NASA worries about SpaceX's culture of "inadequacy"

In addition to causing problems at the car manufacturer Tesla, the explosion of Elon Musk marijuana in September will also have consequences for SpaceX. Tuesday, The Washington Post announced that NASA will conduct a "safety review" of its two commercial crew companies, SpaceX and Boeing. The review was motivated, sources told the newspaper, because of Musk's recent behavior, including smoking marijuana on a podcast.

According to William Gerstenmaier, NASA's manned space flight manager, this review will be "pretty intrusive" and will involve interviews with hundreds of employees at different levels of the company, at several work sites. The review will begin next year and the talks will focus on "anything that could affect safety," Gerstenmaier told the newspaper. To post.

The exams will take place as SpaceX and Boeing hurry to conduct human test flights of their rockets and spacecraft in mid-2019. Both companies still have crucial milestones, including abandonment tests and unprepared test flights, before the first crews fly into SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner vehicles.

The "safety culture" exams also come after NASA worked with SpaceX for 10 years and with Boeing for decades. NASA engineers and managers probably already have a thorough understanding of how both companies work.

"For years, our engineers have worked side by side with NASA, creating a strong partnership and guiding the development of Crew Dragon, one of the safest and most advanced spaceflight systems ever built," said SpaceX in a statement. "In addition, SpaceX is actively promoting workplace safety and we are confident that our comprehensive programs of workforce and drug-free programs are above and beyond all applicable contract requirements. all we have done with NASA, look forward to the return of manned flight capabilities to the United States. "

Safe rockets

In justifying the review, officials at the agency said NASA needed to set an example not only for itself, but also for its subcontractors. "If I see something inappropriate, the main concern for me is" What is the culture that led to this inappropriateness and is NASA involved in that? ", Said in the newspaper the NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine. "As an agency, we are not only leading ourselves, we are also leading our subcontractors, we need to show the American public that when we put an astronaut on a rocket, it will be safe."

This is an interesting posture to take, as NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing to end its reliance on Soyuz Russian rockets. It is currently the only means by which NASA astronauts can get to the International Space Station.

The last two times, NASA has put its astronauts "on a rocket", serious problems have arisen. Two months after the launch in June, the space station crew discovered a small leak in the Soyuz orbital module and repaired it. The Russian authorities are making fun of the cause of the leak, even stating (falsely) shortly after the discovery that an NASA astronaut could have punched the hole in space.

Then, in October, a Soyuz rocket broke down, forcing the crew to escape urgently in a maneuver at high gravity. Less than two months after this accident, NASA says it is confident in the Soyuz rocket for the crew's next launch on Dec. 3.

Although the impact of such an examination on the commercial crew schedule is unclear, delays appear to be the most likely outcome. On the one hand, companies will have to devote time to complying with NASA's reviewers. And secondly, if problems are discovered, the companies and the space agency will have to negotiate ways of solving them.

A source familiar with NASA's motivations said that the agency was tired of answering questions about SpaceX's corporate culture, the long hours of work of its employees at Musk's behavior. on social networks. "SpaceX is fraternity," said the source. "And NASA is the old white man on the other side of the street screaming at them to" get off my lawn. "

NASA seems to have called the mayor to enforce its laws of order.