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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 15, 2014
Contact: Emily Hytha, 202-225-4676
Gardner Presses NASA for Transparency on SpaceX
Gardner and Coffman Send Letter Expressing Concern over Lack of Disclosure and Repeated Anomalies on Launch Vehicles
Washington, DC
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Today, Congressman Coy Gardner (CO-04) and Congressman Mike Coffman (CO-06) sent a letter to the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) expressing strong concerns over anomalies that have occurred on taxpayer-funded space launch vehicles, and the lack of public disclosure or transparency of these anomalies. The letter expresses concern over an epidemic of anomalies that have occurred during SpaceX launches or launch attempts, and communicates frustrations with NASA’s refusal to provide insight into those mishaps.
"In the interest of full disclosure and accountability to the American taxpayer, we request that NASA publicly release all anomalies and mishap information, un-redacted, so that Congress can gain a better understanding of what has occurred and ensure full transparency. Because the development of the vehicles and capsule in question were funded by NASA dollars, we request that you provide Congress with the information you have on the various aspects of risk and reliability from these programs, including contractual, management, technical, manufacturing, cost, schedule and safety," wrote Coffman and Gardner.
According to recent news reports, SpaceX launch attempts have resulted in wide ranging problems, including multiple helium leaks, loss of capsule control, multiple thruster issues, avionics issues, capsule contamination issues, and three consecutive seawater intrusions on ISS Cargo Resupply (CRS) missions. SpaceX contracted or planned 24 Falcon 9 flights for its NASA, DOD and commercial customers through 2013 and flew seven. They list approximately 30 flights for this year and next, yet have only flown three times.
"Because the vehicles in question were funded by American taxpayer dollars, there should be no issue making this report publicly available. This information is critical to Congress’ understanding of these programs and the associated risks," wrote Coffman and Gardner.
The letter to NASA can be found here.
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Congressman Gardner is a member in the U.S. House of Representatives serving Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. He sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee and is a member of the following Subcommittees: Communications and Technology, Energy and Power, and Oversight and Investigations.
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Two more socialist Republicans.
At least they’re not making up anomalies. Although at least some of them have been attributed to NASA purchased launches that weren’t.
I think that “epidemic” is a pretty freighted word.
It’s pretty easy to convince the uninitiated that this normal amount of anomalies is somehow indicative of procedural problems.
SpaceX launch attempts have resulted in wide ranging problems, including multiple helium leaks, loss of capsule control, multiple thruster issues, avionics issues, capsule contamination issues, and three consecutive seawater intrusions on ISS Cargo Resupply (CRS) missions.
Yet somehow, all of their missions have been successful so far.
They forgot the first stage engine failure on CRS-1, which occurred at almost the exact moment in the flight that Challenger exploded.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ra46x/
Except with much less catastrophic results.
This is exactly the sort of thing one expects from a rudderless and sorely beset ULA; when you can’t beat ’em on the merits, sic a few of your pet Congressmen on ’em.
The best response to this nonsense would be for SpaceX to get the three missions they’ve got scheduled in the next 60 days off the ground on time and cap off the fourth CRS mission with an RTLS feet-dry landing of the F9R first stage back at KSC/Canaveral. SpaceX needs to crush its critics under an avalanche of achievement.
I believe many, possibly even all, of the cited anomalies are related to systems for which SpaceX sources at least some of the parts from traditional aerospace contractors. I recall the thruster problems being due to purchased valves that the manufacturer changed the design or fabrication process for without informing SpaceX. Similarly, the helium systems on F9R incorporate sub-contracted parts such as the filament-wound pressure bottles. Maybe SpaceX could avoid future such issues by simply amping up their already formidable degree of manufacturing autarky another notch or two.
It would be nice if the normally hyper-partisan, heavily Democratic California Congressional delegation would at least notice that a pair of out-of-state Republicans are making a run at one of the few recent California-based business success stories and a major employer in the state. That would be particularly true of Rep. Maxine Waters, in whose district SpaceX’s headquarters and manufacturing plant is situated, and who usually leads the league in prickly partisanship. We’ll have to see what, if anything, is forthcoming by way of opposition from that quarter.
Maxine Waters only understands to Potato.
Perhaps SpaceX should suggest to their vendors that they should get into the political fray or lose business?
Flight anomalies are a lot more common than some people would like to think even if they seldom get public disclosure. So it is kind of easy to see how this congressperson would get confused. In particular when SpaceX does a lot more public disclosure on minor anomalies than companies like ULA.
What I do not get is why he is bothered that SpaceX has a lot of flights in the manifest. AFAIK they have met their contractual obligations with NASA so far. As for the launch delays with private customers they exist because ramping up launch capacity takes time. How many airplanes do Boeing or Airbus have on their manifests? Why did Airbus take 4 years to deliver 50 A380 planes, yet the next 50 planes only took 2 years to deliver? You cannot ramp up production with the flick of a switch. Plus the fact is the customers themselves are not complaining. Did you see Orbcomm’s comments on the last launch delay? They were not bothered with them. The fact is they got a sweet deal with that launch which ended up being extremely cheap. Plus it was launched successfully eventually. It is better to delay a flight than to botch up a launch. Ariane is the leader in the commercial space launch sector and they delay launches all the time.
So it is kind of easy to see how this congressperson would get confused.
That’s a pretty generous assumption. Sounds to me like a lazy approach to sabotaging SpaceX’s operations. If SpaceX complies with the demand, then the congressman gets (without having to work for it) lots of propaganda material for low information voters to get disturbed about.
Definitely not confused, they know exactly what they’re after.
Good you noticed, Rand. They’ve since changed the url. It no longer links directly to Lockheed Martin 🙂
The congressman from Eastern Colorado? I think the URL tells the truth of the matter; he’s the congressman from Lockheed-Martin.
Oh, and BTW… the other owner of ULA is Boeing, which is also the company competing against SpaceX for commercial crew with CST-100 project, which just happens to be headquartered in Colorado Springs (and the high end residential areas between Colorado Springs and Denver, where a lot of the Boeing people live, is in the congrescritter’s district).
Hrmm, maybe he’s the congresscritter from Boeing, too?
however… irregardless of my comment above, I also feel that the congresscritter has a point; congress does indeed have a right to whatever NASA has. (just like it has an absolute right to anything the IRS has…) so there’s nothing wrong in them asking for it. But, that said, what about a parallel request for the same data regarding ULA? The internals on the RD-180 fiasco could prove most illuminating.
The request is to make it public. NASA couldn’t do that if they wanted to, thanks to ITAR. In any case, I doubt NASA has any insight into SpaceX’s helium leak issues as they occurred on a different configuration of the Falcon 9.
My mistake; I didn’t realize it’d mean making proprietary info public. I don’t agree with that.
Lot’s of commercial businesses provide goods and services to the US government, even pencils and paper clips. Checking out all the anomalies in the products of all those businesses would be one of the most productive undertakings for Congress that I can imagine.
I agree, checking out the minute of paperclip manufacture would, at least, be far more productive (and less harmful) than the overwhelming majority of what congress does. 🙂
IIRC, a lot of the Orion work is done in Denver. Not only is the Falcon 9 a competitor with ULA’s rockets, Dragon is a competitor with Orion.
I’m pretty sure that CST-100 is based in Houston.
To be fair, HQ and size of largest workforce are two different things often confused.
Ugh. I’m reminded of the Romney attack on Newt during the 2012 Florida primary, when Newt actually had some valuable things to say about space policy, Romney had nothing, and Romney and the Newt hating press piled on with derisive B.S. attacks on Newt’s space policy.
Also, isn’t the timing of this attack letter rather odd considering SpaceX just had a successful launch?
Sounds like the perfect time to attack.. poisoning in the punch bowl as it were. Their strongest argument is the schedule slips, but they went off on so many different tangents and screwed up so many simple facts that it’s mostly lost in the stupid.
SpaceX should open its books voluntarily. If it shows it’s making a profit at these prices, that will be one more nail in the coffin of the incumbents.
[sarcasm]Well, I’m glad to see that Lockheed Martin is getting value for money in it’s political contributions. According to opensecrets.org , Coffmann has picked up $38.8k from LM over his career (7th on his list), and Brooks a total of $49k from LM and Boeing together (which are 2nd and 3rd on his list). Gardner, on the other hand, seems to be doing it for free. While I’m all for generosity, I’m a little concerned that doing things for free is socialism: he may be devaluing the lobbyist’s dollar.[/sarcasm]
I haven’t seen any position from Udall on commercial space, but Gardner just lost my vote. I hate it when Republicans who should know better come out with this anticompetitive crap.
And people wonder why there is a Tea Party.
What does “three consecutive seawater intrusions on ISS Cargo Resupply (CRS) missions” even mean to a layperson who hasn’t been following SpaceX launches?
Those of us with scorecards know that it’s a result of SpaceX intentionally landing its launcher in the ocean as a way of safely testing the re-entry systems and landing systems for reusability, even though landing in the ocean isn’t the ultimate goal of the system.
To those without such knowledge, it almost sounds as if the rockets somehow fell into the ocean instead of reaching the ISS, or they were launching from a submarine and had water leak into them during the launch. In either case, it’s a misleading, nonsensical non-issue.
I wonder if staffers wrote this, if the congress critters themselves wrote this, or, really, who wrote this. In any case, it’s a pretty good indication of the current state of PR degrees these days. Is it safe to assume that none of the professors who used to teach “Fact Checking 101” and “Research Methods 201” ever made tenure at their various institutions? It doesn’t appear that anyone is teaching such things any longer, for sure.
I highly doubt this is just some hastely scribbled meme that is tossed into the ring. More like an army goes over it and vets it word by word with someone like frank luntz running focus groups on which words get the maximum angst from low information voters.
“three consecutive seawater intrusions on ISS Cargo Resupply (CRS) missions”
I believe this is cargo comming back from ISS in dragon.
They have gotten seawater in the dragon ….. on landing.
Has nothing to do with the 1st stage water landings.
To be consistent, they should demand to see the books for FedEx whenever that service delivers a package for the agency, and any airline when a civil servant flies on board for travel.
They do this crap because it works. At some point Elon might just tell them to fly a kite while he focuses more on his private customers. This is why government often must pay more for the same services others pay less for.
He won’t. Elon understands that you have to keep the government on the hook or they start rocking the boat. (Hey, that’s not bad!)