14 thoughts on “SpaceX Had To Deliver”

  1. Thank you for this; it’s great to see the backstory.

    The air conditioner story was unknown to me. It’s a shining example of why companies like SpaceX were so badly needed to shake up oldspace and its often needlessly expensive ways of doing things.

  2. This reads like revisionist history to give Obama credit for SpaceX’s success. I say BS. His disinterest in space did give room for Spacex. But it was Bush that cancelled STS, and Obama let SLS spend billions with nothing yet to show for it.

    1. I’m curious about what specific criticism you have regarding the Obama administration and SLS. My understanding is that SLS was forced upon them by congress. Is your complaint that they didn’t fight back hard enough?

      1. The word I used was “disinterest”, as in he did nothing, like SLS.

        What do you mean by “forced”? That seems odd to apply to a person who once remarked that he had a Pen and Phone.

        1. That’s the language I hear commonly used by SLS critics, though you are certainly correct that the president could have vetoed the appropriation bill and forced a government shutdown over the issue if he wished to carry it that far. In practice, NASA programs seem to be pretty far down the list of what recent administration are willing to fight for. They make their desires know via the budget proposal, but when it comes to choosing their battles, other programs take precedence.

          I’ve never heard anyone describe the Obama administration as being pro-SLS, though I’ve not heard just how hard they fought against it and if they would have stood a chance if they had. Saying that “Obama let SLS spend billions” suggest that he had a politically viable alternative, and I wondered what that was.

          1. Saying that “Obama let SLS spend billions” suggests that Obama did nothing why NASA spent billions on SLS.

  4. I think the “liquid nitrogen tank” was actually a liquid oxygen tank from one of the old Saturn I pads, either 34 or 37, I don’t know which.

  5. Ironically, I was in a short course on the history of space mishaps when this all occurred. We were in the loop, of course. When it was all over, my boss, George Nield, said to me that it was like Apollo 13. He wasn’t the only one to express that view. Steve Davis said the same thing. But I pointed out that it was actually like the Skylab Workshop.

    Apollo 13 was a failed mission, and they barely got the crew back alive. The Skylab Workshop launch was very nearly a complete failure. During launch (which I saw from 3 miles away), one of the two main solar panels and a great deal of external sunshield were ripped away by aerodynamic forces. The Workshop’s interior heated up to 140 F. In the next couple of weeks, NASA and the first crew (headed by Pete Conrad) came up with a parasol sunshield, and a procedure for deploying it through the experimental airlock. The crew docked with Skylab, deployed the sunshield, and began the first of three crew rotations on board the first US space station.

    Interestingly, Steve Davis was unaware of the Skylab mission (he’s a lot younger than I am), but quickly got up to speed. I was surprised at the number of old timers who had forgotten about it, though. I would never forget it, mostly because I could never forget the last launch of the Saturn V, seen that close up (and the launch of the first crew, a couple of weeks later). But it is surprising how that particular piece of space lore – the rescue of an entire mission by an intrepid crew – could have been so lost.

    1. I suspect that during the heyday of the Soviet stations it was easier to forget that the USA had abandoned long duration spaceflight, just like South Vietnam and the Bretton Woods system.

      Or maybe I’m just grumpy because it’s St. Patrick’s Day and I haven’t had my first Guinness yet.

  6. FWIW, this article made the front page of the Washington Post Business section in the printed version of the newspaper on Sunday. I do wonder what people like Lori Garver, Jeff Bezos and Charles Bolden have to say about this.

  7. Interesting. Not sure this was as harrowing as the first successful Falcon 1 launch from Omelek on 9/28/08 tho, after what, three previous failures? THAT one was all eggs in the basket for SpaceX. According to Elon there wasn’t enough money left for a 5th.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

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