SpaceX has, after some initial teething problems with both the Falcon 1 and then the Falon 9, been remarkably successful for a new entrant into the space launch field. In fact, for at least the Falcon 9 they may have been the most successful program in the history of rocket propulsion in terms of overall realized reliability for a new design vehicle, and that is entirely attributable to the hard work and lessons learned by many of the smart people working at SpaceX. (Less, I should say, for Elon Musk who, despite his pretensions of genius exposes a deep well of ignorance every time he tries to speak about propulsion and spacecraft engineering.) But there is a saying in the space launch industry: “Every success is just that much closer to your next failure.”
When companies become complacent about success, lose critical skills, or start moving into new area of technical expertise, they basically reset the reliability meter to zero. I’ve worked with every major space launch integrator in the US and most of the major suppliers to them, and every single one of them has had notable failures when they became lax about things like requalifying components when they moved production to a new facility, or made a “minor” design change without testing, or just decided to clear-cut the most expensive 10% of their work force to reduce costs. Every single one. Boeing is the latest and most obvious, but Lockheed, Orbital Sciences (now Northrop Grumman), Rockwell (now part of Boeing), ATK-Thoikol (now part of Northrop Grumman) et cetera have all had very public failures stemming from not recognizing the limits of their knowledge and/or management overriding good engineering. Nobody gets “the benefit of the doubt” when it comes to systems that when the fail, fail in a catastrophic fashion.
I am not an expert on pressure suit design and I’ve never worked with the major environment suit companies (ILC Dover, The David Clark Company, Hamilton Sunstrand SLS). I’ve never worn an environment suit intended for use in vacuum, and all I really know about pressure suits used in space comes from some background research and reading that I did for a Mars exploration study a number of years ago. But I can look at that SpaceX suit and see numerous things that would make me seriously concerned for the reliability, integrity, and functionality of that system based upon my admittedly cursory knowledge. I can only imagine what an experienced pressure suit engineer from DCC or ILC Dover would have to say about the design, and I think it would be scathing. Now, maybe a costume designer and a bunch of bright innovative kids at SpaceX have totally reinvented the idea of how a pressure suit should function but I do not see the evidence for that. What I see is something sleek and cinematic and totally lacking in some basic features I would look for in a system that was intended to maintain pressure and environmental conditions needed to sustain life in a very hostile environment. I see a track suit with a helmet with few concessions to functionality necessary in a freefall vacuum environment.
The fingers still seem to have decent mobility. In general, I won’t say it’s *impossible *to come up with scenarios where the limited mobility is a problem, but they start to get implausible. The reality is that most responses are going to be handled by automatic systems or the ground. The fact that the capsule has controls at all is mostly so that the passengers don’t feel like spam in a can. After all, the current Dragon capsules are going up and down with nobody onboard.
The challenger accident was caused by NASA ignoring the solid booster engineers saying it was too cold to launch. Investigation found NASA thought their crap did not stink.
Since you presumably have a lot of time on your hands, here’s some reading to do on the topic. Please come back when you have educated yourself on the topic.
The thing I read a while back (recap of podcast by the astronaut Reisman that works for spacex) was that the gloves are one of the most important elements for working in spacesuit and they feel these ones are superior to other spacesuit gloves.
O ring failed due to temp (too cold). Thiokol lead engineer would not sign doc saying it’s ok to use it in the temp conditions they had. Thiokol managers and NASA managers pushed him hard to approve but he refused. Eventually Thiokol manager approved it instead.
Temps in Florida had gotten down to freezing (if I remember correctly) overnight.
You really should read the book because it is a prime example of organizational failure that applies far beyond aerospace, but in a nutshell, the fundamental problem was a poor joint design, managerial resistance to changing something that hadn’t failed catastrophically (by both Morton Thiokol and NASA management), and complacency by the very people in both organizations regarding design verification and safety. While it is true that the launch of STS-51-L mission occurred at an ambient temperature below the temperature that the SRBs were qualified to (and the lowest that the Shuttle was ever launched in), and the most memorably moment in the testimony in front of the Rogers Commission was Dick Feynman pulling an O-ring out of ice water and showing its lack of resiliency when chilled, CFD analysis found that local cooling from vented oxygen which pooled in that region of the field joint (and had done so in prior flights in which partial burn-through of the O-ring was found) which brought the O-ring material to a temperature where it was not able to properly seal. This, along with record high wind shear exceeding the 3σ historical values, were the primary causes for the field joint to vent toward the hydrogen tank which is what caused the catastrophic failure. The cold ambient temperature by itself was not enough to cause the O-ring seal to fail which is evident because none of the other field joints exhibited venting.
That’s certainly good news, but I have to take issue with the language “We have chosen to refly…”. It shouldn’t have been Boeing’s choice at all. In fact it shouldn’t have been anyone’s choice: they so obviously failed to fulfill their contractual requirements that *not *reflying the mission should never have been a serious consideration.
I wonder how many people know (or care) that the US has only been sending astronauts to space on Russian rockets for almost 9 years. Average Joe or Jane probably doesn’t know.
Hardly any, and that’s a bit sad. With the political tension between our two countries, and the ongoing conflict with Ukraine and Crimea, this should have been much bigger news. We’re paying $85 million per astronaut, per launch, and on top of that Russia came alarmingly close to moving a portion of the required Soyuz training to their abandoned facility in Sevastopol, Crimea. US astronauts have to complete Soyuz training to be allowed aboard their spacecraft. So, that would have put America between a rock and a hard place–continue to allow US astronauts to complete training in Sevastopol and tacitly recognize Crimea as legitimate Russian territory, or cancel all US manned operations in space. This was a big deal, with major ramifications, yet there was hardly a peep about it in the media.
Scott Kelly describes that in his book Endurance, including the custom of urinating in the transport bus tire began by Uri Gagarin. Hey, Gagarin did it, and he came back.