nickik

Thanks for tracking it down, I was to lazy.

The clean them pretty well. For example the clean along the welds to check them. The soot only stays on the parts where it doesn't really matter.

Engines are also cleaned. In fact, one landing failure happened because left over cleaning alcohol in the engine itself.

We know for sure that even later in the Block 5 generation the re-usability got better. So that isn't controversial.

I would assume their 'favorites' are being pushed in order to get engineering information on those flights, not because they are superior to the others of the same build.

Then maybe the journalist should have done that, instead of just hunting headlines.

Space industry average is an utterly useless and idiotic thing used for comparison.

Most of those companies make tiny sats, or things like small thrusters. Or even small sub-components. And even those that build larger things, build them at far smaller rates.

SpaceX in Brownsville should be compared to things like manufacturing oil platforms or maybe wind power plants.

My point is this, how do you know their practices are worse if you don't compare.

If SpaceX does 100x as many rocket engine test but has only a 2x worse insure rates then what you suggest:

> should also have vastly more experience designing safe testing processes and procedures

Is already true.

So articles that just say 'SpaceX bad because more insury then avg' just don't actually provide any information.

> To the point where they may eliminate injuries completely. ;)

> So saying worker injuries are acceptable due to the output quantity of stuff still seems like an excuse for poor workplace practises.

Sure if we lived in a perfect world that would be nice. But no other type of building anything has perfect safety.

And the way you are phrasing your statement still just assumes SpaceX has 'poor workplace practices'. But we in my opinion have not actually been presented sufficient evidence that this is actually true.

So yes its no excuse for 'poor practices' but I have yet to be convinced that their practices actually poor. There is a difference between saying their practice isn't perfect and its actually poor.

It seems to me these articles just want to say something bad about SpaceX because they know this will create clicks rather then do the actual real work of analyzing safety in rocket testing and manufacturing.

> If they double their output of stuff, are you ok with them increasing the number of worker injuries rather than figuring out how to reduce or eliminate the injuries?

You are simply framing the question in a way where there can never be right answer. Of course continuously improving safety is important. At the same time evaluating safety by comparing companies that do 100x more of something and then screaming 'see they are unsafe, is clearly not fair either'.

If they double their output and injury rates go up by 1.1x times, then that is pretty successful.

So before being negative, please actually show me real actual data in how much their output went up compare do their injury rate. Then maybe we can figure out something relevant about their safety practices. Until then this is just headlines.

And lets compare with relevant industries. How does their rocket engine test facility compare with other rocket engine test facilities. The South Texas manufacturing sight should be compared with a shipyard or building an oil platforms, and not with companies building small rocket.

Actually it does. If you assume that doing some a difficult dangerous task like, testing a rocket engine, building a building sized rocket or launching a rocket is inherently dangerous, and no amount of safety will get the injury rate to 0.

So if a company only does 5 engine test and 1 launch a year and has 10 injuries, then that is inherently worse then a company that does 1000 engine tests and 100 launches but has 20 injuries.

Or do you disagree?

> Along the lines of "we produce more stuff, so cutting corners on worker safety is ok".

Well but that really isn't it.

Its more like doing X has some inherent danger and if you do more of X then its likely more people are gone be insured. So comparing to some 'industry avg' in an industry that also includes people building cube-sats compared to the most powerful rocket engine isn't really fair.

And I wasn't suggesting this to say what SpaceX is doing is inherently ok (I don't know enough) but to establish better comparative baselines.

Then we can actually figure out if SpaceX is more unsafe or simply does more dangerous activity.

You are comparing people that work on small sats to people who work on the largest rocket in human history.

McGregor is the most active rocket engine test facility in the world.

How are their insure rates compared 'per rocket engine test' with other places that test large rocket engines. But again, most of those are tiny rocket engines being test, so how about we look at insure per unit of thrust tested.

> The company’s facility in Redmond, Washington, had a rate of 0.8, the same as the industry average.

And what is the rate per sat produced compared to others?

> I want to know what this thing is so bad.

Its a small space plane used for materials and operations testing..

> Also wonder what are the odds that space force has put people into space and brought them back at this point,

Literally zero.

> and what is the timeframe they envision for doing such things if not.

Not sure why Space Force would be interested in that. Not anytime soon.

Amazing work by all involved! Thank you.

I'm sorry but is just nonsense? Go where? To Russia or China, that would never be allowed. To Europe?

And even if it was allowed, the infrastructure and people are here, this would be a decade long transition.

This is just so utterly and completely unlikely that the chance for it happening is so close to 0% that its practically irrelevant.

I think only because its Musk would people come up with scenarios like this.

This was long before Trump.

And the thing is, depending on how you do the agreement. Europe could produce the engines themselves, they only would need plans and help with manufacture.

This isn't unprecedented in the space industry. Its how India and China worked with Russian engines. And it also happens between commercial companies.

In case of a complete breakdown of relation Europe could continue to manufacture the engine.

This would allow for in-depended access and still produce jobs in Europe. This could serve for both a large, medium and small rocket. Additionally it could allow for learning to do landing. Also, Europe has a decent second stage engine that they could have combined with that first stage.

Europe has to get away from solid fuel boosters and hydrogen main engines, its totally the wrong architecture and moving away from it would have been smart. Sadly they domed themselves with the Ariane 6 and Vega designs.

If not the US, you could have done the same with something like the RD-191 or something like that.

Actually there was a big movement for crew launches in the 90s. This died becuase it was gone cost way to much.

In the last 2 years there has been a very big marketing campaign by various austronauts and people from ESA to push the idea of a commercial crew from Europe. You can find various article like 'Getting serious about crewed flight' and stuff like that. So there is defiantly a big movement within ESA and European space that want it. However the political will behind any of that has not been even remotely shown.

> ISS is slated to be decommissioned soon so what's the point in spending billions on it?

ISS wasn't slated for decommission when the Europeans decided to stop doing cargo.

And ISS will not be the last space station in human history.

Also I didn't suggest they should invest in crew.

> For cargo Ariane is in the shitpit yes but they're in good company with ULA etc. SpaceX caught the whole industry unprepared.

ESA used to have the ATV but it got to expensive for them. ULA never cared that much. As soon as cargo went commercial other defense contractors snatched it up and used their own rocket, see Cygnus and Antares . ULA is a pure launch company they wouldn't have anything to do with ISS cargo unless somebody booked the flight.

Lots of different ESA and Arianespace made lots of arrogant and wrong statements over the years, trust me as somebody that has followed it.

Their claims about illegal subsidies were always utterly hilarious. It was literally just them appealing to European nationalism without any evidence. They were basically saying to convince clueless ESA member-state politicians of nonsense. There is a reason they haven't even tried to bring this to the WTO, they knew they were full of shit.