July 16, 2019

SpaceX Reveals Cause of Crew Dragon Explosion (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
SpaceX held a test of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on April 20, 2019 which ended with an explosion at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. Today, SpaceX released what it believes to have caused the accident. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, Kathy Lueders and Hans Koenigsmann SpaceX’s Vice President of Mission Assurance discussed how the explosion occurred during a battery of tests of Crew Dragon’s propulsion systems. “We went through the evidence and the debris and through the telemetry data and have a conclusion at this time,” Koenigsmann said.

“There are two propulsion systems on Crew Dragon and they use the same propellant…it’s a bi-propellant that consists of NTO nitrogen tetroxide on one side, that’s the oxidizer, and monomethylhydrazine, that’s the fuel. When you put those two together they basically react immediately... We know that we had a leaky component on the system that allowed oxidizer or NTO to cross over to the pressurization system and we believe that we had a liquid slug of that oxidizer in that pressurization system... We think that this slug was driven back into the check valve... at significant force and that destroyed the check valve and caused an explosion.”

“In this case we learned a lot, maybe more than we wanted,” Koenigsmann said. Leuders echoed this sentiment, stating that the accident occurred during a ground test and not a flight test and was, in some ways, “…a gift.” April’s accident placed the timing of the Demo-2 crewed test flight to the International Space Station in question. The flight had been slated for this month (July). With several critical testing milestones requiring completion, it’s unlikely Demo-2 will take place this year. (7/15)

The Scientists Searching for Alien Life Aren’t Very Popular in Science (Source: Quartz)
But while scientists tossing around the idea of alien life may find a rapt public audience, they can also draw cynical, even hostile reactions from their fellow scientists, a response summed up by acclaimed physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who once quipped to CNN: “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”

This paradox has ripple effects. The threat of being written off as a kook can loom large for researchers, especially young ones. A lot of academics “won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole,” said Don Donderi, a retired associate professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal who now teaches a non-credit course called “UFOs: History and Reality” in the school’s continuing education department.

NASA physicist Silvano Colombano maintains that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been limited by long-held assumptions and that the “general avoidance of the subject by the scientific community” means no one questions them. It’s a dilemma: scientists might look like cranks for posing questions about aliens, but we’ll also never know unless someone asks. (7/15)

Space Tourism: Brevard Tourism Chief Unveils $7M Plan to Market Space Coast (Source: Florida Today)
Brevard County new tourism director is proposing a $7.15 million promotion and advertising campaign for the coming budget year to market the Space Coast to potential visitors. Space Coast Office of Tourism Executive Director Peter Cranis said he is using his experience working for Visit Orlando to help craft his plan for Brevard County for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. Cranis was vice president of global consumer and convention marketing for Visit Orlando from 1999 to 2016.

The plan also incorporates input from members of the Brevard County Tourist Development Council's Marketing Committee, which held a two-hour workshop on the topic last month. Cranis sees this as the first year of a three-year campaign to build more brand awareness of the Space Coast to potential tourists. Tourism is a $2.1 billion-a-year industry in Brevard County, and is responsible for about 26,000 jobs. So the tourism marketing plan is a crucial component of local economic development. (7/15)

NASA Farm-Boy Engineer Left His Fingerprints All Over Apollo Missions — Literally (Source: Florida Today)
Lee Solid, by his own admission, is not a man prone to frivolity. And he can’t pinpoint when, or even why, but he started putting his thumbprint on Saturn V rocket engines before missions, including the ones that blasted the first humans to the moon. “I’m unemotional,” he said. “I’m not superstitious, but it was just something I did.” As the lead engineer overseeing the development and production of the 30 engines on the three stages of the Saturn V, Solid watched with particular joy the day Apollo 11 left the launchpad with his fingerprints all over it.

“That nine seconds was like an eternity,” he said, shaking his head. “You want that thing to lift off. It’s cranking away. It’s making this incredible noise. You really want to see that movement. You’re antsy. That’s an emotional moment, when those engines start and it seems like it’s boiling there forever. It slowly starts moving. You’re go, go go!”

Still tall and lean, the onetime South Dakota farm boy, born in 1936, had accepted a scholarship to play basketball at the University of South Dakota. Then, driving home one weekend to see his family on their farm just outside Martin, Solid was involved in a serious car accident. Click here. (7/15) /

SpaceX's Response to Crew Dragon Explosion Unfairly Maligned by Head of NASA (Source: Teslarati)
In a bizarre turn of events, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has offered harsh criticism of SpaceX’s response to Crew Dragon’s April 20th explosion, suffered just prior to a static fire test of its eight Super Draco abort engines. The problem? The NASA administrator’s criticism explicitly contradicts multiple comments made by other NASA officials, the director of the entire Commercial Crew Program, and SpaceX itself.

Lest all three of the above sources were either blatant lies or deeply incorrect, it appears that Bridenstine is – intentionally or accidentally – falsely maligning SpaceX and keeping the criticism entirely focused on just one of the two Commercial Crew partners. The reality is that his initial comments were misinterpreted, but an accurate interpretation is just as unflattering. Ultimately, Bridenstine responded to a tweet by Ars Technica’s Eric Berger to correct the record, noting that the criticism was directed at his belief that SpaceX’s “communication with the public was not [good]”, while the company’s post-failure communication with NASA was actually just fine. (7/14)

An Exploration Shakeup (Source: Space Review)
As NASA and the nation prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the agency got caught up last week in issues involving its effort to return humans to the Moon. Jeff Foust reports on the shakeup that led NASA to reassign two top officials in its human spaceflight program. Click here. (7/15)
 
The NASA-Vatican Relationship Models a Bridge Between Science and Religion (Source: Space Review)
Science and religion can often seem diametrically opposed to each other. Deana Weibel describes how NASA’s long-running relationship with the Vatican Observatory, one dating back to Apollo, can show how the two can work together instead. Click here. (7/15)
 
When a Chimpanzee Landed on the Moon: the Saga of Boris (Source: Space Review)
Last week, Dwayne Day explained how a tall tale he created about a mythical Soviet program to send chimpanzees to the Moon took on a life of its own on the Internet. This week, the story itself. Click here. (7/15)