FAA will require an investigation of the booster landing accident which means that Falcon 9 is grounded again

https://x.com/BCCarCounters/status/1828838708751282586

26 Comments

  1. That’s a bit unexpected in a sense. In other way, it does make sense as a failed landing on land would be an issue. Just because this was on a barge is probably not relevant here.

  2. This_Freggin_Guy on

    not sure a mishap requires a grounding if there was no potential of life risk. I think they need to petition the FAA to allow flights while investigation is underway. maybe grounded for a few days at worst.

  3. Wth? Why should F9 be grounded for that? It‘s out in the ocean, no danger, no harm done.

  4. PerAsperaAdMars on

    Falcon 9 landed exactly where the flight plan specified. Why the investigation? Because the booster turned out to be a pile of debris like any booster before Falcon 9?

  5. UltraRunningKid on

    Makes sense. If SpaceX is documenting the landing as non- experimental and it clearly did not perform as expected there needs to be a mishap investigation.

    I don’t think there is any need to worry about an extended grounding. They will document their preliminary findings, explain why it doesn’t present a new risk and the FAA will approve it pretty quickly.

    This type of requirement prevents normalization of deviance.

  6. At some point we need to get past the “we stop everything because of one failure” mode.

    We don’t halt use of all Ford F-150’s because one had a wheel fall off.

    With this higher tempo of lots of units flying the super rare things will happen.

    For these non-life safety critical failures we should just proceed ahead while the investigation happens.

  7. TheDentateGyrus on

    Investigation is always a good idea, grounding seems a bit silly. The booster otherwise always falls into the ocean (in most countries).

    I think SpaceX could make the Mitch Hedburg argument. “Escalators are never out of order, just temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”

  8. People panicking over this.

    Spacex wants to make rockets as common as planes. If a planes landing gear gave out as it hit the runway there would be an investigation etc. landing is now seen as part of the mission. Plus last grounding only took like 2 weeks to return to flight. The fast turn around is probably why the FAA felt comfortable doing this. If they thought it would be a year of investigation etc they wouldn’t do it.

  9. I’m just glad the satellite I was waiting to launch made it up before the second grounding.

  10. Dangerous_Dac on

    I mean, how many boosters are at 23 landings now? It was seemingly a leader in that regard, checking the specific section of legs just seems like another item to add to the list that may have been overlooked before. Is this really pushing Polaris Dawn even further out?

  11. rebootyourbrainstem on

    I think the FAA just wants SpaceX to submit a document spelling out their rationale for why the possible factors in the landing failure could not pose a risk during any other part of flight.

    SpaceX did the same for the second stage issue.

    Seems like a reasonable approach, as long as it does not delay SpaceX much. It should also not turn into punishing SpaceX for attempting landings, or for making the trade-off that landing has lower margin than other parts of the flight profile.

  12. Looked like one of the legs collapsed: it’s happened before, just not in a long while.

  13. PeterTheWolf76 on

    I think after Boeing’s “little mishap” in space we will see a lot more scrutiny like this on all spacecraft which is good in some ways.

  14. Probably because these things are also brought down on landing pads, on land, near people and over people. The FAA is right to look.

  15. LegitimateGift1792 on

    Soo, the title says “grounded” but the tweet says “requiring an investigation”??? Can the FAA investigate without grounding? Is Polaris pushed out now?

  16. I never have a problem with grounding for investigation that takes an appropriate amount of time.

    My only issue is one of semantics, sort of. It was a landing anomaly on a barge. That could pose some risk landing back on land. No matter how minimal it could be an issue.

    So why not ban landing on land until it’s investigated? If there is an upcoming launch that can’t be moved to land booster on barge it has to wait. Otherwise let it go to the barge.

    Again, that’s just semantical to me. As long as investigation completes in a fair amount of time I see no issue.

  17. Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    |Fewer Letters|More Letters|
    |——-|———|—|
    |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkdvaa0 “Last usage”)|Federal Aviation Administration|
    |[LOX](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkds4tj “Last usage”)|Liquid Oxygen|
    |[LZ](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkdrona “Last usage”)|Landing Zone|
    |[RTLS](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkdsdgh “Last usage”)|Return to Launch Site|
    |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkdq8e0 “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
    |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkdp6gu “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|

    |Jargon|Definition|
    |——-|———|—|
    |[iron waffle](/r/Space/comments/1f3g0k0/stub/lkdldke “Last usage”)|Compact “waffle-iron” aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, “grid fin”|

    **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

    —————-
    ^(7 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1f2v6dh)^( has 31 acronyms.)
    ^([Thread #10504 for this sub, first seen 28th Aug 2024, 18:30])
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  18. Does it mean grounded again? the language appears to include those phrases that have allowed operations to continue while an investigation is open in the past