Nonetheless, in Musk’s absence, he has succesful lieutenants resembling Mark Juncosa main the way in which. SpaceX has lengthy had a hard-charging tradition instilled by Musk for the reason that founding of the corporate. Musk’s modus operandi is to push his groups to achieve some bold objective, and after they do, he units a brand new, much more audacious goal. It might be not a lot Musk’s absence that’s inflicting these points however quite the corporate’s relentless tradition.
It appears doable that, at the least for now, SpaceX has reached the pace restrict for business spaceflight. Once you’re launching 150 instances a 12 months and constructing two second phases per week, it is arduous to flee the likelihood that some particulars are slipping via the cracks. And it is not simply the launches. SpaceX is working a constellation of greater than 7,000 satellites, flying people into area repeatedly, and growing an unprecedented rocket like Starship.
The current failures could also be indicators of cracks within the basis.
What are the implications
To this point, the results of those failures haven’t been deadly. However area stays a tough, hazardous recreation. Reentering particles from a Falcon 9 higher stage might have struck somebody in Poland. God forbid, a second stage might fail early in a crewed mission.
The dangers of great issues with Starlink shouldn’t be understated, both. There have been unconfirmed rumors in current months of close to misses between Starlink satellites and objects in low-Earth orbit. Extra particles on this more and more cluttered area could be disastrous.
Thus far, the Falcon 9 rocket program has not been slowed down by these points. It is maybe not absolutely appreciated how totally reliant NASA’s human spaceflight actions are on the Falcon 9. It at present launches the one crew-capable automobile in Dragon. Nonetheless, a Cargo model of Dragon additionally flies on the Falcon 9, and that is NASA’s solely technique to get scientific experiments again to Earth. And for at the least the following 12 months, the one different US cargo automobile, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, additionally should launch on the Falcon 9.