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Comment by perspective1 | Hacker News Reader

During prototype tests you don't have to target 6-sigma, obviously, but I hope we get a post-mortem without spin.

When their entire business depends on very carefully managing their PR, you're not going to get a public post-mortem without spin.

If a government regulator runs the investigation, you might. I don't know if a regulator's going to get involved in this, though.

> When their entire business depends on very carefully managing their PR

You really think this? My perception is that their PR is fairly blunt and upfront. while they may not tell you everything they dont seem to be trying to "spin" anything

There was a public accusation that a competitor shot one of their rockets with a rifle, causing it to fail. If they had reasonable suspicion of that, they should have kept it to themselves and the FBI/law enforcement. What really happened is that a strut failed due to faulty batch of material that wasn't tested before fabrication.

I'm not sure if this was deliberate spin, but it seemed pretty shady to me at the time.

I don't think SpaceX ever made that accusation. At the time (2016) Musk said the cause of failure was unknown. He was asked directly about sabotage on Twitter and replied that they didn't rule that out. As far as I can tell, the first time anyone at SpaceX talked about the rifle hypothesis was Musk simply saying SpaceX looked into it (the implication being it wasn't sabotage).

WaPro: http://archive.is/j8zjc

>they dont seem to be trying to "spin" anything

Compare their statements about the cause of the CRS-7 explosion to NASA's.

I dug around and didn't find an official SpaceX statement. The cause was a poorly constructed struct they bought from a 3rd party company.

> Compare their statements about the cause of the CRS-7 explosion to NASA's.

Did NASA's and SpaceX's statements differ in content?

SpaceX statement: https://www.spacex.com/news/2015/07/20/crs-7-investigation-u...

NASA accident investigation report: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/public_...

TBF the NASA report came much later than the SpaceX explanation. However it might be of interest to compare:

SpaceX explanation of why looking at the right telemetry is hard vs "Technical Finding 4" from NASA.

SpaceX explanation of the strut's "certifications" and max load vs "Technical Finding 1" (and the longer explanation earlier in the document, you can do a control-f for "Where the IRT differs with SpaceX is in regards to the initiating cause")

"SpaceX chose to use an industrial grade (as opposed to aerospace grade) ... cast part"

Hmm.. Isn't this a common cost-cutting strategy for Musk's companies? The touchscreen in the Model 3s was (is?) also industrial grade, if I recall correctly.

> The touchscreen in the Model 3s was (is?) also industrial grade, if I recall correctly.

Isn't that exactly what it should be? Or would you expect aerospace grade material there? Or is there yet another grade in between called 'automotive'?

Yup! I think the common electronic tolerances go: commerical, industrial, automative, military, aerospace, and then space, though I may be missing one or two.

These are the guys that give us amusing compilations of some of their more explosive mistakes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

So much for very carefully managing PR.

Thank you so much for sharing this!

> When their entire business depends on very carefully managing their PR

That is simply wrong. Their business depends on reliably launching rockets and delivering payloads to station. And that is what they have done.

> If a government regulator runs the investigation, you might. I don't know if a regulator's going to get involved in this, though.

They are not going to. Starship is a SpaceX project that is not financed by NASA or the DoD.

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