In addition to spurring problems for the car company Tesla, Elon Musk's puff of marijuana in September will also have consequences for SpaceX. On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that NASA will conduct a "safety review" of both of its commercial crew companies, SpaceX and Boeing. The review was prompted, sources told the paper, because of recent behavior by Musk, including smoking marijuana on a podcast.
According to William Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief human spaceflight official, the review will be "pretty invasive" and involve interviews with hundreds of employees at various levels of the companies, across multiple worksites. The review will begin next year, and interviews will examine "everything and anything that could impact safety," Gerstenmaier told the Post.
The reviews will come as both SpaceX and Boeing are racing to conduct human test flights of their rockets and spacecraft in mid-2019. Both companies have yet to meet critical milestones, including abort tests and uncrewed test flights, before the first crews fly on SpaceX's Dragon and Boeing's Starliner vehicles.
The "safety culture" reviews are also coming after NASA has worked with SpaceX for 10 years and Boeing for decades. NASA engineers and managers likely already have a deep familiarity with how both companies operate.
"For years, our engineers have worked side by side with NASA, creating a strong partnership and guiding the development of Crew Dragon—one of the safest, most-advanced human spaceflight systems ever built," SpaceX said in a statement. "In addition, SpaceX actively promotes workplace safety, and we are confident that our comprehensive drug-free workforce and workplace programs exceed all applicable contractual requirements. We couldn't be more proud of all that we have already accomplished together with NASA, and we look forward to returning human spaceflight capabilities to the United States."
Safe rockets
In justifying the review, agency officials said that NASA must set an example not just for itself but for its contractors. "If I see something that's inappropriate, the key concern to me is 'What is the culture that led to that inappropriateness and is NASA involved in that?'" NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told the newspaper. "As an agency, we're not just leading ourselves but our contractors as well. We need to show the American public that when we put an astronaut on a rocket, they'll be safe."
This is an interesting posture to take, as NASA has awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing in order to end its dependence on Russian Soyuz rockets—presently the only means by which NASA astronauts can get to the International Space Station.
The last two times NASA has put its astronauts "on a rocket" there have been serious problems. Two months after a launch in June, the crew on the space station found a small leak in the Soyuz's orbital module and patched it. Russian officials have been coy about how the leak was caused, even (falsely) intimating shortly after the leak's discovery that a NASA astronaut may have drilled the hole while in space.
Then, in October, a Soyuz rocket failed in flight, forcing the crew to make an emergency escape in a high-gravity maneuver. Less than two months after that accident, NASA says it is confident in the Soyuz rocket for the next crew launch on December 3.
Although it is not clear how such a review would affect the commercial crew schedule, delays seem the most likely outcome. For one, the companies will have to devote time to complying with the NASA reviewers. And second, if any problems are uncovered, the companies and the space agency will have to negotiate means of fixing them.
One source familiar with NASA's motivations said the agency has grown weary of addressing questions about SpaceX's workplace culture, from the long hours its employees work to Musk's behaviors on social media. "SpaceX is the frat house," this source said. "And NASA is the old white guy across the street yelling at them to 'Get off my lawn.'"
Now, NASA appears to have called city hall to enforce its ordinance laws.
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