Falcon Safety Issues Persist Between NASA and SpaceX

Elon Musk's SpaceX is using a powerful rocket technology. NASA advisers say it could put lives at risk, Washington Post

"... But in a 2015 letter to NASA, Thomas Stafford, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and then chairman of the agency's space-station advisory committee, wrote that "there is a unanimous, and strong, feeling by the committee that scheduling the crew to be on board the Dragon spacecraft prior to loading oxidizer into the rocket is contrary to booster safety criteria that has been in place for over 50 years, both in this country and internationally." At the hearing this year, William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said the agency had not decided whether it would allow SpaceX to load crews before loading the fuel, but he did not rule it out. He vowed that the agency would "make sure that we're really, really safe to go fly, and the system is ready for crew before we put them on board."

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