The National Transportation Safety Board Joins the Space World
Prologue
This story is important because it shows how the industry came to learn exactly how important and relevant the material they provided in a license application might become. Up to a certain point in time, they provided material they thought satisfied the licensing requirement, without thinking about the actual significance of that information.
I have found that seemingly different unrelated events sometimes connect as time progresses. For example, I attended an event and Peter Diamandis came up and excitedly said he had just found the money to establish the XPrize. He wanted to create the equivalent of the Ortieg Prize for manned commercial space flight. The Ortieg prize was created to advance aviation and the $10,000 prize went to the first person to fly nonstop from the US to Paris. Diamandis’ XPrize concept was going to be $10 million for the first person to make it to outer space with a private space vehicle and pilot. The second unrelated event was when I invited Burt Rutan to meet with me to talk about how regulations can stifle innovation. Burt Rutan told me he had never thought about space before. Those two events connect when less than 10 years later Rutan wins the Ansari XPrize when SpaceShipOne and its pilot fly into outer space.
This section describes a number of independent events that eventually come together in a significant learning moment for the industry.
Involving the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
NTSB plays a critical part in all aspects of transportation safety in the United States. Most people know that when there is a commercial airplane accident, the NTSB is on the scene. However, NTSB’s jurisdiction covers virtually every transportation mode. One finds NTSB investigators at the sites of pipeline explosions, ship accidents, tanker truck explosions, or significant rail derailments.
NTSB is purely an investigative body. Its mission is to: determine the events leading to significant accidents; identify the cause of those accidents; and make recommendations that could correct the problem and prevent accidents in the future. It generates nonbinding recommendations, which regulatory agencies are under no obligation to implement. NTSB has played an enormous role in improving transportation safety. When NTSB investigators show up at a site, they are the lead investigators. Their typical approach is to involve all relevant parties in the investigation, including those who may be at fault. Its findings are often consensus-based. NTSB itself seeks to find the causes of accidents but does not seek to place blame.
Sometime in late 1988 or early 1989, I visited board members of NTSB with an invitation. I wanted them to become part of the fabric of the commercial space transportation system. As I explained to them, it was important to be proactive, rather than reactive should any significant event occur. OCST would be willing to take their investigators on familiarization trips and to pay for any training should they need it. The benefits in my view were not only having a knowledgeable investigative agency, but it also would add to the strength of the industry. Just-in-time regulatory steps were what led to patchwork regulatory systems. Just as I wanted our regulatory system to be capable of handling technologies not yet existing, I wanted to have NTSB proactively prepared before an accident. In June 1989, OCST signed a memorandum of understanding with NTSB.
The Government Taketh Away
People see the space world today with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson as the face of commercial space and media headlines establish that space is the rightful province of those daring, risk-taking, entrepreneurs. It wasn’t that way at the start. In fact, when this all started, cell phones were the size of bricks and were best used in cars. There was no internet as people know it today. If one uttered the word “space”, it was synonymous with NASA or the US government.
Even from the very, very beginning–meaning when President Reagan signed Executive Order 1246– the government’s commitment to commercial space launches was half-hearted. The Department of Defense had embraced privatizing expendable launch vehicles (ELV) as a counter strategy to NASA’s successful end run to President Reagan that resulted in the closing of its Atlas and Delta production lines. NASA supported privatization because it had the space shuttle, and, as we would soon see, it was intent on capturing all commercial satellite launches for itself.
After the Challenger disaster in 1986, some things changed. The White House decided that the extremely valuable shuttle system should no longer carry common commercial cargo. This permitted the USAF to keep its Titan ELV. Moreover, because the space shuttle system was shut down during the subsequent accident investigation and redesign era, NASA itself realized it needed ELVs.
In theory, this should have meant that all government launches using the Delta and Atlas vehicles would have been considered commercial launches, and therefore would require licenses. In fact, in the everyday world the government, including DOD and NASA, all use commercial airline, trucking, marine and other transportation services. Even though the services were purchased by the government, those service providers had to have licenses and follow the same rules as with any other customer.
But commercial space transportation isn’t like its other transportation kin. Having owned the Delta and Atlas, NASA wanted to claim that when it used the services of McDonnell Douglas Delta and General Dynamics Delta, it wasn’t a commercial launch because NASA itself was the operator. This occurred when Charlie Gunn, former Delta program manager, purchased a launch and told McDonnell-Douglas, it didn’t need a license. McDonnell-Douglas was caught in the middle. DOT took this case to the Department of Justice.
America’s space culture runs deep. NASA has always been the country’s space leader; it’s an image that NASA continues to promote because even when NASA uses a license commercial service that it doesn’t oversee, the NASA public affairs releases will say, “NASA just successfully launched another rocket!”
DOT lost. Never mind the fact that DOT showed example after example of when the government purchases commercial transportation services the companies obtain the required licenses. In this particular case, though, the Department of Justice sided with NASA. When NASA purchased commercial launches in the future, it could tell companies they didn’t need licenses.
Commercial space transportation was supposed to mirror the normal transportation world. But the Department of Justice’ decision muddied the water. “What the government hath given, the government hath taken away” might be one way to put it.
This set the stage for confusion. As experts at the National Transportation Board will tell you, almost every accident is the product of a continuous series of events that lead up to the accident. It’s called an “accident chain”. Should any of those events not have occurred, the accident itself would probably not have occurred.
A Company Tries to Play Government Against Government
It is not important to name the company because this is actually about the setting. Given the right circumstances at that point in time, any company could have become a part of this type of chain.
The company X was innovative, and it held out the promise of what the future would bring. Its launch concept was novel, and of all the launch concepts it was the most mobile. Its concept allowed it to launch from the most optimal locations in the world. It was the new darling of the space world, and it straddled the boundary between commercial and government. It heralded itself as a commercial company but worked extensively with DOD.
Our first experience with company X was when it was launching a satellite for a government agency that claimed the launch was commercial. The government agency did not launch satellites and had no rocket launch experience. Hence, OCST concluded that the agency was contracting with launch company X as a commercial provider to put its satellite into space. The launch had to be licensed.
We didn’t hear from company X about a license. We notified company X. No response. Rumor had it that the agency told the company not to apply for a license, or that the company was using the agency as a shield not to apply.
The problem was that the Justice Department decision had opened up a can of worms. The Justice Department decision was based on the fact that no party knew more about space launches than NASA, so NASA could tell a company NASA itself would be the launch operator. But could the Departments of Commerce or Agriculture claim that it was the operator using the same rationale? The answer would be “no” because neither had launch experience. The launch credentials of this particular agency were about the same as Commerce or Agriculture.
Our strategy was twofold: we went to company X and informed it that it could be cited; we went to the agency and asked whether they really wanted to claim that they knew anything about rockets. Again the question, “Do you really want to be responsible for the consequences of an accident?” was enough to get a government bureaucrat to take the safer route. The purchasing agency decided the launch was commercial and needed to be licensed. However, the Justice Department decision that sometimes a company needed a license and sometimes didn’t just reinforced some parties’ opinions that the license was a worthless bureaucratic hurdle.
Although in this instance, company X eventually applied, it was not really a willing applicant. It was different from Conatec, SSI, McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics and Martin Marietta who were eager for their licenses because it established them as part of a new private sector industry,
Company X made it obvious that it didn’t want to go through the process. It said that it was using a national launch range, and our regulations said that in most cases a company using a national range uses a streamlined process. The company wasn’t pleased by OCST’s response that this did not fit within the standard national range experience and that its innovative technology created different safety issues.
The company then complained that OCST’s information requirements were not specific enough so they didn’t know what to provide and that when they provided information, we asked for more. (This complaint was legitimate in a sense. The advantage of regulations built around design specification is that the applicant knows exactly what to provide. However, had design regulations been in place, company X would have found its innovative designs would have been hindered by the regulations themselves. OCST’s performance regulations readily handled the company’s innovative design, but unfortunately, it meant that the safety review process would essentially be a learning experience for both parties. Since this was the first time OCST was confronted with this new launch concept, it also had a learning curve.)
Company X described OCST as hostile and was reluctantly pulled through the process. For the most part, the company appeared to go through the motions, providing the documentation that would indicate that it understood the factors affecting the safety of its launch. However, given the company’s attitude, we suspected the company told us it would do one thing, and then during launch very well might do something else.
Today, OCST might call this uncooperative. I used less harsh language then. This event took place only 5 years after the Executive Order was signed. The industry was learning. For example, even when companies responded to the application requirements, we had a sense that they gave us what they thought were safety procedures, but we were fairly certain they didn’t know what was in the material they gave us.
NTSB’s First Investigation
In my opinion, the fact that this event occurred at all was partially due to the fact that the Justice Department created certain circumstances where a commercial company did not need a license. Company X operated on both sides of that line. Thus, if the launch is basically the same, but sometimes a license is required and sometimes not, then the license is not something one spends too much time worrying about.
The events of Company X’s launch were pretty widely known soon after the anomaly occurred. Although the launch took place successfully, and no one and no property were harmed, certain parts of the launch process were so contrary to standard practice that the public expected some kind of government reaction/investigation. I believed that this would be a good time to see how NTSB worked, and to see how the material provided in the license application related to the investigation.
The following event is described in the executive summary of the NTSB’s investigation report dated February 9, 1993.
“On about 0930 eastern standard time, the launch sequence of [company X for purposes here] expendable launch vehicle was aborted by the NASA range safety officer, in accordance with a previously established launch constraint. Several seconds later, the launch sequence was reinitiated by the company X test conductor, and the missile [launched] uneventfully…. The ignition and staging of the launch vehicle and its subsequent deployment of two satellites into low earth orbit were also uneventful. There were no injuries to personnel involved in the mission and no damage to mission assets.
The launch was conducted under license number YYYY, issued by the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, DOT. The anomaly was investigated by the Safety Board, following an invitation by the Department of Transportation in accordance with a Memorandum of Agreement dated June 5, 1989.
The safety issues raised in this report include command, control, and communications responsibilities, launch crew fatigue, launch interphone procedures, the efficiency of launch constraints, and the lack of common launch documents.”
By involving NTSB, companies could see that one aspect of the investigation focused on the procedures the company said it would follow versus what it actually did. Further, companies could see that even though a national launch range was involved, the investigation focused on the company as the operator. The investigation was thorough. As the summary illustrates there were a number of findings that justified changes in the future. The national range admitted that it had not handled that type of launch activity in the past, and wasn’t sufficiently prepared. (This was justification for an earlier message to Company X that the streamlined process for launch range use was for traditional space launch methods and not their innovative approach.)
Maybe companies didn’t change the material they provided in applications by much, but we were fairly confident that they were now going to make sure that they knew what was in those applications and that they actually planned to do what they said.