Op-ed: We love you SpaceX, and hope you reach Mars. But we need you to focus.

Thursday's accident confirms that SpaceX should double down on commercial crew.

Eric Berger

Screen grab of SpaceX static fire anomaly from YouTube video.

USLaunchReport.com

During eight years on Twitter and more than 21,500 tweets, I have used the F-word just one time, on the afternoon of April 8, 2016. Watching a Falcon 9 rocket fall out of the sky and somehow, miraculously, come to fiery stop on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean—the moment overcame me. That first sea-based landing may be the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

It is unprofessional to simultaneously report on, and be a huge fan of, subjects journalists cover. But there are very few space reporters who don’t marvel at the kinds of things SpaceX has done and is trying to do. I count myself among them. That doesn’t mean the company can do no wrong, nor should it be free from criticism. And having talked to myriad people in the space industry after Thursday’s accident, from new space zealots to big aerospace barons, one thing has become crystal clear. The booster that two NASA astronauts might climb on top of in two years—or less—has just suffered two failures in 15 months.

SpaceX is an amazing company, doing amazing things. But right now there’s really just one thing the company should focus on, and that’s meeting the needs of its biggest customer. That is not a satellite company. It is not Red Dragon. It is not the hordes of adoring fans eager to hear about the Mars Colonial Transporter. It is, rather, NASA, America’s stodgy space agency that has stood by the company for the better part of a decade.

The extent of NASA's financial support is not particularly well-recognized because SpaceX does not have to publicly release its financial information, nor does NASA go out of its way to advertise it. However, SpaceX receives the majority of its funding from NASA, and according to one internal NASA document, as much as 85 percent of the company’s revenues to date have come from the space agency through its multibillion dollar commercial crew and cargo contracts. Put simply, if not for NASA, SpaceX would probably be flying the Falcon 1 or 5 rocket today or might not exist at all.

There is precisely one thing NASA wants right now, more than anything, in human spaceflight: commercial crew capabilities. White House and top NASA officials want to nurture the commercial space industry and simultaneously break the dependence of NASA on Russia for launches that has existed since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011.

NASA has not been a perfect partner to SpaceX, to be sure. An inspector general’s report released Thursday raised troubling questions about the speed at which the agency is reviewing safety reports made by SpaceX and Boeing as part of the process to certify their spacecraft as ready to fly. But NASA has been a very good partner in other ways. When a Falcon 9 rocket failed in June 2015, NASA lost $118 million in cargo during that CRS-7 flight. But as part of the initial round of commercial cargo contracts, NASA had agreed to assume these risks to help the companies. And after that accident, the chief of human spaceflight for NASA, Bill Gerstenmaier, publicly praised SpaceX for investigating and acting on the failure in “a matter of days,” a process that would have taken NASA six months.

After Thursday’s failure, NASA again stood behind SpaceX with the following statement: “We remain confident in our commercial partners and firmly stand behind the successful 21st century launch complex that NASA, other federal agencies, and U.S. commercial companies are building on Florida’s Space Coast. Today’s incident—while it was not a NASA launch—is a reminder that spaceflight is an incredible challenge, but our partners learn from each success and setback.”

Focus?

I understand SpaceX has a master plan—the company wants to colonize Mars. It has been brilliant to watch the plan unfold as SpaceX has used NASA contracts to bootstrap up to the Falcon 9 rocket and used Falcon 9 flights to simultaneously test reusability and supersonic retropropulsion for the Martian environment. I mean, it’s genius. But at some point you have to focus on the here and now, and that is the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Falcon 9 rocket lies at the core of everything SpaceX wants to do. It delivers commercial satellites and cargo. It will deliver astronauts into orbit. Three Falcon 9 boosters will power the Falcon Heavy. It is the basis of proving the reusability of orbital launch systems. So if there is no Falcon 9, there is no business. And now there have been two failures in 15 months. While the cause of the second failure is not known to outsiders, and it may have been caused by ground systems rather than the rocket itself, the company has nonetheless lost two of its rockets and associated payloads in 15 months. That is sobering.

Musk has famously contrasted his approach with that of NASA. "There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA,” Musk said in 2005. “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

That is a laudable approach that works for risky efforts, such as landing rockets on a boat or trying to send a Dragon to the surface of Mars. But it does not work when it comes to winning the confidence of commercial satellite customers or flying NASA astronauts. And while Musk said Dragon's abort system would have protected the crew from a "fast fire" like Thursday's accident, that is an untested assertion as of right now, albeit one we hope is accurate.

Commercial crew is by far SpaceX’s most lucrative contract ($3.14 billion in awards so far), and its success would cement the company’s legacy. Whoever launches NASA astronauts first from Florida, whether Boeing or SpaceX, will be the first private company to ever send people into orbit. The prestige and branding value of being the company that breaks the grasp of the Russians on our astronauts and restores pride to our space program is almost incalculable.

One person I spoke to recently who is intimately familiar with NASA’s commercial crew dealings with SpaceX and Boeing said both companies face major technical challenges. And while this source wasn’t particularly complimentary of Boeing, noting its interest in maximizing revenue from NASA, that company at least had dedicated a team of engineers to the project. When this person meets with SpaceX engineers, however, the team members are invariably working on several different projects in addition to commercial crew. “If we could only get them to focus,” this source told me.

Elon Musk is scheduled to speak at the International Astronautical Congress in late September, and he has promised to unveil some of his plans about how SpaceX will colonize Mars. Will he follow through on this given the events of this week? One connected person who has a vested interest in the success of commercial space companies—a real new space guy—told me Thursday, “If he does that now he’s going to piss off a lot of people. Honestly, there’s no rush for Mars. It’s going to be there.” The implication is clear: keep the focus on commercial crew.

Musk is unquestionably a genius. He can run his company however he likes. But if I may humbly suggest, he might use the September meeting as a forum to talk about the accident, what SpaceX has learned from it, and how he’s planning to implement commercial crew. He can talk Mars, of course, and we all would love to see him get there. But he must conquer Earth’s launch market first. I e-mailed back and forth with another source Thursday, someone who in the past helped shape NASA’s policy to favor commercial cargo and crew contracts like those won by SpaceX. He wrote, “Sending thousands to colonize Mars may just have to be put on the back burner until he can send three people to ISS.”