Falcon Heavy Test Flight

[AtomicDog]

And no one is. I am rewarding him for his accomplishments. I am giving him a pass for being human.

I think ignoring the very real problems with Elon Musk the person goes a bit beyond "giving him a pass for being human," myself.  His factory is unsafe for its employees, and he wants that ignored because he's so important.

I assume that you have evidence of this.

Googling tesla factory safety produces a bunch of articles published in the last six months or so from mainstream media sites: Fortune, Forbes, The Guardian, NY Times, CNBC. It's not the best reading.

I can Google, too. I have found articles claiming that these articles are anti-Tesla hit pieces, backed by big oil, union organizers, rival car manufacturers, and investors trying to bring down Tesla stock because they have a short interest.

I could say that's a very Elon Musk sort of thing to say, or I could settle for calling it poisoning the well.

Who should I believe?

I think most of the regulars here would have the answer for you - look at the evidence.

The Forbes article, for example, has a chart showing that the rate of reported safety violations and the level of fines for those violations per employee is considerably higher for the Tesla factory than for a bunch of other car manufacturers.

The Revealnews article provides evidence that Tesla has been under-reporting its workplace injury rate by not recording workplace accidents and injuries.

The other articles make similar sorts of statements, or comment on the way Musk has made a number of demonstrably wrong statements about Tesla, whether in terms of production rates or safety.

For the time being I'm happy to go with the evidence provided. Unless someone can show that evidence is wrong.

And this is actually a serious point: I worry when demonstrably skeptical people lay their skepticism to one side when it comes to a topic they particularly like. It was what caused me to leave the Australian Skeptics: there was a noisy group of otherwise impeccable skeptics who were utterly convinced global warming wasn't real, and their level of criticism of articles about global warming was so vociferous that the editor of the group's magazine was forced to publicly announce he wouldn't publish articles about global warming in the magazine.

I'd hate to think that admiration of Elon Musk might blind people to what appear to be genuine and serious safety problems at the Tesla factory in California.

The Reveal news article? The one that claims that there are no yellow caution tape on the Fremont factory floor or beeping forklifts because they offend Elon's sensibilities?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/29/1767826/-The-War-on-Tesla-Musk-and-the-Fight-for-the-Future

The first of their “personal stories” was about how a person involved in developing the factory was told that they can’t use yellow caution tape or beeping forklifts because they offend Musk’s sensibilities. The lack of these things, according to Reveal, could be to blame for the “high” rate of injuries.

Now, apparently Reveal never discovered The Google, or couldn’t allocate 30 seconds for fact checking, because literally you just go to Google Images or YouTube and search for the Tesla Fremont factory, and here’s what you see:

What follows is photo after photo of yellow safety tape all over the Tesla factory. Forgive me if I don't think much of Reveal's credibility.

Also from the Daily Kos article:

Reveal seems to have made it their goal to prove that Tesla’s Fremont factory is some horribly dangerous place — in a manner that’s covered with UAW’s fingerprints. Strangely, they never thought to bother to mention a single injury anywhere else in the auto industry, because I guess everyone else is spotless. They additionally push the notion that Tesla has been “keeping injuries off the books”, ignoring that Cal/OSHA is probably the most stringent auditor in the nation and Tesla has never been cited for doing so (while the Big Three have been repeatedly cited — but you wouldn’t know this from listening to them). Mainly, though, they focus on “personal stories”, which are nice and convenient because even if they’re false, the company can’t respond because it would interfere in any potential litigation.

So, Reveal accuses Tesla of keeping injuries off the books, but they've never been shown to do so by OSHA.

Now, you have accused me of poisoning the well, when all I have done is, when in response to a request for evidence is to "go google it" was to respond, "go google the opposite". That kind of behavior is not accepted when a moon hoax believer is asked for evidence, and I don't think it has any place in any other argument. If you have a position, provide links, quotes, and discuss the quotes, which is standard in discussions here.

[Dalhousie]

I keep trying to tell you guys that even though your satellite costs millions of dollars, so do rocket launches!

Let the satellite cost be $S and the usual launch cost $L. So the usual mission cost would be $(S+L). Now let's assume you can fly free to your desired orbit on a new launch vehicle with an estimated probability of success P. Then if you take in the cost of building a new satellite if the launch fails, your expected mission cost will be $(S/P), assuming you are offered a free reflight if the first launch fails. If $(S/P) < $(S+L), you still want to risk the test flight.

Of course, even operational launch vehicles can fail so you need to insert another factor into the right side of the inequality to account for that.

Obviously there are exceptions; if your mission is time sensitive, e.g., it must hit an interplanetary launch window, then you can't afford a launch failure because you can't afford to wait for a replacement spacecraft to be built.

Actually, now that I think about it, I remember reading somewhere that SpaceX did offer a ride at a discount to several customers (including NASA), but had no takers.  Nobody wanted to risk it.

They could have easily provided their own payload - a preflown Dragon would have flown a free return trajectory to the Moon or Mars and back. the 2018 Mars launch window would have been an excellent opportunity, with a 510 day free return.  Don't forget  they had years to prepare for this

[Zakalwe]

Isn't this a watered-down version of "If I ran the zoo"? Endless debate on what SpaceX and Musk could or should have done if only we were in charge?

[Echnaton]

You're a Musk hater

He is more or less an overaged sophomore frat boy. Just ask the Security and Exchange Commission about his unwise tweet. But people that have extraordinary visions and then implement them are often a bit over the top, off to the sides and generally all over the place.

I don't particularly care for him as a person. But you are right, he has done some extraordinary things in aviation and I'll add in auto manufacturing also. 

[AtomicDog]

You are known by the enemies you make:

https://electrek.co/2019/04/20/tesla-shorts-threaten-accidents-restraining-order/

This is what Musk and Tesla has to put up with; stalking, vehicular assaults on their personell, and intentional attempts to make their vehicles crash.

P.S. The stalker's brother, who shares his Twitter account, works for Volkswagen.

[Echnaton]

intentional attempts to make their vehicles crash.

At least no one has done this to a Falcon rocket....yet. 

[Peter B]

The Reveal news article? The one that claims that there are no yellow caution tape on the Fremont factory floor or beeping forklifts because they offend Elon's sensibilities?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/29/1767826/-The-War-on-Tesla-Musk-and-the-Fight-for-the-Future

The first of their “personal stories” was about how a person involved in developing the factory was told that they can’t use yellow caution tape or beeping forklifts because they offend Musk’s sensibilities. The lack of these things, according to Reveal, could be to blame for the “high” rate of injuries.

Now, apparently Reveal never discovered The Google, or couldn’t allocate 30 seconds for fact checking, because literally you just go to Google Images or YouTube and search for the Tesla Fremont factory, and here’s what you see:

What follows is photo after photo of yellow safety tape all over the Tesla factory. Forgive me if I don't think much of Reveal's credibility.

Also from the Daily Kos article:

Reveal seems to have made it their goal to prove that Tesla’s Fremont factory is some horribly dangerous place — in a manner that’s covered with UAW’s fingerprints. Strangely, they never thought to bother to mention a single injury anywhere else in the auto industry, because I guess everyone else is spotless. They additionally push the notion that Tesla has been “keeping injuries off the books”, ignoring that Cal/OSHA is probably the most stringent auditor in the nation and Tesla has never been cited for doing so (while the Big Three have been repeatedly cited — but you wouldn’t know this from listening to them). Mainly, though, they focus on “personal stories”, which are nice and convenient because even if they’re false, the company can’t respond because it would interfere in any potential litigation.

So, Reveal accuses Tesla of keeping injuries off the books, but they've never been shown to do so by OSHA.

Now, you have accused me of poisoning the well, when all I have done is, when in response to a request for evidence is to "go google it" was to respond, "go google the opposite". That kind of behavior is not accepted when a moon hoax believer is asked for evidence, and I don't think it has any place in any other argument. If you have a position, provide links, quotes, and discuss the quotes, which is standard in discussions here.

Fair enough, and I'm willing to stand corrected on the Revealnews article.

Would you be willing to comment on the chart labelled "Safety Slap: Tesla Gets Fined More Than Other Auto Plants" in the article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/03/01/tesla-safety-violations-dwarf-big-us-auto-plants-in-aftermath-of-musks-model-3-push/#6750757854ce

The source of the data in the chart is the US OSHA, and it appears to show that, compared with 10 other car factories across the USA, the Tesla factory had one-third of the total employees of the other 10 put together (and only about an eighth of the production capacity), but had three times the OSHA violations and about 2.5 times the fines of the other 10 put together.

On the face of it that's a seriously bad comparison.

[ka9q]

Unless of course, it has taken my company some years to build this satellite of mine, and it will take them more years to build another one if the launch fails. Meantime, I have lost not only the satellite, but some years of revenue from whatever the satellite was for until its replacement is built.

That's basically what I said, though I gave the example of hitting an interplanetary launch window. OTOH, if you decline the free test launch you still have to get in line for an operational launcher and wait.

[ka9q]

Actually, now that I think about it, I remember reading somewhere that SpaceX did offer a ride at a discount to several customers (including NASA), but had no takers.  Nobody wanted to risk it.

Well, I can understand that when the flight is going to a useless solar orbit, not earth orbit or a planet.

[smartcooky]

Actually, now that I think about it, I remember reading somewhere that SpaceX did offer a ride at a discount to several customers (including NASA), but had no takers.  Nobody wanted to risk it.

Well, I can understand that when the flight is going to a useless solar orbit, not earth orbit or a planet.

If course, that orbit would not have been used if a customer had been willing to pay for the test flight to put their own satellite in orbit

KoreatSat (5A to GTO)
NASA (CRS-13 & 14 to ISS & TSS to HEEO)
Iridium (Mission 4/31-40 and Mission 5 41/50 to Polar)
Zuma (LEO)
Hisdesat (Paz to SSO)
Hispasat (30W6 to GTO)

were all launching around the time of the Falcon Heavy test flight. FH launch date could easily have been changed to accommodate the required launch window for any one of them, or a compromise could have been reached.

[jfb]

Actually, now that I think about it, I remember reading somewhere that SpaceX did offer a ride at a discount to several customers (including NASA), but had no takers.  Nobody wanted to risk it.

Well, I can understand that when the flight is going to a useless solar orbit, not earth orbit or a planet.

Obviously, the flight would have gone where the customer wanted it to go, had any taken up the offer. 

[ka9q]

Shortly before the F9H test flight, Musk tweeted that part of the test was to demonstrate a 4-hour "cold soak" ability to the US Air Force, since they are going to be the main customer. Falcon upper stages routinely go into parking orbits and do second burns, but LEO coast phases are never that long. That told me the parking orbit would be highly elliptical, and it was. I found it at space-track.org in the latest cataloged objects, though it wasn't labeled as the F9H. I then reasoned that since it was going to do an escape, the most efficient point to do that is at perigee. The second perigee (second complete elliptical orbit) was at roughly 4 hours, and then I figured out that it would be visible over southern California. So we rushed home from dinner and saw it.

It was very frustrating to have to mine important details about the mission from Musk's random tweets. NASA does this so much better with press kits that go into all the mission details.

[ka9q]

Just for grins, I found four historical element sets for the F9H/Tesla during its parking orbit:

1 43205U 18017A   18037.94171953 +.01086538 -52473-6 +58861-2 0  9998
2 43205 029.0166 287.3637 3402738 180.0678 179.9492 08.75207321000009
1 43205U 18017A   18037.94171962  .02159520 -54079-6  11669-1 0  9999
2 43205  29.0166 287.3643 3402882 180.0750 179.9361  8.75195074    03
1 43205U 18017A   18037.94189123  .00000283 -50857-6  00000+0 0  9991
2 43205  29.0185 287.3580 3404246 180.0270 180.5840  8.75540848    00
1 43205U 18017A   18037.94189123  .00000283 -50857-6  00000+0 0  9991
2 43205  29.0185 287.3580 3404246 180.0270 180.5840  8.75540848    00

Interpretation of the last set: 43205 is the NORAD catalog number.
2018-017A is the international designator (17th launch of 2018, primary object).
The time at which the elements are valid is year 2018, day 37 plus 0.94189123 days (UTC).
The orbital inclination is 29.0185 degrees, slightly more than the latitude of the launch site -- so the launch was nearly due east.
The right ascension of the ascending node (northbound equator crossing) is 287.3580 degrees. This is set by the sidereal time of the launch, which had been delayed a few hours.
The eccentricity is 0.3404246. Zero is circular, >=1 is escape (though NORAD doesn't do escaped objects).
The argument of perigee is 180.0270 degrees, so both perigee and apogee were over the equator. Typical for geostationary comsat launches.
The mean anomaly at epoch is 180.5840 degrees, so at the cited epoch time, the satellite was slightly past apogee.
The mean motion was 8.75540848 rev/day. Dividing it into 1440 minutes/day, that's 164.47 minutes, or two hours 44.47 minutes.

When I found it during the parking orbit the object wasn't named so I had to figure out which element set was likely to be the F9H/Tesla. The unusual period stood out, and the other numbers were pretty much as expected so I figured this had to be it.

[bknight]

Do you have a handy link to NORAD's site where you obtained those values?

[ka9q]

www.space-track.org

You do need to sign up for a free account.