NASA concerned about culture of “inappropriateness” at SpaceX

Enlarge / NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine must continue to rely on Dmitry Rogozin of Roscosmos while US commercial crew vehicles remain under development. (credit: Alexei Filippov / TASS via Getty Images)

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.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments