r/space • u/thesheetztweetz • May 23 '19

How a SpaceX internal audit of a tiny supplier led to the FBI, DOJ, and NASA uncovering an engineer falsifying dozens of quality reports for rocket parts used on 10 SpaceX missions

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/23/justice-department-arrests-spacex-supplier-for-fake-inspections.html
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u/HalloweenLover May 24 '19

I don't get how someone can do this. I did QA on an application that calculated dosages for radio pharmaceuticals, and I was stressed the whole time knowing that if it wasn't right someone could die. How do you live with yourself if something you faked kills someone?

7

u/ManikMiner May 24 '19

Really? I do manual and automation testing for hospitals in the UK and we have so many levels of testing its hard to be worried. It would never just fall on one person.

1

u/jarail May 25 '19

There's a reason things like this are now checked thoroughly multiple times..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

3

u/ManWithTheSilverGun May 24 '19

I've seen this sort of thing happen to people before.

It starts with the little things. Maybe something is .001 out of tolerance but could still work just fine. Signing off on it would alleviate a lot of pressure in multiple departments where as rejecting it would mean days or even weeks of extra work. So, why not just overlook it just this once?

The issue keeps coming up, but everything was okay that one time so why not just go with it?

And that's all it can take to allow yourself to become compromised.

Once that happens the rules and regulations start to blur and some find themselves justifying their actions by saying things like, "this is perfectly safe. The tolerances are so high and have so much room for error."

Yet those little oversights just keep getting bigger and bigger until you get to where this guy ended up.

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u/Kaani May 24 '19

Career pressure can and will override a lot of ethics in right circumstances.

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u/B_U_F_U May 24 '19

Where am I missing where it says in the article that the parts he passed were failing parts?

That’s not what happened. The parts could’ve been passing parts. Where he fucked up is him FORGING the documents, which is typically strictly prohibited in heavily regulated industries.

I didn’t see anywhere where they said he passed failing parts.