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It's not really NASA, but Atlas D and similar early vehicles did have fueling failures. But they also failed sitting empty on the pad and a hundred other ways.
by jccooper 8y ago
It's not really NASA, but Atlas D and similar early vehicles did have fueling failures. But they also failed sitting empty on the pad and a hundred other ways.
Propellant loading is a state change, and so it's theoretically more dangerous. But examples of real problems are rare.
- mikeash 8y agoI hit up Wikipedia to see if they discussed any of those. The Atlas had so many problems that they don’t dedicate much space to discussing individual ones, but I did come across this amazing quote: “Convair engineers noted with some pride that there had never been a repeat of the same failure more than three times....” The past sure was a different place.