NASA concerned about culture of "inappropriateness" at SpaceX, Ars Technica

"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."

NASA to launch safety review of SpaceX and Boeing after video of Elon Musk smoking pot rankled agency leaders, Washington Post

"The review was prompted by the recent behavior of SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, according to three officials with knowledge of the probe, after he took a hit of marijuana and sipped whiskey on a podcast streamed on the Internet. That rankled some at NASA's highest levels and prompted the agency to take a close look at the culture of the companies, the people said."

Keith's note: Its good that NASA wants everyone in the human spaceflight family to be safe and productive. Alas, NASA has run out of things to blame its own internal failures on so they go after two external partners to see if there is anything they can dig up. The net result will probably be a delay to Boeing and SpaceX launches which will make SLS delays look less bad, I guess. Imagine what a similar internal scrutiny of NASA SLS/Orion employees would reveal. Will NASA and SLS/Orion staff at equivalent levels be queried about their on-the-job and off-time habits? It is rather ironic that NASA's human spaceflight program is this uptight about a podcast (one that includes mention of behavior that is legal in California) when the entire NASA senior management has been drinking the Koolaid for decades ("Don't worry - be happy").

SpaceX can reuse rockets and learned how to do so at a fraction of what it would have taken NASA to do so - if they even knew how, that is. NASA has no rockets to reuse and they spent a billion dollars to make reusable shuttle engines disposable. SpaceX needs 7 launches before people can fly. But NASA will launch crews on their second SLS flight and they put crews back on Soyuz months after a booster malfunctioned.

Who cares what SpaceX or Boeing may be smoking. I want to know what NASA has been smoking.