[red-beard]

HOLY CRAP!

The wheels are coming off!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-rockets-were-imperiled-by-falsified-reports-prosecutors-say-11558576047

SpaceX Rockets Were Imperiled by Falsified Reports
Prosecutors Say Engineer is accused of forging inspectors’ signatures on at least 38 documents

By Maria Armental
May 22, 2019 9:47 p.m. ET

An engineer at an upstate New York company who was responsible for ensuring the quality of parts for Elon Musk’s space venture has been charged with falsifying inspection reports.

James Smalley, who worked as a quality-assurance engineer at PMI Industries LLC in Rochester, is accused of forging inspectors’ signatures on at least 38 source inspection reports for space-vehicle parts purchased by Mr. Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX.

Mr. Smalley couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday. He is scheduled to appear Thursday before a federal court.

An audit carried out by SpaceX subcontractor SQA Services Inc. discovered falsified source-inspection reports for parts purchased for the construction of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy Jr. of the Western District of New York said Wednesday.

In addition, the authorities said they identified at least 76 parts that were either rejected or never inspected by SQA but were shipped to SpaceX.

Some of the false source-inspection reports, according to prosecutors, were related to components that were to be used for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which launched from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 18, 2018.

“According to the criminal complaint, James Smalley took the act of forgery to a new level,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Buffalo Special Agent-in-Charge Gary Loeffert said. “A potentially catastrophic level with the potential to not only cost millions of dollars, but also jeopardize years of irreplaceable work.”

Records furnished by SpaceX identified seven NASA space flight missions that were affected by parts that SpaceX purchased from PMI, according to prosecutors.
“The success of America’s reinvigorated space program depends not just on American ingenuity but on American integrity as well,” Mr. Kennedy said.