A preventable Black Swan: incompatible tech in spaceflight
By Moriba Jah|October 2024
The space industry is no stranger to risk. Every test flight, every mission represents the culmination of thousands of hours of meticulous planning, engineering and collaboration. But as history has shown us, even the smallest oversight can have catastrophic consequences or pose a risk of such consequences. A mission can be marred by what I will loosely label a Black Swan event, a term that comes from a complicated theory but in my field has come to mean a rare occurrence with big consequences that was not impossible to predict.
There was a brush with one Black Swan event in the case of Boeing’s Starliner crewed flight test to the International Space Station, and it doesn’t have to do with balky thrusters or helium leaks (at least not directly). It has to do with spacesuits.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced in August that astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams would return aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon in February rather than this year on Starliner, an extension necessitated by the limited number of seats and flights up and down from the space station. It was a wise, safety-first approach, even though during Starliner’s unoccupied return Sept. 6, the thrusters worked without issue and the capsule made a picture-perfect, nighttime landing in the New Mexico desert as night-vision cameras rolled.
The scenario facing Butch and Suni — two extra crew members on an extended stay — demonstrated another potential risk. When astronauts head home, they wear spacesuits whose umbilicals provide a communications link and are plugged into an emergency supply of oxygen and power in case the capsule depressurizes. The issue? The Starliner and Crew Dragon spacesuits are mutually exclusive. Each Starliner spacesuit could only be plugged into Starliner, and it departed on Sept. 6.
This lack of compatibility highlights a potential Black Swan, although in this particular scenario, the incompatibility was rendered moot by other issues. Aboard the station was one extra Dragon suit that NASA said would fit Suni. A second suit for Butch was scheduled to be brought up to the station aboard a Crew Dragon that arrived in late September. None of that matters, because in an emergency such as a debris strike, there aren’t enough umbilical plugs in the Dragon that’s currently docked at the station for Butch and Suni to plug into. They would have to evacuate without suits. This changed when the next Dragon arrived with two fewer astronauts than planned for the station’s Crew-9 rotation, creating slots for Butch and Suni to become part of Crew-9.
But suppose there had been enough plugs? The incompatibility of umbilicals would have presented unnecessary risk. NASA got by in this case, but that should not be the takeaway. The incompatibility of the umbilicals means that not all astronauts can ride on any vehicle of choice or need, if it came down to it. The situation faced by Butch and Suni is just a real example of how decisions can stack up to lead to Black Swan events, and there could be others.
This brings to the forefront a critical question: Why was the incompatibility between Starliner and Dragon not foreseen and planned for, or at least considered in the earliest stages of development? The simple answer is unsatisfying: It wasn’t a requirement. But that’s just another way to state the problem. In NASA’s current contracts with its commercial providers, there was no stipulation that spacesuits had to be interchangeable between spacecraft. Nelson referenced the Challenger and Columbia tragedies as cautionary tales in which the culture didn’t allow information to rise to the surface. Once again, the culture appears to not have allowed a risk to be voiced and resolved.
The assumption was likely made that a Starliner and Dragon would never be operational at the station at the same time, since the capsules were to alternate missions. It was hard to see a scenario in which an astronaut who came up on one would need to ride back in the other. This is precisely the kind of thinking that opens the door to a Black Swan event. It is not that these scenarios are truly unforeseeable — they were probably ignored because they seemed unlikely, until they happened. Improbable is not equivalent to impossible.
For example, there have been times when I’m in some remote part of the planet and I run into someone I know. When they say, “Gee, Moriba, what were the odds that we’d find each other here?” I reply with, “100%!” Probabilities, when used to model our ignorance, can be dangerous because they are subjective. We’re trained to think about so-called three-sigma scenarios, in which we imagine what can be captured by 99% of probable occurrences, but there is still the 1%. Worth noting, too, is that this issue of incompatibility didn’t show up randomly but rather systematically. We’re quick to attribute uncertainty to randomness and, in the act, set ourselves up to be hit by an unknown but real systematic effects.
Consider the Titanic. Designed as an unsinkable ship, it wasn’t the “random” iceberg itself that doomed most of the passengers but the systematic lack of enough lifeboats. This oversight probably came from a belief that the improbable wasn’t worth preparing for. For NASA, the lesson seems similar: Be ready for the unexpected. The incompatibility between the spacecraft didn’t need to be an issue; there were solutions available, such as standardizing the interface for spacesuits or creating a “power adapter.” Yet, none of these appear to have been pursued.
NASA has made progress with its partnerships in commercial spaceflight, but the gaps exposed by the Starliner test highlight a deeper need for standardized protocols across all space systems. Just as travelers carry adapters to deal with different power outlets around the world, NASA should have ensured that astronauts could safely operate and survive on either spacecraft. In this case, the extra risk was dodged, but a simple, well-planned design feature — interoperable spacesuits — could prevent it from arising in future scenarios. If you’re in a decision-making position, don’t make the mistake of equating improbable to impossible, because your improbability may show up. And when it does, it’ll be in the guise of a Black Swan.
