few may remember now the controversy in the mid 2010s when spaceX had secured NASA’s crew transportation contract, then announced they intended to load the crew before fueling the launch vehicle, opposite to how every other crewed launch had ever been performed because it’s senselessly dangerous

why were they do insistent? maybe with the number of tank pressure related failures the company has had to date, keeping fuel and oxygen tanks stable for several hours wasn’t something they internally counted on. bizarre for a company who thinks they will achieve long-term zero bleed cryogenic fuel storage on orbit for months and make a Lunar landing crew’s lives dependent on it.

in fact in 2016 amidst this controversy spaceX suffered a Falcon 9 launch failure on the pad due to a tank pressurization problem in the second stage. it happened so suddenly that had crew been on a Dragon on top of that second stage, there would be no hope of their survival.

in typical spaceX fashion, they grasped at any cause for the incident besides their own procedures, even as all evidence pointed to the tank exploding because they loaded it too fast. Elon Musk became convinced of a conspiracy theory in which a sniper working for their main competitor ULA had shot the Falcon from the roof of a nearby spaceX building.

they so badly wanted to prove this was the case that the company devoted resources to simulating the supposed sabotage to demonstrate it could have happened. failing that, it’s now known that they even managed to pressure the US government until both the FAA and the FBI conducted investigations, all turning up absolutely nothing.

nevertheless, NASA eventually agreed to allow their proposed launch procedure  it luckily has not been a problem yet… but the more one reads about the operational history of spaceX the more it seems like a ride on their hardware is only a step above a Boeing, it seems like a miracle they haven’t killed anyone yet