Engineer charged with falsifying inspections of SpaceX hardware

[Elderberry]

Space News by Jeff Foust — May 27, 2019

Federal prosecutors have charged a man with falsifying inspection records for hardware his company produced for SpaceX, highlighting an issue about the overall aerospace industry supply chain.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York filed charges May 22 against James Smalley, a former employee of PMI Industries, a Rochester, New York-based company that specialized in high-tolerance machining for “flight critical” aerospace parts for a number of companies, particularly SpaceX. Prosecutors allege that Smalley, who was employed by the company as a quality inspection engineer, falsified inspection reports for components produced by the company and then shipped to SpaceX for use on the company’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

According to the complaint filed in court by prosecutors, Smalley started work at PMI Industries in March 2017. In early 2018, an audit performed by another company, SQA Services, on behalf of SpaceX discovered “multiple falsified source inspection reports and non-destructive testing (NDT) certifications” by PMI Industries for parts it produced for SpaceX.

The specific parts are not identified in the court complaint, but are described as “ITAR restricted,” meaning they are on the U.S. Munitions List of items whose export is controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The complaint does refer to structural parts for the rocket’s payload fairing described as “fracture critical,” which it states means that if it failed “it could result in catastrophic failure of the mission.”

More: https://spacenews.com/engineer-charged-with-falsifying-inspections-of-spacex-hardware/