Before the recent COTS-1 Dragon mission it was discovered that the Falcon 9's 2nd stage nozzle had cracks near its rim. Any other outfit would have pulled the rocket off the pad, put it horizontal in the hangar and waited for the factory in California to ship a new nozzle. The delay would have been at least a week. Not SpaceX. They determined that this nozzle would work if just trimmed, but that could still involve bringing down the rocket and taking it apart.
What to do....
Enter Marty Anderson. Marty is an engineer at SpaceX, but Elon Musk describes him as more of an artist. The problem is that Marty hates to fly - he's afraid of heights. Marty decided to suppress his fears for the missions sake;
Marty flew in from California, scaled the Falcon 9 to a height of almost 110 feet using a crane, opened an access panel on the interstage (1st/2nd stage connector), climbed in and did surgery on the nozzle with a pair of snips - removing almost 4 feet of it. All of this was caught on mission cameras inside the interstage.
The next day the Falcon 9 launched Dragon on a mission that's still causing a huge commotion in the international space community, in Washington DC and in the press. Even the ESA has said they need to re-examine how they do things.
Marty Anderson inside the F9 interstage (blue tape = cut line)
What to do....
Enter Marty Anderson. Marty is an engineer at SpaceX, but Elon Musk describes him as more of an artist. The problem is that Marty hates to fly - he's afraid of heights. Marty decided to suppress his fears for the missions sake;
Marty flew in from California, scaled the Falcon 9 to a height of almost 110 feet using a crane, opened an access panel on the interstage (1st/2nd stage connector), climbed in and did surgery on the nozzle with a pair of snips - removing almost 4 feet of it. All of this was caught on mission cameras inside the interstage.
The next day the Falcon 9 launched Dragon on a mission that's still causing a huge commotion in the international space community, in Washington DC and in the press. Even the ESA has said they need to re-examine how they do things.
Marty Anderson inside the F9 interstage (blue tape = cut line)
![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EUzQEJE69N8/TQVWw3SOMNI/AAAAAAAAACg/yEKUgrxZR5k/s1600/saw.jpg)
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