New Crew Transportation Requirements NASA Won't Let You See (Update)

Byzantine.

I expected this to come. I can't help but think that this is intentionally burdensome, in an effort to kill off AMERICAN commercial crew, before they have a chance to become successful.

No wonder NASA is getting so little support, that is except from those who benefit directly from NASA's continued existence.

How can the American people support our leaders when they choose to use Russian crew transport, rather than fully support our own American crew transport, which generates American jobs.

It is my opinion that there are many that would rather see our country become a third rate space country, rather than risk losing their job or political office.

This is not surprising. Many have predicted what Wayne is disappointed in here: a mountain of NASA mandated requirements to meet if the Merchant 7 are going to fly a NASA astronaut.

Solution:

Space X astronauts who fly on a Space X LV. They get trained on the ISS systems by JSC. They are Space X employees, willing to take the risks on a flight system that Space X says is okay, not NASA saying its okay.

Easy solution. However, its a new way of doing business.

Regarding the model of NLS, via Launch Services Program; Wayne, I had a Senior Executive of Space X tell me a few years ago that the price of their rockets, through the NLS, once KSC got done piling on their requirements, would cost NASA customers TWICE what it costs non NASA customers.

The way NASA does business is bankrupting not only the HSF side of the house, but also the robotic side of the house.

Folks:

Does NASA make the Russians meet the requirements of those thousands of pages that Wayne Hale says exists? If not then there's a double standard here with a serious disadvantage for American private space industry. Let's hope that they don't try to apply those "standards" on non-NASA human space flights.

tinker

I don't think we should be surprised. There are only 2 people in NASA that want this to really happen. Then they put teams together to develop requirements and the teams are made up of folks that lived and breathed the Shuttle and Station programs. They don't know anything else and they don't believe in it so hence you have the product that may someday will become avaialbe to the industry that NASA wants to put their own "skin in the game" for this great opportunity. Face it go ahead and pay the Russians that is our access to space. Let me know which company invests their own money for this. You will then find a group of industry leaders that will be looking for a new job soon because this won't happen.

Perfectly predictable. In fact, one would be surprised by anything but.

Two ways of dealing with this. One can either continue to make the mountain exponentially bigger, knowing that the massively overbuilt but empty mountain will collapse because of its own disproportion (and thus be moved to a more pragmatic govt agency that will extract what it needs out of NASA experience/expertise ala FAA and its existing regulatory function). Or to do battle with the relevant but invisible functionaries by making them visible and ridiculing them to the point of career self-destruction to whack things back on their own.

The mistake made was in not asking industry (in the form of a conference on the subject) for position papers and ways of outlining such requirements in a public setting, letting this be responsible for rationale. Then selectively enhancing it in the agency before arriving at a first cut. This would shift the potential blame for omission off the agency - one of the justifications for it being overbuilt.

No attempt at bounding the scope of said requirements, which should be the first step.

There may be an unanticipated surprise coming here. Anything that limits crew transport for one must limit it for all, regardless of how worded. Any lawyer of any stripe can force that. So lets say they build it up, it holds off commercial AND govt HSF so Soyuz is only bet. One good lawyer then lists the unsupported in Soyuz failings, and a federal judge says "sorry you can't fly on Soyuz". Oops. How do you keep ISS alive?

US not only pays for ISS and Soyuz, but also for only non-US crew to do US work on ISS because US crew can't fly on Soyuz til addressed issues proven. Even more painful than needing to buy Soyuz. How ironic.

-nooneofconsequence.

You're right. We should let the free market decide what 'safety' means. Making such decisions base solely on reduced costs would surely *never* come back to bite us in the butt.

Seriously? It's a complicated system. I'm surprised if they got it down to only a thousand requirements. Yeah, there's probably a few that aren't really necessary, but most of them likely are. Not every system can be boiled down to a few simple requirements. The real problem is that it takes that much paperwork to actually do it. We need a system to automate as much of the paper trail as possible, while still keeping the accountability and some time costs to ensure that the designs were fully thought through.

Well they have to make it dense, complicated, and bureaucratic. If they didn't, what do you think the current NASA human space flight programs would do? They would ask for the samesimplified requirements. Looks like NASA is deciding to go the "usual" route rather than find ways to save money and actually facilitate access to space.

Wayne Hale is a great man. In some of his posts about high-level politics and trades he may lack some perspective, but for systems engineering he has the absolute hindsight and clear view of analysis.

As someone who has worked both in the "mainstream" and "low-cost" side of space businesses, I totally agree that requirements are the core problem of high cost for mainstream space projects. This is in real terms a cultural as much as a technical problem.

As long as the two sides work on their own projects it kinda works, but of course when the two try to join, such as trying to use low-cost technologies in a high-cost programme, it can be very, very difficult to make it work.

In my experience, the problems are really human as much as technical. Both sides can be dismissive of each other. Imagine: What would you feel if some young upstart came and told you they can do what you do for a fraction of the price and twice as fast by saying everything you've ever done is wrong? As for the low-cost people, they can have a tendency sometimes to perform reverse mission creep, i.e. match the mission to the cost rather than the requirements.

Very, very, very difficult problem...

Wou.

"There may be an unanticipated surprise coming here. Anything that limits crew transport for one must limit it for all, regardless of how worded. Any lawyer of any stripe can force that. So lets say they build it up, it holds off commercial AND govt HSF so Soyuz is only bet. One good lawyer then lists the unsupported in Soyuz failings, and a federal judge says "sorry you can't fly on Soyuz""
Precisely. Any decent Federal judge will look back at past practices, and in this case particularly at Soyuz and if NASA changed its practices for commercial crew.

If private commercial launch companies don't want NASA rules then they shouldn't be trying to fly government astronauts to government space stations.

They should focus on flying to private Biglow space stations and stop trying to get government contracts and tax payer dollars. Besides, there's not even enough traffic to the ISS to support more than one space launch company.

It would be a lot better for NASA and for private industry if NASA just gave these companies money to do their own thing without any guaranteed launch contracts with NASA.

Marcel F. Williams

Seems to me like NASA should have the commercial providers drafting requirements at the same time so NASA can combine and trim for the final result.

This relationship between customer and provider isn't a one way street. Do people at NASA think it is? They're missing the point if they do.............

More proof that Kennedy has no clue how to run a human spaceflight program....their workforce is trained to do great things, this just isn't it.....not even sure why the program ended up there in the first place. Please end this experiment before it becomes too screwed up to fix.

What's to keep Russia from cancelling the Soyuz contract after the Shuttle is retired? An argument can be made that the US abandoned the ISS by it's unilateral decision to terminate it's only assured manned access to LEO and therefore the ISS assets belong now to the remaining international partners?
Hope not....

Oh I just cannot wait for these requirements to finally see the light of day. I am going to have a field day with them (because, of course, any requirements the GOV levies on commercial enterprises are subject to public comment). Without even reading them, just based on Wayne's words and my knowledge of existing substandard NASA requirements (current human rating requirements is but one example), I can tell they are going to be a bunch of unsubstantiable doo doo.

I am just getting warmed up, but here are the first two issues I have for these requirements mongers:

1) How many of these existing requirements are actually validated? And if so, what are the principles against which they are validated (I hope someone answers this with a CFR citation!)
2) For all those requirements in this set that are not yet validated (a viable situation), I would hope that NASA will clearly and unambiguously identify each and every validation plan for each and every requirement levied.

My specialty over the last 10 years of my career is going into troubled programs and laying waste to all their BS, unverifiable, or outright wrong requirements. The best way to prevent such problems like this from happening is following model-based systems engineering principles, which I am pretty sure NASA has not done in this case. If they actually did, then when they release the requirements for public comment, they should also be expected to release the fully coherent operational, functional, and physical architecture models. If they do not or cannot, then all they are doing is politics, not engineering.

I will take this task on as part of my duty as an American engineer to make sure NASA is NOT permitted to make these kinds of mistakes in systems engineering that they have made before. It is well understood by professionals in systems engineering that each "shall statement" has a dollar amount attached to it. Many contractors use this as a metric (e.g. so many dollars for each well-formed, substantiated, and traceable requirement). When requirements are found that are not verifiable, not measureable, not coherent, or not traceable, the "cost fudge factor" on those requirements is usually somewhere around 4-5x that of a well-formed requirement.

What we are seeing here is the EXACT same problem that DoD has. It is the single biggest problem that government, overall, has that causes over budget and blown schedule technology programs. If We The People let this happen without a wimper, we deserve what we get.

Get ready for a battle, NASA. This engineer is going to hold you accountable. And you can take that to the bank!

Some of you are suggesting that the commercial companies should have developed this requirements document — in other words, you're saying that the seller should be telling the buyer what the buyer's requirements are! Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me, and I'm sure would certainly be unacceptable to you in any situation where you were the buyer.

As I understand it, this is NASA's document, stating NASA's requirements for flying NASA's astronauts to the ISS. Maybe some folks at NASA did deliberately make it excessive because they don't want to employ commercial solutions. If so, that's a sad state of affairs and hopefully NASA senior management will undertake to have it reviewed and reassessed.

However, I don't see that this document has any bearing on the requirements for non-NASA missions, or even non-ISS NASA missions. Some portion of NASA's requirements are certainly mandated by insurance and regulatory bodies. Also, any ISS-related procedures have to take into account the contracts with and requirements of the international partners. Non-ISS and Non-NASA requirements for commercial providers will certainly be less extensive, but the insurance and regulatory issues would still pertain, so it might well be more complicated than some of you are assuming — this isn't the age of the Wright brothers.

I don't discount the possibility that this document is still unofficial, i.e., not released. And maybe that's why it's still behind NASA's firewall. After all, the very first words of this post are, "Now NASA has released a draft."

Steve

I would find any document coming from NASA on the subject of human rating a capsule to be dubious at best. They actually thought that the first stage of Ares-I was a good idea. That speaks volumes.

I do not trust their judgment. I think that the FAA or someone else is more trustworthy.

Let NASA help develop the technology that goes into the capsule, but please, PLEASE get them the heck out of the business of writing requirements for 'human rating'.

Their hypocrisy is disturbing and saddening.

I doubt that anyone involved in the writing of these requirements have ever needed to make a commercial transportation system operate safely and profitably.

I think that the Russians are too smart to do something like that. What they will do is start increasing the cost per seat on Soyuz and the cost per lb to orbit on Progress with every flight, knowning that NASA has no choice but to pay up.

There are those who have said that this is the result of a bureaucratic mindset rather than malice. I suspect that it is the result of malice born of a bureaucratic mindset. They don't want their little paper empires toppled, so they have to make CCT either fiscally impossible or just as costly (ideally more costly) than an MPCV on an SLS.

Naturally, they'll call it "putting safety first". However, I strongly suspect that MPCV/SLS will fail to meet these same standards and, like the shuttle, will fly with a file-full of waivers as "it's the only game in town".

Hopefully the coming Senate hearings will tear a few strips off of Bolden for this fiasco and tell him that Congress will not tolerate bureaucratic foot-dragging.

This is what some of us have been saying. It will take time to make this transition to commercially provided crew transport. Some here with little or none space experience think it's easy and can be done in a few years.

I think it can be done, but it'll take time. In the mean time, the original plan was canceled with no replacement plan in place, only an idea. An idea with problems to fix. Maybe this year Congress will proceed with Orion on a commercial vehicle.

"We should let the free market decide what 'safety' means."

You mean, like we do with airplanes? (Ever hear of the FAA?) Yeah, the NASA HSF safety requirements may be too extreme, but I'm not sure the other end of the spectrum is the right place either. It will probably take some experimentation to find the 'sweet spot'.

Noel

Who wrote these requirements? Did they have experience in human rating requirements for space? Did they have experience with multiple platform types? Did they have experience with NASA, military and commercial platforms? Were they experienced with writing contractual requirements? If they had the appropriate experience they might have done the best anyone could do - maybe not adequate but at least a good start and a good place to delta off of.

I will take this task on as part of my duty as an American engineer to make sure NASA is NOT permitted to make these kinds of mistakes in systems engineering that they have made before.

You have my sword.

NASA should articulate its top-level functional objectives, including what safety means, and impose these as performance-based requirements. The requirements should be as sparse as possible and independent of any particular design solution. How to deliver the performance should be left up to the contractor. The problem comes when specific design solution elements are assumed to be necessary for performance, and become infused into the requirements. This leads to a decoupling of requirements from the real objectives, and stifles design innovation from advancing beyond the preconceived means of providing the service.

Before any train wreck approaches, learn to effectively communicate. Make it safe to talk. Share your facts. Tell you story. Ask for others’ paths. Talk tentatively. Encourage testing. Plan to act. Move to action.

Decide how to decide. Choose to command, consult, vote, or obtain consensus, whichever the situation warrants.

Finish clearly. Determine who does what by when. Make the deliverables crystal clear. Set a follow-up time. Record the commitments and then follow up. Finally, hold people accountable to their promises.

Communication works for those who work at it. – John Powell

I'll be right there with you! I've been waiting for the opportunity to take down NPR 8705.2B.

CCT-REQ-1130 proves that NASA has a clear "conflict of interest", in acting as both "customer" and "regulatory authority".

I have argued this point with Wayne Hale in the past (NPR 8705.2B) while he was at NASA, and he refused to address it. Now suddenly, on the other side of the fence, he is on the warpath. Is this change of perspective merely the result of a change of employer?

What is required is the formation of a Consensus Industry Government Standards Organization for Commercial Spaceflight.

The RTCA, and ARINC, are the Consensus Industry Standards Organizations for Commercial Aircraft.

Let's get the Commercial Spaceflight Federation to sponsor a Consensus Standards Organization, producing either a markup of CCT-REQ-1130, or the drafting of an new standard, utilizing Soyuz as a baseline.

Let NASA provide the funds for CCDev, and let FAA oversee the regulatory / approval / compliance aspects.

"Merchant 7", did you make that up?

@Ray you have my support as well. God Speed.

Spaceman85,

I'm sorry, but the problem is not at KSC. They aren't perfect, and are not fully including their experts in dealing with commercial launch (as Wayne points out), but they aren't the source of this requirements document. JSC is.

Throwing grenades at someone then complaining that the explosions are making too much noise is a time-tested form of character assassination, but it's not valid management analysis.

- Jim

You have to keep in mind that the same people who put in a program manager for NASA's biggest most important program who had no experience managing hardware, projects or programs, and the same people who put in an astronaut who had problems communicating as the chief communicator...also put all the commercial programs people in place; how many had ever worked commercial programs or human standards.

Every time they put inexperience in place, we do not know what we'll wind up with. The experience has not been a positive one. Mainly these people wind up relearning the lessons of the people who had the experience and had done the job previously, but at the expense of the centers, the agency and the US people. They are destroying decades worth of experience of how to do the job.

The real problem is as Wayne Hale says in his blog, there is no real leadership happening in human space flight. Everyone is just left to do as they please.

Try to shut down commercial space with unreasonable requirements? Why not? It'll preserve NASA's jobs.

Folks:

I still think that the main issue here is a possible double standard of standards.

In the best case scenario the FAA will make the human rating standards of commercial spacecraft and launch vehicles similar to the Russians, an even playing field. I don't think the American people will put up with NASA buying tickets on the Soyuz if this were so.

A lot of the human rating standards that NASA has accumulated over the years is based on old technology. If the standards were optimized to eliminate outdated standards and practices then I'll bet the document would be a lot shorter. As an (ex)-computer programmer I know how beneficial optimization can be but we know that government bureaucracies never throw anything away.

tinker

The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that the whole Human Rating issue will end up being a Catch 22 for NASA.

No matter who ends up writing the final, accepted specification for commercial Human Rating, the first time someone gets hurt or killed on a NASA program (or one in which NASA is in any way involved), I don't doubt for a moment that NASA will be blamed. Even if they had nothing to do with the final spec, and did everything in accordance with the spec that was adopted, NASA will still somehow get blamed. It's like a mindless game that people insist on playing, even though it makes no sense and there are no rules.

And I also don't doubt that the people who are complaining the loudest that NASA's first cut at the commercial Human Rating spec is deliberately excessive will be the first ones to criticize both the final spec and NASA when someone does get hurt or killed.

I wonder if the critics will find a way to blame NASA when there's an accident in a non-NASA program.

Steve

The Air Force knows all about this. That's why they built the X-37B cockpit with no windows. See, they've put a man into orbit, with flimsier life support than Vostok, and only fifty people know about it. Remember, you didn't hear this from me.

Some of you are suggesting that the commercial companies should have developed this requirements document — in other words, you're saying that the seller should be telling the buyer what the buyer's requirements are! Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me, and I'm sure would certainly be unacceptable to you in any situation where you were the buyer.
No sir that's not how it works. First, it is the US govt who is the customer, and NASA is the agent (hence "agency") for the customer - a functionary. NASA does a RFP/RFQ and the vendor/provider supplies a product that addresses its needs.
The way the needs are addressed are by processes/requirements/procedures/etc sole choice by the vendor/provider under the advice/consent of NASA. This is how Gemini was done.

When you buy a car/camera/whatever, your consumer choices are set from surveyed market requirements in a similar fashion. So same process. But the power of free enterprise is that vendors/providers do the chosing of the products, and the customer choses from among them. Central planning "top down" is more like the old Soviet model - surely you are not suggesting thats what you want?

-nooneofconsequence.

I wonder if the critics will find a way to blame NASA when there's an accident in a non-NASA program.
Yeah, right, and NASA gets blamed when Soyuz stumbles. NASA gets blamed when Scaled has an explosion. NASA gets blamed when the corn ripens late ...

Just like the FAA gets blamed when JetBlue stupidly tosses a bunch of unsafed oxygen generators in a pile that catches fire onboard a plane. No sir, that's not the case. The farther things are from NASA, the less the responsibility. Oversight isn't anything more than it appears to be. Liability rests on who originates the rules and runs by them.

Which is why NASA shouldn't be originating the rules.

-nooneofconsequence.

nooneofconsequence, I'm not trying to be adversarial, but the context here is requirements for products and services to be supplied to NASA by a commercial provider. I am fully familiar with RFPs, etc., and I'm assuming that normal practices will be employed should NASA, for example, buy a launch from SpaceX at some future date. (And I suspect it will be NASA personnel who sign the contracts, not "the US govt.")

Project Gemini is irrelevant to this discussion because it was not conducted using what we would consider normal business practices. If we're willing to be honest, the US (NASA) beat the USSR to the Moon by temporarily being more successful communists. And I'm not in any way trying to be derogatory or facetious in saying this. The fact is that the US government not only intervened, but to a considerable extent took control of relevant industries during the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo time frame, changing companies' priorities and subsidizing companies and even whole industries, putting the space race ahead of market economy considerations. In short, a central economy (a communist economy).

Neither is buying "a car/camera/whatever" relevant to the issue under discussion. These are products designed for the mass market, not the extremely expensive, special purpose items that launch services and spacecraft are. The details of mass market products and services are specified by the vendor/manufacturer for obvious reasons. But if, for some reason, you needed a car or camera with functions or features different from the available off-the-shelf models, it becomes a custom order and you, the customer, define the specific requirements you need (and negotiate price and delivery date).

For the record, I didn't say anything advocating "Central planning top down," so please don't put words in my mouth.

I stand by my original statement — "As I understand it, this is NASA's document, stating NASA's requirements for flying NASA's astronauts to the ISS." NASA, as the customer (or agent, if you prefer), is stating its requirements with this document. Regulatory and insurance issues have an affect on what the document includes, as does available technology. However, the potential commercial sellers are not entitled to have any input into NASA's requirements. An RFP, in conjunction with any other documents that it references, is the customer's (i.e., NASA's) requirements document. Any proposals submitted in response to an RFP specifically and solely address the contents of the RFP. NASA's Crew Transportation Requirements is one of the documents that will be referenced by any NASA RFP for flying NASA astronauts to the ISS.

To be clear, my comments here are not intended to address the actual content of NASA's Crew Transportation Requirements, only the fact that it is not the sellers' place to tell the customer what he wants.

nooneofconsequence, I usually find your comments logical and well supported; they hint of inside knowledge of NASA affairs that people like myself are not party to. But in this instance I'm afraid that we're miles apart. Thank you for your comments.

Steve

Perhaps the process for defining these requirements is incorrect?

There have been basic safety requirements in place almost since the beginning.

There have been human spaceflight standards for 25 years, the NASA Standard 3000, and in several instances these were consolidated to those pertinent only for Station, ACRV/CERV, and several other vehicles.

From the description it sounds like a new organization is now chartered to try and define a new set of more all encompassing requirements. Who is doing this and why isn't what exists already [more than] adequate? Are the organizations that already have the responsibility for safety and human integration the same ones creating the new requirements documentation?

Is it NASA place to make requirements to the commercial world? Would they be able to make requirements that favor one company over another? Will they have influence on the finical infrastructure with this requirements? NASA should only have the right to make proposals in my eyes. By being a potential customer you do not have the right to make the rules. We must remember that they are multiple companies trying to brake into this field.

Second thought. Could this be just be another type of a allusion with language to satisfy the American people?

Folks:

Let's not forget that the Shuttle has serious gaps in launch abort capability. I'm sure that the Shuttle would fail to meet the human spaceflight standards that NASA has set for commercial vehicles. Just another double standard worth mentioning.

tinker

Steve,
The limitations of our communication is that we read each others comments in whatever context imagined, not necessarily the one it was written with. Also, they must be short and thus omit much that otherwise might clarify.

I'm not trying to be adversarial but informative. When I visit with my Huntsville crowd, I often serve up pointed comments because they aren't aware of how they sound to others, and would rather have me catch them on a slip then go off at the mouth in a more critical setting, where they'll lose stature and have to work it off for years. In fact, the only ones I ever tear into are pure ideologues, who are willing to crash our plane in order to make their point.

And I suspect it will be NASA personnel who sign the contracts, not "the US govt.")
Actually, they are the knowledgeable agents for the US government implementing the lawful intent of its space policy as agreed on by Congress & President. Their signature is in effect a proxy for the entire US govt including all citizens. That is the legal meaning of it.

Project Gemini is irrelevant to this discussion
My use of Gemini was in reference to the closest analogy to where we've been heading for Shuttle follow-on as a HSF provider oriented business. Yes the historical context is entirely different. But before you dismiss Gemini, you may find that a lot of Gemini experience gets back to some of NASA's best experiences in managing HSF, mostly because with the emphasis on Apollo, there was less battle over "what to do" and more over "how to do it".

But if, for some reason, you needed a car or camera with functions or features different from the available off-the-shelf models, it becomes a custom order and you, the customer, define the specific requirements you need (and negotiate price and delivery date).
To paraphrase "the customer is always right". It has been my experience that with almost every "special order" it is a) wrong and redone 5 times, b) terrifically cost ineffective, c) leads to overruns/overtime, and d) gets supplanted by the true next volume product that is cost effective that comes online while the customer is waiting for the special product.

Once upon a time, there was a national security initiative for a 10x faster technology than present. It dug a financial hole in the ground in no time. While it was doing so, volume and market trends got 5x with incremental IR&D cost recovered on every 18 month iteration. Eventually with market trends, a 50x advantage occurred. Because the initiative subtracted funds that would have otherwise fed into the volume above, it actually slowed down progress and injured national security.

Space is still dominated by the very special-purpose. But in order to make it more economic, businesses must do more of the choosing (as they do with market surveys in any goods/services they supply). Do not neglect this as it is the key to economic effectiveness.

For the record, I didn't say anything advocating "Central planning top down," so please don't put words in my mouth.
My apologies. But when my Huntsville crowd talks "top down" to justify against vendor/provider "bottom up", I've reminded them of the Soviet analogy so as to keep them from going too far and wrecking themselves. I'm sure you don't want this to happen either. But trust me there are many Soviet analogies here to draw upon.

only the fact that it is not the sellers' place to tell the customer what he wants.
What if the customer's ignorant? In sales, this happens all the time. This is how a salesman earns his rightful commission, because they educate and cajole. You may want a car with a V-18 engine but find your salesman makes you happy with a more appropriate for you V-8 engine and rightly closes it. In my early career I faced this along with a eventually thankful customer.

Few years back had a "milkshake sans cup, let Reagan be Reagan" (Bloom county cartoon strip) type who insisted that their was a "magic pill" doctors wouldn't sell her that would make her world perfect - she literally starved to death holding out for it, ready to pay for it with millions. Not saying you're like this, but this shows how far such a presumption can go.

In the practical real world, we market with a lead/follow approach with billions of mindful details in industry that matter. Which includes "what the customer wants". Its ignorant to discard that crucial value, and its arrogant to assume that NASA knows best.

What NASA knows best is how to go about deciding how to decide. Not concluding on that basis how to implement in order to prejudge the decision.

Steve, you are making a mistake that you shouldn't do in assuming there's a magical vending machine of consumer choice where you put in X billion, pull the lever, and get vended a Shuttle replacement. A) There isn't. B) There shouldn't ever be. and C) that isn't the point of having choice.

Choice is about an informed, give-and-take, tradeoff negotiation of fate/future, that is very subtle and subjective at the start. Only becomes objective and conclusitory in its final phases. You can't compell it.

Our choices define in the end who we are and what we set forth to do. Choose wisely.

-nooneofconsequence.

In the case of the NASA Standard 3000 that I identified earlier, this was the first standard NASA ever developed;
https://standards.nasa.gov/documents/nasa
These are standards and not requirements, and have been adopted for use across multiple industries and international organizations, simply because they are very broad and comprehensive; but the basic set was never intended as 'requirements'. Usually only a select set are pulled out to apply to a new contract.

nooneofconsequence, we're just not communicating with one another here. Executing a contract involves mutual education between buyer and seller, for sure. But, that give-and-take is for the purpose of clarifying the customer's requirements and eliminating any impossibilities. (The implementation (design) is a separate issue.) A proposal in response to an RFP can certainly offer alternatives, if/when appropriate, but the requirements, which will be spelled out in any resulting contract(s) are the customer's requirements — we're not talking about buying a car, or any other mass market product where the manufacturer's marketing people have basically had to try to determine what customers will be interested in buying.

At PDR and CDR the customer has to sign off, or everything comes to a stop. In the case of progress payments, the customer decides whether the relevant milestones have been met before any corresponding payments are made. At the end of the day, the customer has to be satisfied that all acceptance testing criteria have been met, etc. The customer is the end user, and the customer pays for everything. So, unless the customer has a contract with some entity to evaluate and specify requirements on the customer's behalf, it is the customer's requirements that determine what goes into the contract.

Please note that in the above two paragraphs I'm not second-guessing what was in your mind when you typed your comments. I have experience in both design and program management, on both the buyer and the seller side of engineering contracts; I certainly don't know how everybody acquires and manages their contracts, but in my experience the customer awards the contract based on a number of factors (obviously including price), not the least of which is a potential seller's ability/willingness to satisfy the customer's requirements.

I suspect that we're not going to resolve this between us (hard to do commenting on a blog), so let's agree to disagree and part friends before we end up co-authoring a novel.

Thanks,

Steve

Steve,
You're right we'll probably not agree. But the conversation is useful in exposing the basic positions we hold.

Executing a contract involves mutual education between buyer and seller, for sure.
On at least this we clearly agree.
But, that give-and-take is for the purpose of clarifying the customer's requirements and eliminating any impossibilities.
Here is the focus of why we disagree - where the substantive body of specification is located. You hold to the force of "top down" omniscience, where I place the burden "bottom up" on the vendor/provider.

And this is exactly why I brought up Gemini correctly. It is the best case of where the vendor did the "heavy lifting" and NASA winnowed to the essential. A fast, efficient partnership of the kind you desire the most. So lets get back to that model for energizing US space leadership.

We have gotten further away from this, and it has harmed the US and NASA. IMHO, its because some would like to favor certain constituencies (like Utah) in a cold hearted way to feather their nest. They trump up false arguments about "national security" simply to get the taxpayer to shell out 5x the money for a RSRB than an LRB (counting all cost elements on the path). They don't care about HSF or the nation, only filling their pockets with taxpayer cash. I'd rather not have that anymore - we can't afford it, and it is particularly galling to watch. Many other examples of this, and I have no truck for any of it.

These constituencies can sell their wares/stuff on the open market - if cost effective, it'll be used by existing vendors/providers - only then is it fair.

At PDR and CDR the customer has to sign off, or everything comes to a stop. In the case of progress payments, the customer decides whether the relevant milestones have been met before any corresponding payments are made. At the end of the day, the customer has to be satisfied that all acceptance testing criteria have been met, etc. The customer is the end user, and the customer pays for everything. So, unless the customer has a contract with some entity to evaluate and specify requirements on the customer's behalf, it is the customer's requirements that determine what goes into the contract.
So lets talk about PDR/CDR in Ares I for example - do you believe this demonstrates my point or yours? Go back and compare like with Gemini, where the signoffs came a whole lot later. Be honest with yourself on this one - its open and shut.

Steve, we can't continue to do it that way because we don't use the US economic system well. The reason I keep bringing up the Soviet analogies is that it wasn't lack of skill that thwarted them but raw economics that was insurmountable. Remember that China competes with us on the basis of economics - far more effectively than Russia can/could. I'm certain you don't want to do anything but the best here ... and so do I.

As for a novel, might be a best seller ... in a tiny community.

Thanks for the back and forth,
-nooneofconsequence.

I've just read Wayne Hale's "Trying to Clean Up a Mess" essay post. In it he makes the following statement: "If commercial human spaceflight is to be cheaper and safer and more flexible and and and, well then it will require different oversight from the government than what we used for shuttle or station or constellation."

Now, is CCT-REQ-1130 a NASA requirements document, or is it a government oversight document? Keith's original post (based on Wayne Hale's original comments) makes it sound like the former, but Wayne's "clarification" essay sounds like maybe it's the latter.

Which is it? To my mind, it makes a big difference in what we have to say about it. Personally, I'm wondering if all of my comments have been out of context because it's not, in fact, a NASA requirements document, but a government oversight document. [I know some of you will argue it, but I maintain that 1) a requirements document is not the same as a government oversight document, and 2) NASA is not the same as "the government."]

So, which is it? Does anyone know for certain?

Steve