NASA's Take On Certifying Commercial Crew Carriers
How Commercial Space Is Paying Off Now, Aviation Week
“We are aware that SpaceX does have an upgrade coming to the Falcon 9 that they intend to use for crew,” Jett says. “[I]f they win CCiCap, we would see in their certification plan . . . [just] how they would get comfortable certifying that vehicle. They’re going to tell us how they would certify it, and then we’ll balance that against how we would certify it, and be able to understand that delta of what we would be able to do under that certification contract [which is] going to come sometime in the future.”
NASA is doing CC because of fear of failure.They are afraid if they design something,like Venture Star,it will be cancelled.The companies will come up with something that they can build.With so many,they think that if the money is cut off,there will be some company that can finish up on their on.It would have been cheaper if NASA had R&D a crew ship,but they think there would be so much infighting and such a wild design it would be cancelled.They have always done the R&D,which they are now doing with SLS.There will be so few of them that they will give the plans out and say give me price.They can afford that.A simple design,so no problems.They are not going to get into manufacturing as I suggested.They are R&D.The few number of launches they will have for crew,they can afford those.Maybe procurement would like to get into manufacturing.
“It would have been cheaper if NASA had R&D a crew ship”
Based on what? Why would anyone think that it would be cheaper to have NASA do the R&D?
All the evidence suggests that funding four different commercial options is still much cheaper than funding NASA to do the R&D in-house.
NASA’s human spaceflight organization is broken. Very broken. Just look at Ares I/Orion versus Falcon 9/Dragon. NASA chose a horrible design, mostly for the sake of saving existing jobs. It spent more than an order of magnitude more than Falcon 9/Dragon, and had less to show for it. Granted a part of that was that Orion was designed for some things Dragon wasn’t, but that’s part of the problem. Rather than designing something much smaller and simpler for the immediate mission, then looking to extend it later for new missions, or even wait and design a successor for future missions, NASA tried to make Orion everything to everyone.
Folks:
From the Aviation Weekly article:
“At SpaceX, Musk says, the company’s Falcon 9 rocket was built from the
ground up to meet NASA’s human-rating requirements, and will be ready to
carry crew to the ISS as soon as Dragon’s pusher-type abort system the
company is developing with CCDev-2 funding is completed.”
On a silver platter! Just call me a ‘glass half-full’ sort of person but it appears to me that Dragon development is about where Boeing wants to be in four years time. Dragon has even flown once. The abort system is the only critical hardware development necessary for crew safety from a structural point of view, ie; Dragon can maintain low enough G forces through the entire flight envelope, including abort, for crew survival. The rest, life support, seats, controls and docking system are fluff. Add-on appliances only. Well understood and nature technologies. No… big… deal.
What Spacex has here is a working space capsule that has lots of potential. You’ve read some of my ideas for Dragon (yes, I have more) so I won’t pontificate but it seems to me that more folks are whining than just NASA about all the problems, the hurtles, Spacex has to overcome before they can achieve that ‘holy grail’ of safe human spaceflight.
On that opinion, I beg to differ.
So… the ball’s in the air. Catch or fumble?
tinker
Man-rating and ‘not killing the crew’ is not the same thing.
You could strap youself inside an weighted oil drum and get dropped into the ocean. That does not make the oil drum a submarine.
“The rest, life support, seats, controls and docking system are fluff. Add-on appliances only” You obviously have no idea about the engineering & testing involved to develop such systems.
..and by the way its HURDLES not HURTLES.
“You obviously have no idea about the engineering & testing involved to develop such systems.”
Tinker was just paraphrasing what Musk himself has said multiple times — that the seats, upgraded life support (cargo Dragon does already have life support), controls, and such are not much work compared to the LAS and all the work that went into Falcon 9/cargo Dragon.
So, if Tinker’s statement can only be made by someone who obviously has “no idea about the engineering & testing involved to develop such systems,” then you’re claiming Musk has no idea about the engineering and testing involved in developing such a system.
I’m going to have to go with Musk, and Tinker, not being the ones who are clueless here.
Chris:
Thanks for the support. I don’t think Jon’s been around here long enough to see the a good cross-section of my comments.
Jon:
Click on my profile and read a bunch of my posts. You not only might learn something but you might also be able to further the conversation with some helpful dialog.
I do tend to look at the big picture and leave the fiddley bits to specialists but, hey, I was a system designer, not a technician. I used to put my trust and judgement in other folks knowledge and skills all the time to get the job done. My assessment of Spacex is ‘educated’.
Who was it that said “Pick up a shovel and help or get out of the way ’cause we’re comin’ through!” ? Maybe just me :).
tinker