ULA and NASA Complete Space Act Agreement
NASA and United Launch Alliance Complete Space Act Agreement (with full text of SAA)
“NASA partner United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed the fifth and final milestone for its Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The Hazard, System Safety and Probabilistic Risk Assessment detailed how ULA’s Atlas V rocket launch system hardware would ensure crew safety during launch and ascent. “The ULA team did an outstanding job outlining how it plans to integrate its launch vehicle with completely different spacecraft designs,” said Ed Mango, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager.”
SO what I getting from this is that the Atlas V rocket is just about to be rated for human launch and it could launch anything from the Orion to the X-37C.
What’s closest to being ready to fly?
Orion’s flight test one is scheduled for 2014 but it will be unmanned. Launch will be done with a Delta IV.
… Atlas V rocket is just about to be rated for human launch …
No – they’ve done their “homework”. e.g.
… ULA establishes a technical foundation for potentially certifying its Atlas V rocket for crewed missions.
and
… ULA established requirements for its dual-engine Centaur configuration and selected the design approaches it would take for accommodating a spacecraft and its crew at the company’s launch facility …
There is no DEC at the moment. No SC adapters, no mated SC to launch vehicle, no flight history with the stack.
You qualify something as a system, you integrate a system, you simulate a system, you check the simulated system against actual system. You simulate/other pad aborts. Practice pad crew escape. Then you are rated for HSF. Pretty much.
Word is out that Sierra Nevada plans on using Atlas V as its launch vehicle.
http://www.wired.com/autopi…
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s outfit, is keeping busy at NASA’s Stennis space center with developing a new liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engine. Huh? Bezos got acess to Stennis? Who woulda thunk it?