Keeping Focus on Commercial Crew
NASA’s Commercial Crew Partners Focus on Testing, Analysis to Advance Designs
“NASA’s aerospace industry partners are taking their designs and operational plans for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) through a series of comprehensive tests, evaluations and review boards this summer as they move through important milestones – all with an eye on launching people into orbit from American soil by 2017.
To meet milestones established in Space Act Agreements with NASA, the companies are completing specific assessments such as materials stress tests, engine firings and analysis, and system tests. The companies’ engineers use data gathered from these tests to refine the design, then NASA’s team uses the data to ensure the tests satisfy milestone objectives that provide confidence a spacecraft system or program is progressing toward its goals.”
Related: Commercial Crew Partners Get Extension, SpaceNews
You’ve really got to wonder about the lengths that these companies are being required to go to in order to demonstrate safety. Can it really require such analysis and testing. I mean Dragon didn’t go through the microscope to this extent and has flown successfully since it was first launched. SpaceX relied on empherical evidence based on their on-ground structural tests and then their first dummy test to and from orbit.
Is Dragon V2 so different?
IMHO this is a case of over-kill and the unhealthy obsession with safety at all costs as previously discussed by Rand Simberg. If cars and planes were required to undergo similar (for their environment) testing, they’d cost a small fortune irrespective of the production run levels.
Cheers.
really, are you surprised that crew-carrying capsules are held to much higher and more rigorous levels of safety standards than cargo capsules?
this isn’t the same as a car. there are far greater dangers in space travel, and the vehicle absolutely must work or else your crew is dead.
and as for automotive crash testing, yes, it is expensive, too. some crash test dummies have a price tag of $125,000. crash testing alone can cost over $100,000. a vehicle prototype used in a test could easily run $250,000.
And the testers NASA flew a rocket for decades without even an abort system killing crew and yet they continued to fly again with no abort system.
This is reason I had wished Spacex had just added abort dracos to cargo dragon instead of new D2 vehicle, so NASA would have less opportunity to slow down us getting back to to HSF. American Commercial HSF. Something with growth potential.
“I had wished Spacex had just added abort dracos to cargo dragon”
That’s essentially what they did, it’s just dressed up all nice and fancy. the pressure vessel is essentially the same between V2 and Cargo. the interior layout is different, no cargo racks or cargo support equipment, since it doesn’t need those, and it will get crew couches and life support equipment instead.
however, they did have to relocate the RCS draco systems to accommodate the SuperDracos. also it got a new crew-friendly hatch, some new windows, and the nose has a NASA Docking System instead of the Common Berthing Mechanism.
keep in mind, these are all improvements that HAD to be made to accommodate crew.
the Cargo Dragon simply did not have the support equipment necessary to handle people.
–
The first ones had windows. Use one of those. Can not use one for abort tests since the mold line has changed for V2,ok v1. Dragon has climate control. Musk has said someone would have had a good ride if they were on a cargo flight. Might not be good for 7 people though. The hatch is 52″ for cargo. Just bolt on the new adapter. NASA probably has the same bolt pattern. NASA gives them one free. Not hard to run a few cables. Just use solids in a belt. Fire a few to cushion landings. This was suggested to them early and they have rejected it, so slip a little and everything will workout. They will do something to comment on.
More thinking. NASA are buying the whole flight. Not just seats. So like any launch. the customer can get what they want. NASA will pay for developing propulsive landing. With crew flights they will land on the ocean until ISS ends. Orion shows what they like. Cargo flights are that way. No reason to change. Have to protect the heat shield. Landing skids need to be castoring so with a parachute landing the capsule might grab and tip over. The answer SpaceX gave to when will they make a dry landing? When NASA wants to. The will use a cargo run with V2 to make propulsive landing, no crew, I think. They will have to look to find someone to pay for a crewed propulsive landing flight. Maybe Bigelow. No need to start writing complaing letters yet.
“Dragon has climate control. Musk has said someone would have had a good ride if they were on a cargo flight.”
the cargo Dragon has fans to circulate the air. it does not have any CO2 scrubbers or other life support systems.
We have had numerous crashes of light aircraft, business aircraft, commuter airliners and even full-size airliners over the years. Thousands of people have been killed. Modifications have been made to improve low-impact crash survivability (such as 20-G seat mountings for airliners) and ballistic parachutes have become practical for light sport aircraft, but no inflight abort or bailout capability has ever been thought practical for civil transport aircraft.
In spacecraft, only two men have been saved by a launch abort system, and that was in one incident over half a century ago. An escape system was added to the Shuttle after Columbia was lost, but it was incapable of saving the crew in the Challenger incident. I think SpaceX has a reasonable design, in which the same rockets that provide abort power are used for landing. For Orion the LAS adds greatly to the vehicle weight while its actual impact on safety is minimal.
The focus on abort systems is something of an illusion. We have accepted the concept that there has to be a backup plan for any failure. This makes the vehicle heavy, complex, and expensive. But in reality it will work only in a few of many possible failures. Keeping the system simple and reliable is a better solution.
Maybe. It’s also possible that an iterative process, possibly over many vehicles, will finally produce a system that works.
I wish they had just added an abort tower. The extra weight is nothing, since they only carry people.Only one failure point and the system to fire could have several backups. Dracos has the valves to get stuck like they have already done. Many failure points.Yes, better temps. on the ground. If one of those pods go out, there will be a large roll. SpaceX said they could convert Dragon for 350 million under COTS-D. Now it is 3 times that much. Back then, half joking, they could use lawn chairs and a computer terminal. Now they want it to land on Earth, Moon, Mars. They have test vehicles to learn how to land on Mars. They should have kept it simple for a LEO taxi.
Seems Musk has a time table(his life time) to get off this rock so he is gambling time and money to hurry to get a lander too. I just learned how Dragon 2 can use the Mars atmosphere by using dracos to make the most of Mars thin atmosphere to land with least fuel which makes me realize why Dragon 2 is designed the way it is.
Sure hope He pulls it off!
Redundancy is not equivalent to reliability. Four unreliable valves and a complicated control system aren’t a substitute for one reliable valve. Hypergols are extremely demanding fluids and after half a century it is still difficult to build a completely reliable hypergol valve. NASA made the right decision in going to lox/methane for the Morpheus. It has had problems. But not valve problems.
No, not surprised but I believe the level of testing is OTT given that there is already empirical evidence available on leo human spacecraft and the conditions they are subject to. That includes Shuttle, Apollo, Gemini, and Dragon Cargo.
Seems like there’s a lot of reinventing the wheel type stuff going on. JM2CW.
Have you read Rand’s discussions on the subject? What do you think of them if you have?
Cheers.
that’s true, but you never know what you’ve overlooked. the Dragon V2 also has a quite different aerodynamic profile than a simple conical capsule. so, as any engineer would tell you, “this is why we test” 🙂
and since the SuperDracos Dragon V2 will have been tested on the ground, but not at Max Q, it’s probably worth it to SpaceX to have them do an in-flight abort.
i’m not sure who Rand is, but if you provide a link i could take a look. thanks!
Hi HG.
Here’s a starting link for Rand:
http://cei.org/adjunct-scho…
Cheers
He is on twitter too. Rand Simberg @Simberg_Space
Rocket engines have been around for decades and are well understood. However this is what happened the first time NASA tried to fly its new engine.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
“This is why we test.” Crashes in real life are much more expensive than tests. Skipping testing only looks cheap and quick because people leave the big costs out of the estimates.
I’m not questioning the need for testing. I’m questioning the level and expectations surrounding safety and the resultant expense.
I refer you to Rand Simberg’s comments on the subject.
Commercial companies, IMHO, have a greater incentive to ensure their systems and hardware is safe than NASA. Their business relies upon it.
BTW, all NASA’s testing didn’t prevent a culture from developing that flew the Shuttle and resulted in two, not one, but two LOMs.
Cheers.
a link to Simberg’s comments on the matter would probably help
It’s posted here, again.
http://cei.org/adjunct-scho…
Cheers
that’s just a bio. i meant if there’s an article you were referring to.
Hi HG. I’m actually referring to his book which is well worth a read. The book is titled: Safe is not an option, and there’s a website here: http://safeisnotanoption.com/
A number of articles have been written on the book as well as on it’s contents. SpaceReview did one here: http://www.thespacereview.c… and I’m sure if you look for them, you’ll find others.
Cheers
ah, finally an article, so that i can know what you’re talking about.
there’s a difference between being risk-averse and unnecessarily doing testing.
SpaceX is being risk-averse in its pad-abort and in-flight abort tests. you do want to know how your spacecraft will perform in those situations. these are meaningful tests and will provide SpaceX with a lot of data and a benchmark for how well its systems can perform.
you can say that NASA is unnecessarily doing testing, for example, by performing dozens of Orion parachute tests, however, they have the resources to repeat tests like that over and over, and they do so to test failure modes – and these are tests that do need to get done. real-world data is going to trump a computer simulation every time, and the physics behind parachute inflation and failure is still a bit more of an art than a science. so maybe that’s not the best example.
however, it sounds like you’re coming to the knee-jerk reaction that ANY testing is unnecessary. you just want to slap a spacecraft together and put people in it and launch it.
that’s a very extreme position.
As Trevor Kletz once stated, “If you think safety is expensive, try an accident.”
Risk may need translating into cost in money and lives. The rules will something like:
While benefits > costs And
cost_of_testing < probability_of_failure (any) * cost_of_failure Repeat
For I = 1 to number_of_items Do
If cost_of_testing (I) < probability_of_failure (I) * cost_of_failure Then
Perform test(I)
If test_failed Then
cure (I)
Exit For
End If
End If
Next I
End While benefits
The cost_of_failure once put into production can be very very large.
The probability_of_failure () changes as faults are cured.
Once an item has been made to work normally only the success paths need checking in any future tests. The regression tests of old items may only need a single test session when a new item is added.
problem was they were at JSC and if the vehicle had broken loose there could have been a lot of damage. After that incident they moved the testing to KSC where there is a lot more room for live testing. However I think if they had kept up the partnership with Armadillo the danger would also have been avoided, since Armadillo also had an isolated testing site, and a bit more experience with similar systems. If we work together as a team we will have a better chance to succeed.
In 2013 tethered testing of the lander took place at JSC. Free flight testing took place at KSC (except for a quick tethered test to ensure nothing was damaged during the journey).
I note that SpaceX never engaged in this sort of ‘risky’ testing. All their engine testing has been undertaken either in static mode or in flight.
Cheers.
SpaceX would need a very strong tether to stop the Falcon 1 flying away.
Which goes to show it’s horses for courses. Personally I believe that if you need to tether your vehicle, then:
1. It’s not sufficiently developed to do flight tests on anyway, and/or
2. You’re not sufficiently confident in your design, and/or
3. You don’t have a sufficiently large crash zone.
Cheers.
you might find this 2008 article on tethered testing illuminating.
http://thelaunchpad.xprize….
One mishap that cost the lives of a crew would deal a heavy blow to the program. This we know. But the program needs to speed up and become fully funded.
If there is more than one provider then no it won’t. That’s the beauty of redundancy. Aircraft crash and people lose their lives but that doesn’t:
1. stop people flying, and
2. ground the rest of the industry.
because there are other providers flying other aircraft types. Even when a particular type crashes, the authorities don’t immediately ground all other aircraft of that type. Occasionally they do, granted, when they have hard evidence of a type-wide issue but it’s pretty rare.
Why oh why should space be treated any differently? Oh yes, I forgot. ‘Cause astronauts are ‘heroes’ and it seems that they shouldn’t be subjected to any level of risk even if it’s their job, they’re paid to do it, and no one is forcing them to do it.
Agree with fully funding at least 2 providers and yes the pace should be picked up if possible. The lack of full funding has delayed the program by about 2 years and reduced the level of use of the ISS and consequently the amount of research of the facility. This is Congress at it’s worst. Reducing funding by a billion or so and therefore underutilising an asset worth several hundred billion and with a limited lifespan.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
End of rant 🙂
Cheers
Just out of curiosity — I always thought that the “In-flight Abort” test that SpaceX is going to do was overkill. Are they being required to do so, or is it voluntary? Were the other capsules in NASA’s history ever required to do the same?
Were they even capable of in flight abort near max Q???
SpaceX’s in-flight abort test is part of their milestones, but was voluntarily added to them. i believe they want to do it because they will get some real-world data of how the SuperDracos perform at Max-Q
and Yes.
Mercury did numerous pad-abort and in-flight abort tests, and unmanned suborbital flights. there are so many because this was the first time anything like this had ever been attempted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Gemini had ejector seats. they were extensively tested in pad-abort simulations (they were designed to be able to escape the fireball of the rocket exploding on the pad), but never in-flight. however, they did provide the additional abort capability of ejecting in the event that the recovery parachutes did not deploy before landing.
and the Apollo program did two pad-abort tests and four in-flight abort tests.
Orion did a pad-abort test back in 2010.
Thank you, Doug. I now remember reading about the Mercury stuff. I didn’t know about Apollo. I think what throws me is that SpaceX has a animation of a full stack doing an in-flight abort, and I was thinking how interesting it would be to watch that for real. Further thinking was, I wondered if a full Saturn stack was launched to do an in-flight abort, which also would be a great watch. Not the case; but the video on YouTube of the “Little Joe” rocket rolling and breaking up during the test was fascinating.
oh yeah, that is an interesting video. that Little Joe flight was meant to go to Max Q, but the rocket developed an uncontrolled roll and disintegrated in flight – and the abort system worked perfectly xD an unintentional, yet completely successful test of the launch abort.
It said they engineers put made a little mistake in mounting the gyros… sure sure, mistake 🙂
Mode 1 abort (ejection seats) for Gemini was from 0 to 70,000 feet. Lots of info here: http://www.astronautix.com/…
And Blue Origin has done a pad abort test. They thought it so important it was the first thing they did.
From the smoke it looks like solids. This was not the bi-conic. Just wanted to test a pusher system with partner NASA. This is the sub orbital system.
I thought a pusher solid abort would work. This reminded me of Mercury and the de-orbit rocket pack. They say a 3 or more person crew. So a slight increase in power, if possible, other wise use and buy the same rockets as BO. Strap it to the heat shield, like Mercury. Put 3 or 4 rockets on the sides to help the Dracos soften the parachute landing. Now that would be neat. Fly this year. Call it Dragon Lite. SpaceX got plenty of money. Give people a choice. Maybe Bigelow would launch if they had Dragon Lite.
One of their CCiCap milestones.
NASA should scrutinize its own systems this well. I doubt if Orion and SLS could cut the mustard. They will have to pencil-whip these systems to certify for flight. There will be a lot of hand-waving and head-nodding when the evidence to certify is lacking.
After doing thermal protection system repairs for United Space Alliance on the Shuttle Program I got to talk to alot of astronauts they knew that the escape system was a joke but they flew anyway because they are true explorers and willing to take the risk. What kind of escape system does the Russians use?
The Soyuz uses a tractor rocket at low altitude and booster shutdown and stage separation at high altitude. It had two successful launch aborts, one on the pad and one at high altitude during a launch.
Thanks appreciate it
Both abort stories are very dramatic. summaries can be found on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
All you space-X fans….When will their rocket fly again??? What would have been said if this launch was a ISS cargo mission??? Looks like the true colors are showing. I hope they are paying Orbcom for the lost revenue.
the rocket will fly in mid-July, when the Air Force is done with range maintenance.
delays are a part of the space launch industry. this is nothing to get worked up over.
What is it with Space-X, Do you seriously think Boeing has never conducted a abort test?? Dream Chaser can abort and fly to a safe landing on any runway.
Nope, Boeing hasn’t done any abort test for their CST-100. Parachute landing, yes, abort, no. Can DC outrun an RUD event? They’ve done a glide test. That’s it, so the answer is, don’t know. Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us as to how they plan to go about it?
Cheers