ULA Completes CST-100 Pad CDR
ULA Successfully Completes Critical Design Review for Boeing Commercial Crew Accommodations at Launch Pad
“The CDR, supported by Boeing, NASA, and the Air Force, approved the design for the Crew Access Tower, Crew Access Arm as well as the White Room that will allow the flight crews the ability to safely ingress and egress Boeing’s CST-100 crew module for launch. In addition, the team reviewed the conceptual design of the emergency egress system which is similar in design to the space shuttle basket escape system.”
How much input does NASA provide in these design reviews or before? Is all this necessary?
a) Not much on Commercial Crew.
b) No.
a)Enough to make sure that the product is safe and everything is up to NASA standards
b)Yes
I’m always eager to learn. What did NASA redline on the CDR that will actually save lives or dollars at Cx 41? Or has in the past in other programs? I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. But usually the contractor has more experience than the civil servants, or the people who wrote the standards.
It is not always needed, but it is necessary. It’s always good to have completely new set of eyes with different experience looking at your designs (I know I feel better and learn few things when someone new reviews my designs)
If someone has real experience to contribute we should capture their experience before we start, or make them part of the team, or just let them comment on the work as we go along. These formal reviews can be surprisingly expensive when you add up the multiple levels of review and the number of people involved, both man-hours and program delay, and most of the people involved have nothing to go on but the presentation. When the organization responsible for the design keeps everything in-house until PDR and then springs the whole concept on you, and you don’t agree with how they have approached it, you either have to persuade the program to spend a bundle to change the design or suck it up and go along.
The way we do things now is _much_ too expensive. I don’t know exactly how we need to change, but I’m durn sure we need to. And I won’t even wait till PDR to say it.
Wow. A pad CDR. What next?
Cheers
Best answer
you want two carrots?