Jeff Findley wrote on Wed, 22 Aug 2018
06:41:34 -0400:

In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote on Tue, 21 Aug 2018
19:51:37 -0400:
Like Fred said, dummies.

I got the attribution wrong. You didn't say "dummies".

Specifically, instrumented "crash test"
dummies. They're used in the aerospace industry as well as the
automotive industry. They mimic the mass, strength, and etc of a human
and are instrumented to measure the accelerations at various parts of
the dummy's body. They're literally "off the shelf" items.


Actually, I think the whole 'dummy test' scenario is unnecessary. Were
dummies used to test the Shuttle or Apollo or Gemini or Mercury?


Monkeys were the human analog used to test Mercury.


They had a lot of untested stuff, so needed a living analog to test
with. The Russians used dogs for the same purpose.


Gemini and Apollo had instrumented uncrewed test flights.


Which is what I would expect Dragon V2 to do. I just don't see the
necessity of dummies on those flights.


The STS-1 was a mistake. There
were several issues with that first flight that could have resulted in
LOC.


They didn't have a choice. Fly it unmanned and it was a guaranteed
loss of vehicle, since the thing couldn't land without a pilot.


For current uncrewed test flights using off the shelf crash test dummies
(i.e. min size female and max size male) is the cheapest way to
instrument the vehicle to see what accelerations the meat bags will have
to endure.


You get the same data without the dummies from sensors on the capsule.


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world."
-- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden