Once mo Man Rating Delta IV and Atlas V

I know this has been hashed over before, but I've got the task to
determine what exactly would be required to man rate the two EELV's to
NASA standards. Without getting into the philosophical debates over the
worthiness of such a project, does anyone know of sources of
information for *what* would need to happen and how much it might cost?

Thanks...

On 2 Mar 2005 09:03:38 -0800, in a place far, far away,
" made the
phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

I know this has been hashed over before, but I've got the task to
determine what exactly would be required to man rate the two EELV's to
NASA standards. Without getting into the philosophical debates over the
worthiness of such a project, does anyone know of sources of
information for *what* would need to happen and how much it might cost?

I don't have a link (though Jorge probably does), but there's a
document at JSC that purports to define what that means. The main
thing is adequate FOSD (failure on-set detection) to provide warning
in time to allow a flight abort system to be employed. It's still an
open question, I believe, whether or not boosters have to be capable
of being shut down (to prevent unlikely event of the launcher from
"catching up" to you after pulling the handle), but if so, then that
makes the Atlas problematic with its solids.

As for cost, nobody knows. Make your best guess, then multiply it by
two or three orders of magnitude.

wrote:
I know this has been hashed over before, but I've got the task to
determine what exactly would be required to man rate the two EELV's to
NASA standards. Without getting into the philosophical debates over the
worthiness of such a project, does anyone know of sources of
information for *what* would need to happen and how much it might cost?

Thanks...


I'd agree that the document Rand and Ed are talking about in another
response thread is going to be part of it, but looking at the CEV RFP
that was made public today (can be found at
http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eps/sol.cgi?acqid=113638) suggests
that it's not the entire story. From what I can read (in attachment
J-1), they permit the vendors to consider trade-off between different
objectives *including abort requirements* in the final design.

Finally, the "man-rating" of the booster will certainly only be
definable in the context of the overall launch system -- differences in
spacecraft & abort systems design will play a part in determining what
has to be done to the booster and pad infrastructure to make the overall
system "99% safe" (whatever the h*ll that means)...

--
Reed Snellenberger
GPG KeyID: 5A978843
rsnellenberger-at-houston.rr.com