Plotting A New Course for NASA

In article cbfa807f-8ca7-44dd-92ee-f7bae5da7771
@o1g2000vbe.googlegroups.com, says...

On Nov 29, 6:48*pm, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

It depends on when the choice was made. If Griffin had chosen in 2005 to
design CEV to be flown on existing vehicles, and not develop Ares I, CEV
would probably be close to flight test by now.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The original CxP plan had Ares I and CEV ready for flight test in
2013. Now we'll get Orion on EFT-1 in 2014 on a Delta IV Heavy. IF,
and I do mean if, NASA chose an EELV for Orion crew launches to LEO,
it'd still take three years to human-rate an existing vehicle.
Something the Bobbert doesn't seem to get-but then again, he's living
in his fantasy world anyway. He seems to think that all you need to do
is stick the capsule on the rocket and that's it. Wrong. But also, the
Bobbert's been against any HSF, so.....his general ignorance and naive
thinking show where he is.

So if the decision was made in 2005 to go with EELV and the "man
rating" work took six years instead of three, we'd still have a "man
rated" EELV by now (nearly the beginning of 2012).


At this point it's also interesting to note that "man rating" means
anything that NASA says it means. They not only write the rules, but
they also write the waivers for when their favorite launch vehicle can't
meet the original specs. Because of this, the process can be as long
and expensive, or as short and as inexpensive, as NASA wants it to be.

Furthermore, "safety" at NASA is as driven by politics as much as their
choice of launch vehicles. In fact, it's obvious that they're tightly
coupled. The biggest example of this is the selection of Ares I for
crew launch on the basis of "safety". That was, and still is, one of
the biggest lies in recent NASA history. The original Ares I "design"
wasn't even workable, let alone "safe".

Paper rockets are *always* claimed to be safer than what's flying, but
reality is almost never as rosy as the original analysis would have you
think. Unfortunately at the paper rocket stage, engineers don't know
what they don't know (like just how big the dispersal field is for
flaming bits of SRB propellant after a case rupture). Openly admitting
that fact is political suicide while trying to "sell" the program to the
politicians, but those very same unknowns are what tend to cause
schedule slips and cost overruns.

Jeff
--
" Ares 1 is a prime example of the fact that NASA just can't get it
up anymore... and when they can, it doesn't stay up long. "
- tinker