What is the Crew Exploration Vehicle supposed to be?

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 05:25:27 GMT, (Henry Spencer) wrote, in
part:

A launch vehicle which is reliable enough
to be trusted (in a sane world) with billion-dollar space-station modules
is plenty reliable enough to carry people.

Only if the launch of a man-rated vehicle doesn't also cost billions of dollars.

If the price tag is more like:

Building the space-station module: $5 million. (The cost _would_ be $800,000 if
we could have mass production.)

Launching it into space on something that blows up half the time: $2 billion.

Launching it into space on something that hardly ever blows up: $10 billion.

Then, using the former launcher gets you a "$4,010,000" space-station module
instead of a "$10,005,000" space-station module, so using the former launcher on
a four-billion dollar module doesn't mean it's safe enough to put people on.

Incidentally, it isn't possible to raise an individual from the dead who was
killed in a rocket explosion even *with* billions of dollars. Just because
statistics on safety measures show that we can't *afford* to spend more than
$2,000,000 per life saved on reducing most kinds of industrial accidents doesn't
mean that's what human life is actually worth.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 17:18:02 -0500, Brian Thorn wrote, in
part:
On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 05:25:27 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

NASA is out of the launch-vehicle business for
the moment, except for that nagging possibility that the KSC-MSFC-JSC axis

That's a weird axis. More like a croissant. :-)

Hey, have you ever tried drawing a straight line (or great circle) joining Rome,
Berlin, and Tokyo?

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

Rand Simberg wrote in message ink.net...

There is, however, the airworthiness certificate issued to a
manufacturer
upon successful completion of a test program that satisfies FAA
requirements. It is roughly analogous to "man-rating", in that the
aircraft
cannot be operated without one.

No, that is a completely different definition of man-rating. To the
space community, that term means a vehicle that *can* carry a human, not
one that must. An airworthiness certificate means that the aircraft is
capable of flying in public airspace, and has nothing to do with whether
or not it will have a pilot

Furthermore, NASA is quite willing to talk about a CEV that lands in
the US (and overflies populated areas) even before it is not
"man-rated." Protecting the lives of test pilots is somehow deemed to
be more important than protecting people on the ground. In that sense,
"man-rating" is the opposite of an airworthiness certificate, which is
meant first and foremost to protect the public.

The FAA views pilots, quite properly, as operators who are responsible
for the safety of their aircraft. They are considered even more
important on initial test flights. NASA engineers, on the other hand,
tend to view pilots not as contributors to safety but as additional
risks, to be avoided whenever possible. A frequent refrain is "we
should never send humans to do anything a machine can do."

On 2004-08-04, Kim Keller wrote:

"Andrew Gray" wrote in message
. ..
The specifications are intended to
allow for either Atlas or Delta launches, and presumably anything else
built to those mating specs (unlikely as that is).

That is not yet a requirement, though it was for the now-dead OSP program.
It is possible that requirement will not appear in the CEV program, although
CEV prototypes will likely fly on both vehicles.

Bah, my mental blurring of CRV-OSP-CEV returns.

Is it accurate to say that CEV is likely to be scaled for a launcher
broadly similar to the current EELVs?

--
-Andrew Gray

Andrew Gray wrote:

That is not yet a requirement, though it was for the now-dead OSP program.
It is possible that requirement will not appear in the CEV program, although
CEV prototypes will likely fly on both vehicles.


Bah, my mental blurring of CRV-OSP-CEV returns.

Is it accurate to say that CEV is likely to be scaled for a launcher
broadly similar to the current EELVs?

That's the current thinking.

"John Savard" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 17:18:02 -0500, Brian Thorn wrote, in
part:
On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 05:25:27 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

NASA is out of the launch-vehicle business for
the moment, except for that nagging possibility that the KSC-MSFC-JSC axis

That's a weird axis. More like a croissant. :-)

Hey, have you ever tried drawing a straight line (or great circle) joining Rome,
Berlin, and Tokyo?

Hmmm. On a Mercator map, a line from Pyongyang through Tehran misses
Baghdad, though it does come pretty close to Tripoli. Too bad the Bushies
couldn't read maps. Might have saved them some WMD embarrassment and the US
a lot of ill-will. ;-)

On 2004-08-04, Rand Simberg wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:

That is not yet a requirement, though it was for the now-dead OSP program.
It is possible that requirement will not appear in the CEV program, although
CEV prototypes will likely fly on both vehicles.


Bah, my mental blurring of CRV-OSP-CEV returns.

Is it accurate to say that CEV is likely to be scaled for a launcher
broadly similar to the current EELVs?

That's the current thinking.

In other words, stipulating the conditions such that they can be filled
by DIV and AV, rather than stipulating the conditions such that they are
D/A. Makes sense, although the cynic in me suggests that we're not too
likely to see a third viable US competitor.

But ten years is a good long time, and who knows what we shall see...

--
-Andrew Gray

"Edward Wright" wrote in message
om...
Furthermore, NASA is quite willing to talk about a CEV that lands in
the US (and overflies populated areas) even before it is not
"man-rated." Protecting the lives of test pilots is somehow deemed to
be more important than protecting people on the ground.

You fail to acknowledge (perhaps because you are unaware of it) the
considerable effort put into minimizing, by trajectory analysis, the danger
to the general public. During the OSP program hundreds of hours were spent
analyzing various northern flight paths and trajectories to ISS that would
prevent exposing the populace of Europe, Africa, and Asia to spent stage
disposal or accident-generated debris. Similar effort went into studying
methods of disposing of the resource module on those designs which were not
fully reusable. Therefore, your statement, "Protecting the lives of test
pilots is somehow deemed to be more important than protecting people on the
ground", is false.

In that sense,
"man-rating" is the opposite of an airworthiness certificate, which is
meant first and foremost to protect the public.

This is rubbish. Man-rating is intended to make the vehicle safe for human
occupants. Range safety is intended to make the flight (both launch and
descent) safe for the populace. You are trying to lump together two separate
subjects.

-Kim-

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
nk.net...
No, that is a completely different definition of man-rating. To the
space community, that term means a vehicle that *can* carry a human, not
one that must. An airworthiness certificate means that the aircraft is
capable of flying in public airspace, and has nothing to do with whether
or not it will have a pilot (thought the notion that an aircraft with
such a certificate wouldn't have a pilot would be a foreing concept to
most, includin the FAA).

Note that I did say "roughly analagous". But I would like to see you try to
sell or operate an airliner without a standard airworthiness certificate.

-Kim-

Kim Keller wrote:

No, that is a completely different definition of man-rating. To the
space community, that term means a vehicle that *can* carry a human, not
one that must. An airworthiness certificate means that the aircraft is
capable of flying in public airspace, and has nothing to do with whether
or not it will have a pilot (thought the notion that an aircraft with
such a certificate wouldn't have a pilot would be a foreing concept to
most, includin the FAA).

Note that I did say "roughly analagous".

As in "not analogous at all"?

But I would like to see you try to
sell or operate an airliner without a standard airworthiness certificate.

And I would like to see you make some kind of connection to this absurd
demand to the subject at hand.