OSP: reliability and survivability

rk writes:

Rand Simberg wrote:

On 12 Sep 2003 15:40:01 GMT, in a place far, far away, rk
made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

It's a volume thing.

Exactly. The same with space launch.

Every year they come out with the numbers and, if I remember
correctly, the total number of world-wide launches is around 6 dozen
per year.


"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)

--
__Pascal_Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/
Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.

Pascal Bourguignon wrote:



"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)



You know, if he'd said around five computer operating systems.... he
might have been right.

Pat "Fortran" Flannery

On or about 13 Sep 2003 07:55:04 GMT, Pat Flannery made
the sensational claim that:
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)
You know, if he'd said around five computer operating systems.... he
might have been right.

Only if you count all Linux distros as "one" OS. Otherwise it'd be more like
5,000,000.
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In article ,
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)

At the time, he was probably spot on.

Cheers
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
powered by emacs

"HAESSIG Frédéric Pierre Tamatoa" wrote in message
...

The Ruzicka Family a écrit dans le message :
...

"Edwin Kite" wrote in message
om...
In deciding whether or not to fund NASA's proposed Orbital Space Plane
- a "space taxi" dedicated to crew transport, in contrast to the
current "space truck" - Congressional mavens are making a faulty
assumption. That is that because OSP will be launched on unproven
Delta and Atlas-family rockets, it will be fundamentally no more

By the time that OSP actually flys, both the Delta 4 and Atlas V will
have
flown many missions, with both commercial and government payloads. Both
systems will be far from "unproven" by that time. In order to actually
FLY
the OSP, there will have to be some modifications made, especially with
regard to avionics, adapter interface, etc. ALL of these mods will be
made
with the intent of actually making the launchers even MORE safe and
reliable. Will they be 100% safe and reliable? No. No space launch
system
ever has been, nor ever will be 100% safe and reliable. But to say that
the
Delta 4 or Atlas V will be unproven by that time is not factually true.

Remember that Ariane V is supposed to be Man-rated ( triple redundancy ).
Would you take a flight on it at this time?

Why would ANY Ariane be truly and fully man-rated. I can not imagine why
this would be done, since it can be hideously expensive to man-rate a
vehicle. And since Ariane is first and foremost a commercial launch
vehicle, there is no economic incentive (as yet) to man-rate it.

On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 09:15:28 CST, in a place far, far away, "The
Ruzicka Family" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


Why would ANY Ariane be truly and fully man-rated. I can not imagine why
this would be done, since it can be hideously expensive to man-rate a
vehicle. And since Ariane is first and foremost a commercial launch
vehicle, there is no economic incentive (as yet) to man-rate it.

What does it even *mean* to man rate it? I'd think that if it wasn't
already as reliable as possible, the insurance industry would have
told them to fix it via high rates.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
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In article ,
The Ruzicka Family wrote:

Why would ANY Ariane be truly and fully man-rated. I can not imagine why
this would be done, since it can be hideously expensive to man-rate a
vehicle. And since Ariane is first and foremost a commercial launch
vehicle, there is no economic incentive (as yet) to man-rate it.

The question is whether Ariane is first and foremost a project based
on economics or a national prestige project. If it's the latter, then
it wouldn't really matter how expensive it would be or whether or not
man-rating would be useful in any way.

Cheers
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
powered by emacs

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 09:15:28 CST, in a place far, far away, "The
Ruzicka Family" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


Why would ANY Ariane be truly and fully man-rated. I can not imagine why
this would be done, since it can be hideously expensive to man-rate a
vehicle. And since Ariane is first and foremost a commercial launch
vehicle, there is no economic incentive (as yet) to man-rate it.

What does it even *mean* to man rate it? I'd think that if it wasn't
already as reliable as possible, the insurance industry would have
told them to fix it via high rates.

It isn't just a matter of making the vehicle more reliable. Man-rating a
vehicle also can entail modifying ground systems and such to enable a crew,
on their own, to get out of the vehicle and away to safety in an emergency
situation on the pad. If, as an example, there is no easy egress from the
vehicle because the tower, or some other structure, has been rolled away,
you might be in big trouble.
Another area of man-rating involves modifying/adding avionics to enable
health-monitoring of the crew. I've been told that that is NOT as easy or
cheap as it may sound!

"Bent C Dalager" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Ruzicka Family wrote:

Why would ANY Ariane be truly and fully man-rated. I can not imagine why
this would be done, since it can be hideously expensive to man-rate a
vehicle. And since Ariane is first and foremost a commercial launch
vehicle, there is no economic incentive (as yet) to man-rate it.

The question is whether Ariane is first and foremost a project based
on economics or a national prestige project. If it's the latter, then
it wouldn't really matter how expensive it would be or whether or not
man-rating would be useful in any way.


Well, if Ariane is first and foremost a project based on national prestige,
then I would wonder why there was so much fuss and arguing over all of the
money that had to be ponied up to help fix the Ariane V ECA, following it's
disastrous first flight. Sure, I've no doubt that there's some national
pride involved, but governments are not TOTALLY stupid. If there are no
reasonably good economics there, the program would probably not continue.
Just my own thoughts on common sense.

On 14 Sep 2003 14:45:06 GMT, in a place far, far away, "The Ruzicka
Family" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Why would ANY Ariane be truly and fully man-rated. I can not imagine why
this would be done, since it can be hideously expensive to man-rate a
vehicle. And since Ariane is first and foremost a commercial launch
vehicle, there is no economic incentive (as yet) to man-rate it.

What does it even *mean* to man rate it? I'd think that if it wasn't
already as reliable as possible, the insurance industry would have
told them to fix it via high rates.

It isn't just a matter of making the vehicle more reliable.

Man-rating a
vehicle also can entail modifying ground systems and such to enable a crew,
on their own, to get out of the vehicle and away to safety in an emergency
situation on the pad. If, as an example, there is no easy egress from the
vehicle because the tower, or some other structure, has been rolled away,
you might be in big trouble.

That's not man rating a vehicle. That's designing a launch system to
accommodate an on-pad abort.

Another area of man-rating involves modifying/adding avionics to enable
health-monitoring of the crew. I've been told that that is NOT as easy or
cheap as it may sound!

That's the only vehicle change that I could see being worthwhile to
add.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: