OSP: reliability and survivability

"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?


Are we talking here about the regular Ariane V, or the newer ECA version?

"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.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

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:

[I've clipped the attributions, because I'm not sure who said what,
except that Rand said the second. Or something like that.]

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.

What does "health-monitoring of the crew" mean in practice? Pulse rate
and blood pressure would seem to be easy enough. General activity ditto.
At least crude real-time EKG and EEG might be done with a bit more
invasiveness, but not a lot. Wireless to get it to the ship systems and
back to the ground.

On 14 Sep 2003 20:15:00 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Allen Thomson) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

[I've clipped the attributions, because I'm not sure who said what,
except that Rand said the second. Or something like that.]

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.

What does "health-monitoring of the crew" mean in practice? Pulse rate
and blood pressure would seem to be easy enough. General activity ditto.
At least crude real-time EKG and EEG might be done with a bit more
invasiveness, but not a lot. Wireless to get it to the ship systems and
back to the ground.

I think that he meant health monitoring the vehicle, so you know ASAP
whether or not to abort.

--
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:

In sci.space.policy Bent C Dalager wrote:
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.

But I don't think Ariane is foremost a national prestige project. So instead
of man-rating, the next step will be Ariane 5 ECA.


Cheers
Bent D

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++