Atlas V to be man-rated

On Jul 20, 5:51*am, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article 9e6eb710-6c25-4645-8324-
, says...



The problem is that Space X apparently doesn't want to fly Dragon atop
anyone else's boosters, and Orion MPCV is way too massive to carried
into orbit by a single common core booster, hence the launch
tenatively scheduled for 2013 on a Delta IV is going to be a Heavy.
This modification of Atlas V strikes me as a smart hedging of bets
towards ensuring manned access to LEO in the advent that Falcon 9 has
a Bad Day.

Obviously SpaceX would like to see Dragon fly on Falcon. *Falcon keeps
the fate of Dragon within the same company. *On top of that, it's far
cheaper than Atlas. *

Yes, and the down side to that is what is going to happen when Falcon
9 has a Bad Day? Does Musk have a secret back up plan to fly a Dragon
on an Atlas V or other launcher? That's what bothers me. He's gone too
"in-house" in order to cut costs.

What about Boeing's commercial capsule? *Assuming it flies, it's got to
go up on something. *For Boeing, having Atlas as an option is a good
thing. *Falcon may be cheaper, but why would Boeing want to trust their
capsule to be launched *only* by the competition's launcher? *

As you well know, Boeing and other COTS groups, like SpaceDev, are
designing their vehicles to go on a wide variety of launchers, not
just one in particular. That might be a big more expensive in the
short term, but it could pay off big time in the long term by not
stranding their spacecraft in the advent of a Bad Day.

Competition is a good thing, but when the same companies are working on
both launchers and capsules, the situation does become a bit
complicated.

I don't see that as a big problem. We can take a lesson from aviation
history here. For example, look at how for many years Hughes Aircraft
produced numerous designs and aircraft and Howards Hughes at the same
time owned and operated Trans World Airlines (TWA), which also made
use of Hughes Aircraft designs.
-Mike