Shutting off the private sector route

Mark Matthews points to the CBO report mentioned here earlier on NASA's long term budget woes: Two reports spell big problems for NASA and the future of American spaceflight - Orlando Sentinel - Apr.16.09

Matthews also discusses a report(pdf) by NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, which, among other things, addresses the issue of US crew spaceflight capability between the shutdown of the Shuttle program in 2010 and the 2015 start up of Ares I/Orion. With regard to COTS, the report states:

3. Private Sector. The ASAP concludes that the private sector cannot bridge the gap.
[1] There is no evidence that Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) vehicles will be completed in time to minimize the gap.
[2] COTS vehicles currently are not subject to the Human-Rating Requirements (HRR) standards and are not proven to be appropriate to transport NASA personnel.
[3] The capability of COTS vehicles to safely dock with the ISS still must be demonstrated.

These are remarkably weak arguments to justify cutting off the only viable route to attaining US crew spaceflight capability before 2015. Firstly, as is typical is such pronouncements, they do not address the enormous difference in the budgets involved. As I've noted before, even with COTS-D the Falcon 9/Dragon project will cost NASA about a factor of 100 less than Ares 1/Orion (~$500M vs ~$50B). A relatively small amount of money could accelerate the project and produce "evidence" that the gap could be minimized. Unfortunately, by the time there is such evidence at the current pace, the delay will probably fulfill the ASAP prediction. Regarding the second point, Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized that F9/Dragon was designed from the beginning for human spaceflight capabilities and to meet the human rating requirements. With respect to the third point, we should know by 2010 or so if the Dragon can dock with the ISS. And if there is some problem, there is no evidence that a modest amount of additional funding could not fix it.

The fact is, if SpaceX manages to launch the Falcon 9 successfully this year, these sort of arguments will be swept aside and there will be a strong push to support manned capabilities with it. If they are unsuccessful, then COTS-D will not happen.
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Meanwhile, NASA goes with its preferred option: NASA buys 24 seats aboard Russian Soyuz space vehicles - DC Space News Examiner

Posted 04/17/09 | 07:42:28 by TopSpacer | Filed under: NASA Exploration Systems

Comments

from the ASAP report:

"C J Scolese Response to ASAP Questions ...
3. What are the important "unrealized opportunities? ...
Innovative utilization of ISS as a platform for advanced observations of Earth and the Universe via revolutionary technologies (an NMP-like
program for ISS utilization) ...
Creative use of commercial Earth remote sensing capabilities to enhance NASA Earth Climate science research (and model development), including hyper-resolution platforms such as GeoEye-
1 and Radarsat-2 ...
c. Leveraging the commercial and international capabilities that are being developed to allow NASA to focus on the more difficult ground breaking technologies and missions.
i. Commercial crew and cargo opportunities for the ISS
ii. Commercial remote sensing satellites ...
7. If you could write the "top five" goals for new administrator, what would be on the list? ...
e. Encourage and utilize commercial capabilities and innovative markets to
expand the exploration of space and reduce Agency overhead."

Posted by red at 04/17/09 09:37:32

Congress gives NASA money to create high-tech jobs. NASA can not directly support a commercial program that undermines the Ares 1, a program designed to maintain those high-tech jobs, not save money. Once Dragon crews are launched Ares 1 money will be used to accelerate Ares 5, pay for space station until 2020 and maybe some science.

In the most likely scenario:

Falcon 9 maiden launch 2009
Falcon 9/Dragon Demos 2010
Falcon 9 NASA COTS 2011
Falcon 9 Bigelow crew 2012
Falcon 9 NASA COTS-Dragon 2013

Posted by WildBill at 04/17/09 09:53:12

"Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized that F9/Dragon was designed from the beginning for human spaceflight capabilities and to meet the human rating requirements"

The issue is what are "human rating requirements"? There is no industry standard and which ones was Spacex was designing to? I believe Spacex is designing to its own standards and not NASA's. I am not saying that NASA's requirements are not valid but
"human rating requirements" are not the same for everyone. Atlas says it can fly humans, and what are they basing that on?

Posted by Me at 04/17/09 11:10:01

I would normally avoid the "human rating" issue but since it was brought up by ASAP I mentioned it here. NASA does have a set of HR requirements and SpaceX is trying to meet or surpass them. The Shuttle, of course, does not meet NASA's human rating requirements. It will be interesting to see if Ares I/Orion gets some waivers as well.

In general, as Rand Simberg is often saying, it's ridiculous to build a launcher for billion dollar satellite payloads with any less reliability than crew launchers. The HR term may have been appropriate when converting 1950s ICBMs to astronaut launchers but it is obsolete today.

- C.

Posted by TopSpacer at 04/17/09 13:05:17

SpaceX has never said that they were going to meet NASA's HR requirements. Anyways with regards to "It will be interesting to see if Ares I/Orion gets some waivers as well." Technically, no, but it is due to the requirements being revised in May 2008, because Ares I couldn't meet them. So the ESAS pointed out where EELV couldn't meet HR requirements, they don't exist anymore.
http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov...

So the funny thing is that Griffin said the same thing to Congress as Rand did

Posted by Me at 04/17/09 15:24:37

"SpaceX has never said that they were going to meet NASA's HR requirements."

Yes they have: "F9/Dragon meets all the NASA human rating requirements, such as extra structural safety margins, multi-redundant electronics and acceptable g loads through all phases of flight and abort." - Feb.11.09
http://www.spacex.com/cotsd...

- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 04/17/09 16:20:54

TopSpacer: "The Shuttle, of course, does not meet NASA's human rating requirements. It will be interesting to see if Ares I/Orion gets some waivers as well."

The ASAP report actually discusses this in "Overview of New Human Rating Standard" (p. 34-35 of the Quarterly Meeting minutes section). Here's an excerpt:

"However, the HRR will be available for, and applicable to, the Constellation Program. (In fact, as Mr. Marshall pointed out, the HRR revision process focused on Constellation and was heavily influenced by the members of the Constellation team ... Fifth, the failure tolerance standard changed from no two failures resulting in crew or passenger fatality of permanent disability to the current minimum of one failure tolerant to catastrophic events, with the specific level of failure tolerance derived from an integrated design and safety analysis. ... Sixth, the inadvertent actions standard shifted from no two inadvertent actions (during operation or in-flight maintenance)�or a combination of one inadvertent action and one system failure�resulting in crew or passenger fatality or permanent disability to the current standard of a minimum of one inadvertent operator
action (as identified by the human error analysis) without causing a catastrophic event and tolerance of one inadvertent operator action in the presence of a single system failure."

It almost sounds like the standards were weakened to accomodate Constellation. If the standards were made to snugly fit Constellation, I'd be surprised (dismayed) if Constellation had to get a waiver.

Posted by red at 04/18/09 05:13:20

On the ASAP comments on COTS:

"3. Private Sector. The ASAP concludes that the private sector cannot bridge the gap."

Does "bridge" mean "completely eliminate"? If so, that's probably a reasonable, but completely irrelevant, statement, given that NASA hasn't started funding COTS-D yet as it should have years ago, and that the gap is getting close to a matter of months rather than years away.

"[1] There is no evidence that Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) vehicles will be completed in time to minimize the gap."

Here they talk of "minimize" rather than "bridge", which is something else entirely. To "minimize" the gap, all COTS efforts have to do is come in sooner than Ares/Orion, which could be 2015, or 2017, or 2020+ ... depending on what happens in Ares tests, with Ares funding, etc. It would be a pretty astonishing and perhaps out of scope statement for a safety panel to say that COTS vehicles can't do that. Perhaps if we stay on the current course and COTS-D is never funded, the ASAP will turn out to be right, but that's not an argument against COTS, it's an argument against current government policy not funding COTS-D. Also, the statement about "there's no evidence they'll be ready" is just silly -- there's no "proof" they'll be ready, since we don't have a time machine, but there's plenty of "evidence". Not only that, but even if commercial crew capability to ISS might arrive later than Ares/Orion, that's just another reason to get started with COTS-D or something like it ASAP (uh, meaning As Soon As Possible, not Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel).

We need (and NASA needs) this capability so we don't need to spend Ares V/Altair funds on Ares 1/Orion ISS trips, so Ares 1 and COTS can back up each other in case of an accident or stand-down with either of them, and so the U.S. participates in important markets like space tourism, Bigelow and other station transport, DragonLabs and similar labs, and so on ... i.e. all those markets NASA can point to as deriving from ISS, just like it hopes will happen with the lunar missions some day as justification for Constellation.

If the ASAP panel is for some odd reason critical of SpaceX in particular, that's still not an argument against COTS-D, since a new COTS-D specific competition could be run, opening up the field to existing Soyuz components matched with U.S ones, existing EELVs ... everything ... and NASA could focus strongly on safety in their evaluation.

"[2] COTS vehicles currently are not subject to the Human-Rating Requirements (HRR) standards and are not proven to be appropriate to transport NASA personnel."

This one is pretty silly too. The current COTS vehicles are for cargo; COTS-D hasn't even been funded. This will not be an issue when/if NASA funds COTS-D, because then they'll be subject to NASA's HRR standards if that's what NASA wants. At that point, ASAP can and should cast a critical and skeptical eye their way, but not now.

"[3] The capability of COTS vehicles to safely dock with the ISS still must be demonstrated."

Here we have the time machine syndrome again. Uh, the capability of Orion to safely dock with the ISS still must be demonstrated.

Posted by red at 04/18/09 05:54:24

""F9/Dragon meets all the NASA human rating requirements, such as extra structural safety margins, multi-redundant electronics and acceptable g loads through all phases of flight and abort."

They forgot independent backup flight software which would be part of the first "all" and spacecraft control of the LV.

Meeting a list of "requirements" vs meeting a standard are two different things.

Posted by Me at 04/18/09 06:49:09

Me,
As I understand it, NASA actually has codified it's Human Rating standards in some technical document (I think it's NPR 8705.2B). Now, as red pointed out, NASA has never and will never design a vehicle that meets all those standards itself without waivers (shuttle has several waivers, but they're dumbing down the standards for Orion, so maybe it will make it through). But according to several of Elon's public statements, they've been designing to that standard from the start.

I'm sorry, but unless you have evidence that Elon isn't telling the truth, I'm not convinced you know what you're talking about.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at 04/18/09 09:49:59

It's a pity, the Delta 4 would easily hit
the Man Rating Standards. Expensive, but
quick and easy.

Posted by anonymous at 04/18/09 12:11:23

Hi Red,
Thanks for your input. Further convinces me that the ASAP panel decided on the conclusion (i.e. "Private sector cannot bridge the gap") and then came up with 3 excuses to give a patina of support for it.

I think ASAP is just expressing the conventional assumption within NASA and mainstream aerospace that there is no way a little startup company is going to accomplish something as challenging as crew flights to the ISS. Even for cargo, the thinking goes, SpaceX will at best experience big delays, major F9 failures, etc, before they have even a marginally workable system.

A reasonable person could argue in support of that assumption but I think an official panel should address the objective data, which currently shows SpaceX meeting or exceeding the COTS milestones. Those milestones include design reviews by NASA panels. If the project is proceeding close to schedule and those panels are not finding any fundamental flaws in the F9/Dragon systems, then ASAP cannot simply state "there is no evidence..." They could state there is not sufficient evidence yet but a flat denial like that is clearly wrong.

- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 04/18/09 12:14:55

"They forgot independent backup flight software..."

Now you're just being argumentative. The phrase "such as" means that what follows is a partial list. As Jon indicates, SpaceX intends to meet all of NASA's official HRR requirements.

- C.

Posted by TopSpacer at 04/18/09 12:24:09

What is needed is to push Sundancer/BA-330 ASAP. The reason is that current top NASA ppl will have a DIFFICULT time explaining to out of work Americans as well as their congressmen why we are sending money to Russia and POSSIBLY China, when we could pay LESS doing it ourselves.
There is something so wrong with all this.

Posted by grr at 04/18/09 12:37:13

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