Quote from: beancounter on 11/16/2010 07:12 amSo NASA determines the Human rating requirements for crew transport to and from the ISS. What about a private station like Bigelow's? Would this be the FAA? Could a commercial company, say Boeing, decide that it isn't interested in the ISS and try to get certification for providing crew services to and from private stations?NASA determines the Human rating requirements for crew transport to and from the ISS for NASA astronauts and no one else.FAA jurisdiction is commercial spacecraft. Certification isn't required for commercial spaceflight.
So NASA determines the Human rating requirements for crew transport to and from the ISS. What about a private station like Bigelow's? Would this be the FAA? Could a commercial company, say Boeing, decide that it isn't interested in the ISS and try to get certification for providing crew services to and from private stations?
The MPCV/SLS comment was meant less as a belief in an intentionally malicious effort to use a double standard against commercial crew as a comment that as I understand it, NASA has often come up with "human rating" rules that were strict enough that all of their vehicles have had to fly with waivers to those rules. If NASA (non-maliciously) came up with ridiculous rules for commercial crew, do you think they would hold their own systems to the same standards? History, at least as I understand it, would suggest otherwise. But maybe I'm wrong?~Jon
Can we print enough dollars to pay for meeting those requirements?
Can we assume that Lockheed must meet all of these requirements for Zombie Orion, as well, but the government (ie, we) will pay the costs of that work? Can we print enough dollars to pay for meeting those requirements?
So, what is my recommendation? Simple. Do what the Launch Services Program does: require that providers HAVE standards and follow them – don’t make them pick particular processes or standards, let the flexible, nimble, [your adjective here] commercial firms pick what suits their business best. As long as they have standards and stick to them – that is what we should require. ...Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. A good system can be devised, examples exist. Human spaceflight is important to our nation and to the world. Whether or not commercial firms can actually succeed is still open; but NASA and the FAA must walk a careful tightrope of ensuring safety while not killing the enterprise with over regulation.
Now I have re-read it and have some additional thoughts. It is clear that this is a vast scaling down from the requirements that say, Ares-1 and Orion had.
I read the story NASA does need to clean up the bureaucratic red tape all that paper work should not be needed.Gemini only had two dozen pages of requirements yet was one of the safest vehicles NASA ever flew.It does seem like there are some people within NASA who do not want commercial crew to succeed.
Background: Requirement 3.3.1.5 states “The CTS shall provide an overall abort effectiveness of 0.95 (TBC) for all single abort events along the nominal and dispersed ascent trajectory profile.”95% Abort Effectiveness seems to be a rather aggressive requirement given the fact that NASA’s own calculations for the Ares I (which was suppose to be one of the safest crew vehicles NASA had ever designed) showed that this vehicle had an abort effectiveness of about 80% to 85%. Enclosed is a transcript from one of the recent Augustine Committee public hearings where one of NASA’s safety & reliability experts (highlighted in the document) specifically says that “95% effectiveness is a very difficult thing to achieve” – the transcript is available at www.nasa.gov/doc/378830main_Huntsville_Transcript_part4b.docQuestion: If one of NASA’s own experts in this area has already stated publically that a 95% abort effectiveness is very difficult to achieve, is this requirement reasonable to be placed on commercial crew providers? Moreover, requirement 3.2.1.2 states “The mean LOC risk for any ISS mission ascent phase shall be no greater than 1 in 1000” so since the mean LOC risk is simply the probability of launch vehicle failure that ends the mission (also called Loss-of-Mission or LOM Risk) multiplied by 1 – abort effectiveness, why not let the commercial crew providers determine how best to meet the 1 in 1000 LOC risk regardless of how effective the abort portion of this equation is?Answer: The requirement documents referenced in the Announcement are in draft form and are intended to inform participants on the development of NASA’s crew transportation certification requirements. NASA will continue to openly develop these requirements for eventual use in development and use in an ISS crew transportation system. NASA is not requiring compliance as part of CCDev 2 but is informing industry as early as possible the considerations being given by NASA as part of crew rating space systems.
On Friday, Dec 10, NASA released an announcement about the full plan of requirements documents that Commercial Human Spaceflight Providers must comply with. You can read that announcement at:http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/commercial/cctscr.htmlThere will be 5 requirements documents apparently. And in the announcement is a link to the overall management requirements document (a 6th document) here:http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/504982main_CCTSCR_Dec-08_Basic_Web.pdfApparently in January all the drafts will be released for industry comment. I wonder if anybody will comment on them? Besides me, that is.
5.2.2 The CCTS shall safely execute the Loss of Crew (LOC) requirements specific to the NASA Design Reference Mission (DRM). The Programs shall determine and document the LOC risk when DRMs are specified. The following are current:a. The LOC probability distribution for the ascent phase of a 210 day ISS mission shall have amean value no greater than 1 in 1000b. The LOC probability distribution for the entry phase of a 210 day ISS mission shall have a mean value no greater than 1 in 1000c. The LOC probability distribution for a 210 day ISS mission shall have a mean value no greater than 1 in 2705.2.3 The CCTS shall limit the Loss of Mission (LOM) risk for the specified NASA DRMs. The Programs shall determine and document the LOM risk when DRMs are specified. The following are current:a. The LOM probability distribution for a 210 day ISS mission shall have a mean value no greater than 1 in 55b. A spacecraft failure that requires the vehicle to enter earlier than the pre-launch planned end of mission timeframe shall be considered a loss of missionRationale: These LOC and LOM requirements are flown down from the NASA ESMD Exploration Architecture Requirements Document (EARD) and are consistent with NASA’s defined goals and thresholds for crewed vehicles. The LOC values are part of the overall certification process for the commercial launch vehicle and spacecraft and establish a basis for decision-making relative to safety enhancing features in the design including failure tolerance.
Will there be a specific procedure published, that everyone will have to comply with when determining these LOC/LOM numbers?As we learned during the Ares-I project, it was pretty easy for L1 and L2 management to manipulate the process in order to make the LOM/LOC numbers say anything they wanted.So I see these particular numbers as thoroughly "fluid" without some very open and clear published methods of quantification that everyone can measure, ahead of time.In short, what's to stop someone saying "Here's my new rocket & spacecraft and here is our evidence that they meet all of NASA's LOM/LOC targets -- just as long as you calculate them my way" ?Ross.
Quote from: kraisee on 12/21/2010 03:28 pmIn short, what's to stop someone saying "Here's my new rocket & spacecraft and here is our evidence that they meet all of NASA's LOM/LOC targets -- just as long as you calculate them my way" ?Quite right.
In short, what's to stop someone saying "Here's my new rocket & spacecraft and here is our evidence that they meet all of NASA's LOM/LOC targets -- just as long as you calculate them my way" ?