Author Topic: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification  (Read 19994 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Excellent and in-depth write up from Yves-A. Grondin

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/08/nasa-outlines-plans-commercial-crew-certification/

I learnt a few things myself after reading this one!
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Offline WM68

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #1 on: 08/05/2013 03:47 pm »
Excellent article.

Offline clongton

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #2 on: 08/05/2013 03:55 pm »
Nicely done - thank you.
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I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline JazzFan

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #3 on: 08/05/2013 04:42 pm »
Great read.  Sadly the closer we get to flight ready craft, the closer we get to down select.  I'm greedy and still want all three flying to some mission of value.

Offline baldusi

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #4 on: 08/05/2013 06:51 pm »
Interesting article. There were a couple of issues that I think should have been highlighted in the article.
First and foremost, that the cost will have more than 50% of the evaluation weight. This might imply a real cutthroat competition on price.
Second, even though the NDS would be GFE, 14M to 16M will be added to the entrant's price for each port. Thus, no money will be required from the contractor, but it will be a "cost" item for deciding the winner. I think this is a point worth stressing.

Offline yg1968

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #5 on: 08/05/2013 07:28 pm »
Thanks for the compliments.

The source of material was posted in the following thread:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32412.0
« Last Edit: 08/05/2013 07:28 pm by yg1968 »

Offline yg1968

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #6 on: 08/05/2013 07:56 pm »
Interesting article. There were a couple of issues that I think should have been highlighted in the article.
First and foremost, that the cost will have more than 50% of the evaluation weight. This might imply a real cutthroat competition on price.
Second, even though the NDS would be GFE, 14M to 16M will be added to the entrant's price for each port. Thus, no money will be required from the contractor, but it will be a "cost" item for deciding the winner. I think this is a point worth stressing.

Concerning the evaluation criteria, I decided not to discuss them because I don't fully understand them. The evaluation is based on a 1000 points but it has a bunch of sub-criteria and it's not clear to me how the sub-criteria are weighted. Wayne Hale made the point that safety wasn't as important a factor as it was in prior rounds. But I don't know how important it was in the other rounds. So it would have been difficult for me to make that claim without backing it up.

I thought about putting the $14M to $16M figure for the NDS but I ended up not putting it because it's more of an accounting number for evaluation purposes than a real cost. So it would have been difficult to explain the number without going through the evaluation criteria which I didn't want to do.

I don't disagree with your points. I am just trying to give you an explanation as to why I didn't include those points in the article. The other consideration is that sometimes some of the details are too complex for an article but are better left as a post. In any event, thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated. Incidentally, I tried to take into account, some of the posts that were made in the other thread on the draft RFP; insights from members of this forum are very much appreciated when writing an article.
« Last Edit: 08/05/2013 07:57 pm by yg1968 »

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #7 on: 08/05/2013 08:25 pm »
Nicely done yg! :) I guess we’ll have to stay tuned to see who gets to “capture the flag”...
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Offline Alpha Control

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #8 on: 08/05/2013 09:09 pm »
And here all along I thought "yg" stood for "young guy", who was born in 1968! 

Just shows that you can't always assume what a person's username means.  :)

Very nice article, Yves.
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Offline Lobo

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #9 on: 08/05/2013 11:30 pm »
I'm thinking if Dreamchaser gets looking possibly like the downselect survivor, they should take a page out of Boeing's book. 
Dream chaser launching on a man-rated F9R (not Grasshopper) from LC-39A baby!

:-)

Keep LC-40 from needing to add a whole new crew access tower, as I think the plan for LC-39A is to have one there, whether they level the tower and build a new one, or modify the existing tower. 

Supposedly DC, like CST-100 can launch from multiple LV's. 

But not sure if SNC could switch horses like that.  Are they already paying ULA to man-rate Atlas V? (and develp the 2-engine Centaur?)  Is that something that even could or would be changed?

Just wondering about SpaceX's interest in 39A and how it could, depending on SpaceX's plans, already have all the crew access hardware you need.  Just need some modifications.
If SNC would need to pay ULA to add crew access to LC-40, as well as man-rate the Atlas, and SpaceX's commercial crew offering is not selected, it might be an interesting switch.
SpaceX wouldn't get commercial crew, but they would still get the launch service, and would still develop Dragonrider as the commercial cargo vehicle, so they'd have it anyway. 




Offline joek

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #10 on: 08/06/2013 01:22 am »
Another great article yg1968, I think you struck a good balance in the level of detail.

Offline yg1968

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #11 on: 08/06/2013 02:22 am »
Another great article yg1968, I think you struck a good balance in the level of detail.

Thanks joek, the discussions on the draft CCtCap RFP that we had in the other thread was helpful in figuring out what were some of the more important points that were worth highlighting in the article.
« Last Edit: 08/06/2013 02:22 am by yg1968 »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #12 on: 08/08/2013 05:37 pm »
Great article there, Yves.

I spent the last hour reviewing the other thread and the vast amount of information there.

This is the best piece of info that I found:

Another item of interest in the draft RFP that could impact the price of a post certification missions is the presence of commercial passengers or of non-NASA cargo or payloads.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Lurker Steve

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #13 on: 08/08/2013 05:46 pm »
I saw that clause about commercial passengers.

It says that NASA must be reimbursed for any non-NASA visitors to the ISS. I wonder what those reimbursement rates will be ? NASA could price those seats in the 75-100 million range, which would basically kill any thought of carrying any non-NASA passengers on the flight.

Offline newpylong

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #14 on: 08/08/2013 06:13 pm »
F9-R most likely not enough payload capacity for DC.



I'm thinking if Dreamchaser gets looking possibly like the downselect survivor, they should take a page out of Boeing's book. 
Dream chaser launching on a man-rated F9R (not Grasshopper) from LC-39A baby!



« Last Edit: 08/08/2013 06:13 pm by newpylong »

Offline Lurker Steve

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #15 on: 08/08/2013 06:28 pm »
F9-R most likely not enough payload capacity for DC.



I'm thinking if Dreamchaser gets looking possibly like the downselect survivor, they should take a page out of Boeing's book. 
Dream chaser launching on a man-rated F9R (not Grasshopper) from LC-39A baby!




Then it won't work for cst-100 either.

Offline JBF

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #16 on: 08/08/2013 06:37 pm »
F9-R most likely not enough payload capacity for DC.



I'm thinking if Dreamchaser gets looking possibly like the downselect survivor, they should take a page out of Boeing's book. 
Dream chaser launching on a man-rated F9R (not Grasshopper) from LC-39A baby!




Then it won't work for cst-100 either.

Please don't use the F9R moniker for standard F9v1.1 flights. You will just confuse everyone.
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Offline newpylong

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #17 on: 08/08/2013 07:53 pm »
F9-R most likely not enough payload capacity for DC.



I'm thinking if Dreamchaser gets looking possibly like the downselect survivor, they should take a page out of Boeing's book. 
Dream chaser launching on a man-rated F9R (not Grasshopper) from LC-39A baby!




Then it won't work for cst-100 either.

Right, it's supposed to be even heavier.

Offline Lars_J

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #18 on: 08/08/2013 08:00 pm »
You're missing the point... F9-R in expendable form (what we call the v1.1) should be able to lift either DC or CST-100. (13,150kg to LEO)

When you write F9R people assume the reusable form, which is commonly assumed to have roughly half the payload.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2013 08:08 pm by Lars_J »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: NASA Outlines its Plans for Commercial Crew Certification
« Reply #19 on: 08/08/2013 08:02 pm »
F9-R most likely not enough payload capacity for DC.



I'm thinking if Dreamchaser gets looking possibly like the downselect survivor, they should take a page out of Boeing's book. 
Dream chaser launching on a man-rated F9R (not Grasshopper) from LC-39A baby!




Then it won't work for cst-100 either.

Please don't use the F9R moniker for standard F9v1.1 flights. You will just confuse everyone.
The assumption was that it'd be the partially reusable F9R, not the fully expendable F9v1.1, which can easily put either Dreamchaser or CST-100 in orbit (expendable v1.1 can do almost 16 metric tons to LEO according to: http://elvperf.ksc.nasa.gov/elvMap/elvMap.ui.PerfQuery0?ReqType=Query&ContSource=-5&OrbitType=LEO&Incl=28&Contract=2&Vehicles=4&Drop1=Apogee&Entry1=400 ).
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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