Author Topic: Commercial Crew providers making "significant progress" toward first flights  (Read 52576 times)

Offline Hog

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NASA has become so "risk adverse", they will do anything to hold up US crewed flight.  I still remember the first privately funded seats to the the ISS. They called them "space tourists" and bad mouthed them. Only NASA space professionals, etc can go into space. It did not matter they had months of training as flight engineers.

We are going to lose people in space and nothing we do will avoid this fact. NASA needs to get out of the way of crewed flight. I do not see them as the solution but the problem. Congress has to get out of designing spacecraft. They can only think of providing pork for their own districts. As for Orion it should be canceled as a waste of taxpayer funds. It is obsolete before its first flight.

I see the private companies leading us into crewed missions. SpaceX will have a colony set up on Mars before the first NASA Mars flight. It is the same for the other companies. Again we will lose people but life is dangerous even if it is just driving to the supermarket.
NASA has become averse to adverse missions.   I remember the days of STS that sent human on test flights with pressure suits and ejection seats and operational missions with no chance of crew escape while powered.  To now, where we wont send a crew on first flight, even with the vehicle having a complete crew escape system.

We need to attempt to preserve the safety of space crews. But our goals in space should not be diluted due to the inability to stomach the mere possibility of the loss of human life.  Great rewards often REQUIRE great risk, the key is to mitigate as much risk as possible, while still meeting mission requirements.

Maybe its the public that is too blame?  Do we tell the politicians that it's unacceptable for Astronauts to die while at work?  IF this is true, perhaps the commercial sector will have the advantage if it is less susceptible to political pressures?
I am not being callous here, I just happen to have a background that has provided me with the gumption to understand that sometimes mission success may cost men and women their lives.   I'd bet that people with any history of being a service member including the Astronauts themselves understand this as well.  Let's support NASA and its workers, lets support their unique understanding and skill sets and not be impediments. 
Paul

Offline woods170

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NASA has become so "risk adverse", they will do anything to hold up US crewed flight.  I still remember the first privately funded seats to the the ISS. They called them "space tourists" and bad mouthed them. Only NASA space professionals, etc can go into space. It did not matter they had months of training as flight engineers.

We are going to lose people in space and nothing we do will avoid this fact. NASA needs to get out of the way of crewed flight. I do not see them as the solution but the problem. Congress has to get out of designing spacecraft. They can only think of providing pork for their own districts. As for Orion it should be canceled as a waste of taxpayer funds. It is obsolete before its first flight.

I see the private companies leading us into crewed missions. SpaceX will have a colony set up on Mars before the first NASA Mars flight. It is the same for the other companies. Again we will lose people but life is dangerous even if it is just driving to the supermarket.
NASA has become averse to adverse missions.   I remember the days of STS that sent human on test flights with pressure suits and ejection seats and operational missions with no chance of crew escape while powered.  To now, where we wont send a crew on first flight, even with the vehicle having a complete crew escape system.

We need to attempt to preserve the safety of space crews. But our goals in space should not be diluted due to the inability to stomach the mere possibility of the loss of human life.  Great rewards often REQUIRE great risk, the key is to mitigate as much risk as possible, while still meeting mission requirements.

Maybe its the public that is too blame?  Do we tell the politicians that it's unacceptable for Astronauts to die while at work?  IF this is true, perhaps the commercial sector will have the advantage if it is less susceptible to political pressures?
I am not being callous here, I just happen to have a background that has provided me with the gumption to understand that sometimes mission success may cost men and women their lives.   I'd bet that people with any history of being a service member including the Astronauts themselves understand this as well.  Let's support NASA and its workers, lets support their unique understanding and skill sets and not be impediments. 
Every US manned spacecraft was launched unmanned at least once. Space shuttle has been the only exception. CCP and Orion are no exceptions however and follow suit in a half- century long tradition.
« Last Edit: 07/23/2017 12:45 pm by woods170 »

Online laszlo

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If "the NASA way" really is holding things back, all someone has to do is demonstrate that by launching a rapid series of crewed orbital flights with volunteers for potentially one-way trips and show that all the concerns are false. Remove all the restrictions, launch on used boosters, land propulsively, launch and re-launch as quickly as possible. A couple of dozen successful flights in a row before NASA's project even gets to the ISS the first time would show the world that the SpaceX fan club is right and that NASA is a dinosaur that's getting in the way and we could then move on to the Way Things Should Be.

SpaceX won't do this because no one is paying them to, so how about a kickstarter campaign to fund this series of demo flights? The crews, of course, would be volunteers from the folks who hang around here and think that there's no reason to proceed with engineering rigor.

This suggestion, silly as it sounds, is simply the distillation to essentials of a lot of the arguments that have showed up here, many in this thread. People who rail against Lego Rocket Engineering seem to have no difficulty with Lego Rocket Safety. I don't know if it's because they've not taken enough statistics classes, never been in a truly risky situation, or what. But if they want to get into space and damn the risks, just give SpaceX the cash and there will be no problem.



Offline Ike17055

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NASA has become so "risk adverse", they will do anything to hold up US crewed flight.  I still remember the first privately funded seats to the the ISS. They called them "space tourists" and bad mouthed them. Only NASA space professionals, etc can go into space. It did not matter they had months of training as flight engineers.

We are going to lose people in space and nothing we do will avoid this fact. NASA needs to get out of the way of crewed flight. I do not see them as the solution but the problem. Congress has to get out of designing spacecraft. They can only think of providing pork for their own districts. As for Orion it should be canceled as a waste of taxpayer funds. It is obsolete before its first flight.

I see the private companies leading us into crewed missions. SpaceX will have a colony set up on Mars before the first NASA Mars flight. It is the same for the other companies. Again we will lose people but life is dangerous even if it is just driving to the supermarket.
NASA has become averse to adverse missions.   I remember the days of STS that sent human on test flights with pressure suits and ejection seats and operational missions with no chance of crew escape while powered.  To now, where we wont send a crew on first flight, even with the vehicle having a complete crew escape system.

We need to attempt to preserve the safety of space crews. But our goals in space should not be diluted due to the inability to stomach the mere possibility of the loss of human life.  Great rewards often REQUIRE great risk, the key is to mitigate as much risk as possible, while still meeting mission requirements.

Maybe its the public that is too blame?  Do we tell the politicians that it's unacceptable for Astronauts to die while at work?  IF this is true, perhaps the commercial sector will have the advantage if it is less susceptible to political pressures?
I am not being callous here, I just happen to have a background that has provided me with the gumption to understand that sometimes mission success may cost men and women their lives.   I'd bet that people with any history of being a service member including the Astronauts themselves understand this as well.  Let's support NASA and its workers, lets support their unique understanding and skill sets and not be impediments.

Taking shortcuts is the fastest way to get people killed -- and for no reason other than space enthusiast impatience.  Getting people killed is also the fastest way to losing public support, and public funding, resulting in program cancellations. 

Offline woods170

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NASA has become so "risk adverse", they will do anything to hold up US crewed flight.  I still remember the first privately funded seats to the the ISS. They called them "space tourists" and bad mouthed them. Only NASA space professionals, etc can go into space. It did not matter they had months of training as flight engineers.

We are going to lose people in space and nothing we do will avoid this fact. NASA needs to get out of the way of crewed flight. I do not see them as the solution but the problem. Congress has to get out of designing spacecraft. They can only think of providing pork for their own districts. As for Orion it should be canceled as a waste of taxpayer funds. It is obsolete before its first flight.

I see the private companies leading us into crewed missions. SpaceX will have a colony set up on Mars before the first NASA Mars flight. It is the same for the other companies. Again we will lose people but life is dangerous even if it is just driving to the supermarket.
NASA has become averse to adverse missions.   I remember the days of STS that sent human on test flights with pressure suits and ejection seats and operational missions with no chance of crew escape while powered.  To now, where we wont send a crew on first flight, even with the vehicle having a complete crew escape system.

We need to attempt to preserve the safety of space crews. But our goals in space should not be diluted due to the inability to stomach the mere possibility of the loss of human life.  Great rewards often REQUIRE great risk, the key is to mitigate as much risk as possible, while still meeting mission requirements.

Maybe its the public that is too blame?  Do we tell the politicians that it's unacceptable for Astronauts to die while at work?  IF this is true, perhaps the commercial sector will have the advantage if it is less susceptible to political pressures?
I am not being callous here, I just happen to have a background that has provided me with the gumption to understand that sometimes mission success may cost men and women their lives.   I'd bet that people with any history of being a service member including the Astronauts themselves understand this as well.  Let's support NASA and its workers, lets support their unique understanding and skill sets and not be impediments.

Taking shortcuts is the fastest way to get people killed -- and for no reason other than space enthusiast impatience.  Getting people killed is also the fastest way to losing public support, and public funding, resulting in program cancellations. 
Despite taking shortcuts and getting people killed (twice! ) the space shuttle enjoyed broad public support until the very end. So where does that leave your assumption?
« Last Edit: 07/23/2017 07:16 pm by woods170 »

Offline rayleighscatter

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Despite taking shortcuts and getting people killed (twice! ) the space shuttle enjoyed broad public support until the very end. So where does that leave your assumption?

So you either need safety or broad public support.

Lacking any broad public support for commercial crew NASA has to fall back on safety.

Offline A_M_Swallow

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The SpaceX Falcon 1 only reached LEO on the fourth attempt. The Falcon 9R needed several goes before it could land on the barge. Do not put people in the spacecraft until the test dummies return safely. You can take the debugging stage out of the plans but not out of real life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

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