For the first time in the agency’s history, NASA has initiated a new effort to enable NASA personnel to fly on future commercial suborbital spaceflights. [...] Now the Suborbital Crew (SubC) office within NASA’s Commercial Crew Program will lay the groundwork for flying NASA personnel on commercial suborbital space transportation systems. The goal of the SubC office is to perform a system qualification, or safety assessment, to enable NASA astronauts, principal investigators and other NASA personnel to take advantage of these unique capabilities. Following the qualification, NASA plans to purchase seats on commercial suborbital space transportation systems for NASA use.“We’ve seen how industry can develop innovative crew transportation systems that meet NASA’s safety requirements and standards,” said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters. “Now we’ll be looking at a new way of enabling NASA personnel to fly on commercial suborbital space systems by considering factors such as flight experience and flight history.”
At #NSRC2023, Chris Gerace, manager of NASA's Suborbital Crew (SubC) program, says the name is a bit of a misnomer: looking at flying NASA civil servants in general on commercial suborbital vehicles now, not necessarily astronauts. See it as a way to foster human spaceflight.He says SubC is working with Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic on "deep dives", studying New Shepard's launch escape system and SpaceShipTwo's propulsion system. Those studies will continue through this year and into early 2024. #NSRC2023Gerace: we will not have a NASA certification process for flying people on commercial suborbital vehicles but instead evaluate companies' "safety case" including their own internal certification as well as their safety culture. #NSRC2023
