D
DarkenedOne
Guest
Recently there has been a great deal of fuss about NASA's requirements for commercial crew vehicles. Many people justifiably are worried that the many of the same problems with HSF under NASA will erase the benefits of private HSF, particularly the innovation and the cost.
The problem lies in the unique environment that HSF operates in. In other industries such as the airline business, the car business, and especially the software industry the costs of experimentation are not that high. Cars and airplanes for example are able to log thousands of hours over hundreds of test runs long before they ever get into wide scale use. Unfortunately rockets on the other hand are very expensive, thus it is impractical for new rockets to be tested hundreds of times before they are put into service. Of course the components of the rockets can be throughly tested individually, but ultimately testing of the entire system is very limited.
The solution to this problem is simple. The fact of the matter is that human spaceflight is not very different from our unmanned satellite launchers and is even less different then cargo carriers. Therefore if you design your rockets with the intention of putting human on them you effectively are able to use the unmanned launches of satellites as tests for your human-rated vehicles. Of course this leaves the actual human spacecraft itself, however if you do cargo services like those for the ISS based on your human spacecraft you can test this component as well.
Using the same hardware for both manned and unmanned launches reduces the costs of both as greater production largely justifies more automation and cost-effective production processes. Every rocket system from the Falcon 9, to the EELVs, to even the space shuttle gets cheaper per launch as the number of launchers go up do to the fact that in the rocket business the fixed costs of factories, launch pads, infrastructure, and highly trained personal are usually significantly higher than the incremental costs consisting of mostly the material and fuel costs.
This approach has been used by every space agency with the exception of NASA when conducting HSF. The Soyuz evolved from an unmanned launcher to manned launcher with a few modifications. At the same time the Progress resupply spacecraft is largely based on the same components as the manned Soyuz spacecraft. The same goes for the Chinese with their Shenzhou human spacecraft which launches on an manned rated version of their Long March 2E unmanned rocket. Same goes for the Europeans who are considering a manned launcher based on the Ariane V rocket and their ATV.
Now going back to commercial crew my point is that you can use a similar approach to insure that commercial launchers are safe. SpaceX is doing this with their Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft. By the time they put humans into their Dragon spacecraft it will have already had extensive experience as a cargo carrier for the Space Station. There is no need for strict regulations and requirements when spacecraft are sufficiently tested as a cargo carrier.
The problem lies in the unique environment that HSF operates in. In other industries such as the airline business, the car business, and especially the software industry the costs of experimentation are not that high. Cars and airplanes for example are able to log thousands of hours over hundreds of test runs long before they ever get into wide scale use. Unfortunately rockets on the other hand are very expensive, thus it is impractical for new rockets to be tested hundreds of times before they are put into service. Of course the components of the rockets can be throughly tested individually, but ultimately testing of the entire system is very limited.
The solution to this problem is simple. The fact of the matter is that human spaceflight is not very different from our unmanned satellite launchers and is even less different then cargo carriers. Therefore if you design your rockets with the intention of putting human on them you effectively are able to use the unmanned launches of satellites as tests for your human-rated vehicles. Of course this leaves the actual human spacecraft itself, however if you do cargo services like those for the ISS based on your human spacecraft you can test this component as well.
Using the same hardware for both manned and unmanned launches reduces the costs of both as greater production largely justifies more automation and cost-effective production processes. Every rocket system from the Falcon 9, to the EELVs, to even the space shuttle gets cheaper per launch as the number of launchers go up do to the fact that in the rocket business the fixed costs of factories, launch pads, infrastructure, and highly trained personal are usually significantly higher than the incremental costs consisting of mostly the material and fuel costs.
This approach has been used by every space agency with the exception of NASA when conducting HSF. The Soyuz evolved from an unmanned launcher to manned launcher with a few modifications. At the same time the Progress resupply spacecraft is largely based on the same components as the manned Soyuz spacecraft. The same goes for the Chinese with their Shenzhou human spacecraft which launches on an manned rated version of their Long March 2E unmanned rocket. Same goes for the Europeans who are considering a manned launcher based on the Ariane V rocket and their ATV.
Now going back to commercial crew my point is that you can use a similar approach to insure that commercial launchers are safe. SpaceX is doing this with their Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft. By the time they put humans into their Dragon spacecraft it will have already had extensive experience as a cargo carrier for the Space Station. There is no need for strict regulations and requirements when spacecraft are sufficiently tested as a cargo carrier.