His testimony goes on with:<br /><br />"Logically, therefore, launch system reliability is treated by all parties as a priority of the highest order, irrespective of the nature of the payload, manned or unmanned.� While there is no EELV flight experience as yet, these modern versions of the Atlas and Delta should be as inherently reliable as their predecessors.� Their specified design reliability is 98%, a value typical of that demonstrated by the best expendable vehicles.� If this is achieved, and I believe that it will be, and given a separate escape system with an assumed reliability of even 90%, the fatal accident rate would be 1 in 500 launches, substantially better than for the Shuttle.� Thus, I believe that launching OSP on an expendable vehicle would pose no greater risk � and quite likely somewhat less risk � for human spaceflight than is already accepted for the Shuttle."<br /><br />His point is launching vehicle safety for the OSP. And its a good point that Delta and Atlas have a proven record of safety and no special modifications are necessary for modern launch vehicles to launch humans. But he also said that there is no record for EELV flights, but assumes that EELV will have a similar record as that of Atlas and Delta.<br /><br />Now we have the CEV Orion capsule and service module.<br /><br />So how did we get from there to here? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>