I'm sorry gaetanomarano, your 'what-if, what-if, what-if' scenarios simply do not stand up to simple scrutiny. What if a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man walks out of the Atlantic at KSC and lifts the CEV off the pad and snaps it in two?<br /><br />At some point you have to ascribe a high level of competence and expertise to the designers, builders and operators of the CEV. Moreover, you can <b>only</b> take history as your guide as to how a new vehicle might perform. All things considered, the STS has performed extremely well given it's complexity. I'm not convinced that whatever system followed Apollo would have had any better operational record than Shuttle, given everything that Shuttle has accomplished.<br /><br />Many of these supposed sensor-warnings don't occur now on the much more complicated Shuttle, and I see no reason to believe Mission Control is going to have red lights coming out the waazoo on this new vehicle. These people know how to put together propulsion sub-systems and navagation sub-systems and environmental sub-systems, etc, etc. My expectation is that this new vehicle <b>will</b> be simpler, safer and more reliable than anything that has gone before it.<br /><br /><b>Annnnnd</b>, my expectation is that it will have an unprecedented level of redundency built into the system to cover for all reasonable contingencies. Life is risk, gaetanomarano. The CEV looks to cover all reasonably anticipated ones. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em><font size="2" color="#ff0000">Who is this superhero? Henry, the mild-mannered janitor ... could be!</font></em></p><p><em><font size="2">-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</font></em></p><p><font size="5">Bring Back The Black!</font></p> </div>