Astronaut Office Thoughts on Going Commercial

"The notion is that an evolvable shuttle-derived HLV could begin with a core that might be an in-line configuration of 4-segment SSRBs, coupled to an ET-sized core segment (strengthened and with a boat-tail at the bottom holding SSMEs, and a payload attachment/inter-stage carrying an accelerated Orion with LAS attached) which would become the "government-operated" LEO/ISS support capability, with a target IOC of 2013."

As good a description of DIRECT as one can get w/o using the 'D' word! Let's see. I think 'D' v.1.0 came out in 2006...

Once again the crew office is trying to exert complete and ultimate control over the design. It seems odd that they reference a "rental car" model of operations, because I am pretty sure the renter in that case has no input into the "design" of the available rental cars. You may be able to pick which model you get and maybe the color that is it.

For commercial Taxi service to the ISS the crew needs to realize the vehicle has 4 goals. safely monitor ascent and abort if required, perform rndz with station, sit there fat dumb and happy for 6 months while crew does their ISS job, undock and land. Those are the 4 requirements for Crew taxi service and the crew needs to realize it is a taxi service. when you hail a cab on the streets of NYC what do you look for? valid inspection sticker which says the vehicle is safe to drive and Taxi Medallion which says the operator is competent to get you from point a to point b. you get in the cab tell the driver the destination and have no say on the route he takes or if the seats are leather or where the cup holder is. frankly if SpaceX or others wants to make the crew display inputs 7 buttons (launch, abort, dock, pwr down, pwr up, undock, land) I would be fine with that.

"if SpaceX or others wants to make the crew display inputs 7 buttons (launch, abort, dock, pwr down, pwr up, undock, land) I would be fine with that."

It would seem that this type of vehicle would require a much higher reliability in its components than a human controlled craft. With the lack of history, I don't see that happening any time soon.

At least with current human spacecraft, if you have equipment failures, you can allow some onboard human control of equipment.

HTV, ATV, Progress all deliver cargo to the ISS, these new commercial ventures are doing the same thing with crew. whether the cargo is animate or inanimate shouldn't matter what sort of crew interface there is if the vehicle can handle the failures on it's own. These crew's job is work on the ISS for 6 months, not play Top Gun in space.

Welcome to the new world of manned spaceflight, where the astronauts are just "cargo". Why don't we just send a bunch of monkeys to ISS? Surely they could be trained to handle 7 buttons. It should be 8 though, you forgot the "DIE" button. You obviously have some sort of prejudice against pilots.

I really don't think there is value in denigrating the views of the NASA astronaut office. The lives of the ISS crew -- of whatever nationality -- rest on the safe delivery of crew and resupply cargo and the safe return of crew. The crew delivery and return vehicle must be substantially more sensitive than a cargo vehicle to the limits of the human body. This is true in terms of G-force tolerance (up and down); loiter time capability in orbit before rendezvous and -- in the event of the need for a temporary evacuation of crew from the ISS -- while docked; and, in the amount of time it requires to get a seriously ill crew member to an appropriate medical facility on Earth. The design for crew member engagement with return vehicle operations has to take into account the degraded capacity of the crew after long dwell times in orbit.

I believe the only cargo with that level of sensitivity to the ascent/return conditions are biological specimens and fragile protein crystals.

For ISS missions we don't need to be hiring test pilots for a FD1 rndz and 4 hr undock/landing we need the scientists and principal investigators that are going to be conducting experiments for 6 months. if the taxi vehicle is so complex that it needs dedicated or specially trained pilots then the whole system is broken. If a cargo vehicle can rndz and dock via on board systems and ground control why do I need anything more complex just because I am sending up a crew instead of food supplies?

I don't think human pilots are better or even comparable to autopilots. The days of "Top Gun" flying are surely coming to an end. This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for the astronauts corps. This is also happening in the armed forces, where unmanned aircraft will soon take over all combat operations. UAV are cheaper, disposable and do not place the airmen in harms way.

"whether the cargo is animate or inanimate shouldn't matter what sort of crew interface there is"

Then either the unmanned version has a higher reliability than normal, or the reliability for human flights is less than normal. In which case, the probability of mission failure or loss of life will be higher. That's one way they can cut costs.

"frankly if SpaceX or others wants to make the crew display inputs 7 buttons (launch, abort, dock, pwr down, pwr up, undock, land) I would be fine with that."

Bad bad bad.
Maybe it's the pilot in me, but when things go wrong, and they will, you need to be able to have as many options available to you as possible and then maybe some new ones you invent on the fly, because totally unanticpated issues will arise.

Do not understimate the importance of the pilot mindset when things go wrong. It can mean the difference between life and death.

We are stuck in LEO and ISS for the next few years. I still hope to see astronauts being sent to the Moon, Mars, Phobos and Lagrange spacestations. To do this the Orion will have to be changed from a ISS taxi to a drivable Cislunar transfer vehicle.

In a way, they are just cargo. How piloting do they really do in Soyuz or is it mostly just a ride up there? The X-38/CRV was mostly a close the hatch, push the button, and enjoy the ride ship if I recall. That kind of control can really open up just who and how many can go up.

from an insider's perspective many a meeting has been ground to a halt trying to cater to crew and their needs to play test pilot for a spacecraft that is just to get them from the ground to the docking port and back again. sure the vehicle will be designed for human physical capabilities, but having some fancy display is not required for a taxi mission. If I could take an ATV throw on a life support system that is redundant and a capability to land vs burn up, why would I need any crew interface? between the vehicle and the ground that ship has been shown to be safe enough to not collide with station which is the main thing.

that is what the mission ops team is there for. for any way out failure they are going to have far more insight than what few bits are on a crew display.

The NASA rulebook NPR 8705.2b requires that a pilot be able to take control. Even if the parachutes are controllable.So a pilot is needed.Instead of landing at 200,how about 20 or zero if you pull the lines correctly and land softly on a runway.On approach to ISS an ISS or Dragon crew member can takeover.Download the document at nasa.gov.Great reading.In the back the actual human rating certificate waiting to be signed off.Suitable for printing and display.
Looks like Elon was right on.Dragon will launch within a month.

What would have happened to the Apollo 13 crew if they had not been able to fire the LM descent engine under manual control?

You hate pilots because some of them are very good at what they do, and they get in the way of engineers who are busy designing their dream machines that don't require input from dirty, fussy humans.

No one in their right mind will get into a vehicle that cannot be controlled by one of the passengers. Anyone who signs up for such a thing should immediately be considered a safety hazard and grounded pending a complete psychiatric assessment.

Think of the airline pilots that were able to save many lives when they had to re-invent how to fly the aircraft by operating throttles only when all flight controls were lost.

I believe in simulation it was not even thought possible up until then.

You must leave the human factor in the loop when lives are at risk.

I never said no control, I said minimize inputs to design. and frankly it has been the crew office trying to design their dream machine over the years, from the unnecessary CAU upgrade on shuttle to Orion cockpit and now to whatever they are going to force on the commercial ventures. sure the crew got Apollo 13 vehicle home, it wasn't due to some cool glass cockpit display it was by working with the engineers on the ground to do what was required to get them home with the minimum capability they had left.

again I go back to the rental car analogy the crew started with. the rental agency provides a reasonably equipped car, the driver decides at a maximum which model he wants. he doesn't have the ability to redesign the vehicle, get nit picky with the interior layout or levy requirements on the company for overall vehicle road wordiness that is for State inspection agency (who certifies the vehicle is safe to operate)

Then there are 10's of thousands of people that aren't in their right minds. Airport shuttle trains are automated. There are many conveyances that are not human controlled.

Anyone who doesn't realize this should immediately be considered clueless and banned from making further posts.

We need to get rid of civil service astronauts and commercialize that too. NASA could save billions of dollars per yer because these people add a zero to the cost of everything we do in HSF.

NASA will impose its will on SpaceX and Orbital. I think they will try to accommodate NASA's requests; but in the end, NASA will go the way of the steam locomotive. The old steamers are great to go to look at and ride at a rail museum, but the new diesel engines are much more economical, cleaner, and have better performance.

NASA astronauts will watch as people ride SpaceX Dragons because of some restriction that NASA (and no one else) deems unworthy. I know I am in the minority here but realistically, people will want to fly into space and are willing to accept more of a risk.

VR
RS327

I think some posters here are shortchanging and underestimating the astronauts in the JSC Astronaut Corp. The "pilots" of the first Merchant 7 missions will be made up largely of former JSC alumn, I predict. I doubt any experienced astronaut will want to just keep seats warm at JSC or spending their day hangar talking to schools and biz groups. They're gonna want to kick the tires and light the fires of these new spacecraft, and asap not later.
It will be quite the sight to see!

Again, everyone tries to make up stories to make their point. But, as in most things technical or war planning or others, one has to look at history to help make their decisions.

Here are a few historical items to ponder:

2005 "NASA officials have confirmed that the DART rendezvous spacecraft bumped into its target satellite 760 kilometers above the Earth during an April 15 mission that ended early when the $110 million experimental spacecraft ran out of fuel faster than expected."

1997 "An unmanned cargo vessel smashed into the Russian Mir space station today during a practice docking in the most serious collision ever involving a manned spacecraft"

These are a few of the many incidents which define the need for crew piloting capability when humans are involved.

As for "Airport shuttle trains are automated. There are many conveyances that are not human controlled." This is a simplified comparison that has no real basis. Airport shuttle trains travel along a distinct, physically constrainted system in which stopping and starting are the only decisions to be made (much like an elevator). Even in a Taxi, you have a driver.

"This is also happening in the armed forces, where unmanned aircraft will soon take over all combat operations." None of these systems carry crew. There are no military systems being developed as remotely piloted crew carriers.

Even SpaceShip Two is piloted. Do you really think a tourist is going to get into a vehicle where the developer closes the door on you and says "good luck, see you on the ground?"

I won't get in a taxiwithout a driver, I won't get in a passenger plane without a pilot, why would I get in a spacecraft without knowing that someone has the ability to improve my fate if something goes wrong?

I am really sorry, but this issue with the Astro Office just gets to one of my core gripes with the NASA way.

If the astronauts are so concerned with flight safety, why didn't they do something when foam was coming off the tank. Answer: Because they wouldn't get to fly. They would be making NASA look bad and that would violate an unwritten rule. Their are others.

Next question. What happens to an astronaut if he doesn't like the color of a button on a Spacex control box?

Nothing. He doesn't work for SpaceX. SpaceX works for his boss. But he does get press that spins how important the astronauts opinions are to flight safety.

Sorry. The AO squandered any humanly-endowed moral capital they had when they helped let their bosses play Russian roulette with their own.

This needs to be changed. Along with Possum, I am an advocate of privatizing the astronauts. As long as we are being forced to revisit all of the fundamentals at this juncture, let's get real about the astronauts.

HSF is not about Glory anymore. It's sadly about money. Tight money these days it seems for NASA.

How many Astronauts do we have again? If the people that flew them are going to be out of a job because it's too expensive to fly them then what is the rationale in keeping so many expensive JAFOs around?

I mean expensive due to the costs of their "NASA Way" opinions as "human space flight experts" and the leverage that this image would allow NASA to have over the contractors.

The irony is that this leverage only serves NASA's agenda towards outsiders. It doesn't exist within NASA, i.e., foam sheading.

This would change if the Astronauts weren't sacred government property anymore and were forced to add value to the equation rather than force themselves into being the center of attention.

"There are many conveyances that are not human controlled."

A majority of "conveyances" are human controlled. If you noticed, automobiles on highways are human controlled.

Also, comparing a airport shuttle car to a spacecraft is absurd. In one when it breaks down you get out. In the other, when it breaks down you die.

What is the difference between experimental and commercial aircraft as far as control that the FAA has? As far as SpaceX, if they are successful with the COTS Dragon and make some profit on this that they plow back into creating a manned Dragon, what can the FAA or NASA do to restrict them from flying humans on it if the declare it as "experimental"? What were the restrictions that Burt Rutan had with SpaceShip One? I would think that they would be much less than true commercial.

@Me is right in that there are many transport systems around the world that are fully automated. Indeed, here in Vancouver, the majority of the Olympic crowd were moved around the city by our automated trains. One line was taking 250,000 a day. These are a lot more than airport shuttles. California has BART, etc, etc. These types of systems are deployed around the world.

A large part of spaceflight is totally automated, of course.

However, having control capability is important. I think the important question raised by CB is whether we're in the taxi mode or the rental mode. Indeed, it's nice to see them accept the idea of Commercial Crew and start the next step in thinking.

As they say, ACR is the big issue. If we use LEO taxi services, the ACR is either provided via a second S/C, or the taxi driver stays on-board, or return is totally automated, as in the original CRV.

Obviously a lot of thinking has to be done here. With the Russians, they do have the concept of commercial astronauts - I'm not talking space tourists, but Energiya-supplied crew. Indeed, the US effectively used to have commercially supplied crew, via company-provided MS, pre-Challenger.

The taxi drivers could fly up with the crew and stay for commercially supported research, or they could return (Orion Lite and Dragon support a LOT of crew members), if there are automated-return S/C. But the idea is to develop the technology to develop these options. Humans need to grow scope and capability if we are going to have sustainable HSF.

BTW, in above, I mean commercially-supplied PS, not MS.

As usual on NASAWatch, I see we're knee deep in extreme straw-men (elevators versus Apollo 13 w/out the ground engineers).

Good point!

When Spacex starts flying the Dragon, the pilot wing of the Astronaut Office will defect or not fly at all (at least for a long time). The mission specialist wing won't give a damn and be passengers on the Dragon because, hey, they were passengers on the Shuttle too.

Back in the Mercury days, as legend has it, the astronauts (test pilots all) fought for and won the ability to pilot their spacecraft if need be. The Soyuz uses automated docking but the means and training are there to dock manually. Even the Shuttle has a mostly automated re-entry. But don't worry, there will always be a need for highly skilled professionals in this biz.

If I were going to be an ISS flight engineer would I care how I got there or who was driving? Not really. I'd be going to space !

If you want vision for space exploration put your bets on Elon Musk (he doesn't want your money). His is a single minded vision not clouded by committees, not hampered by "stakeholders" (both monetary and political) and he fully intends to lead the way in making us a "space-faring species" whether you like it or not.

In my humble opinion, we become a space-faring species, soon, or we die... and take all the precious life on this planet with us.

Gaiacide!

Anyone care to guess what that means?

tinker

P.S. Now everybody just stop bickering and lets get the job done!

Or maybe as far as the automated train metaphor goes, we are more like back in the early 70's when they were new. And Boeing was the contractor building the automated people mover in Morgantown, PA.

What I recall from ex-Apollo gray beards was that it wasn't exactly an easy task back in the day.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/morg.htm
Apparently, it went through 3 years of testing before it was opened. Lots of political issues also.

Started at $15M-$20M, ended at $130M and took 10 years.
http://www.cities21.org/morgantown_TRB_111504.pdf

But: it eventually worked, and is still in use today.

Yup, in some sense, that's what this new budget, and adult approach, concentrates on. We need to move from folks being excited by riding into space, to being excited by being and working in space. It is time for us to grow up, and start climbing out of the cradle. In the future, astronauts will worry about how they get into LEO as much as they worry about how they take a plane flight to KSC, for their launch, right now. Exploration is in space and we need NASA to focus on how to transport us quickly and sustainably in space, and not to it.

Never ceases to amaze me at the hatred and disrespect some engineers have for the people who actually use their products. These people are your customers and you should be listening to their input. If some commercial space companies don't want to work with NASA at meeting their needs they are free to go find other customers for their product. Personally I thnk this document is a good step forward. It doesn't say how to do things, just what the capabilities that are required.

I would care how I got there because I want to make sure I get there and not die in route. To be reassured of that fact I want someone who has done HSF before to look at the design and the ops concepts and tell me how safe the vehicle is so I can decide if the risk is worth it. Isn't the model for governement contract to purchase services that the contracting organization release the requirements of the contract, companies bid the work, and the governement picks the company that best meets its requirements? I don't see anything different here.

The differnece between experiemental and commercial or private aircraft is in how they obtain their airworthiness certificate. For experimental vehicles their is basically little to no effort on the part of the government to verify that the vehicle is safe to operate. Basically their is the concept of informed consent, i.e. as some one riding in said vehicle you have done you own due diligence to ensure the vehicle design and operations are safe and the government takes no position in that regard. All commercial spacecraft are considered experimental, at the request of the commercial spaceflight industry who lobbied the FAA hard for that designation. this saves them money because they don't have to do teh extensive testing that normal certification requires and they are also insulated from any liability for bad engineering or operation decisions because you knowingly agreed to fly on the vehicle with whatever flaws it had. I think it is debatable that it is appropriate to use the experimental designation for vehicles that are designed to carry paying customers.

The "government model" for procuring human rated spacecraft has been broken for decades. The Shuttle is an Elephant built by committee that after thirty years is still classified as experimental.

Government tells the companies what they want, makes them compete for what they want (the companies spending millions or billions in the process), then they pick one design (usually for political reasons not because it was the best design), then they nit pick the companies that "wins", then they change the game on those companies... then they wonder why their "product" is overpriced and under capacity! Tell me I'm wrong.

Sticking to the topic of this thread, it seems that the Astronaut Office has bought into the "government way" of doing things. That's what I take away from reading their "manifesto". Saying that, I realize that it was written by only a few people and does not reflect the views of most astronauts, whom I've admired, worshiped and shed tears for since Mercury.

"It's a new dawn... (Grace Slick at Woodstock)

tinker

I usually read NASA Watch but have never posted but I had to chime in here.

Peggy's paper here is a very level-headed, non-emotional response to a pending situation/environment. As the chief of the astronaut core it is her duty to make sure she offers her organizations inputs into this future development and she is right on target with her inputs from their perspective and it was done in an extremely professional manner (as opposed to some of the kicking and whining coming from other organizations who are only soliciting emotional responses against any change).

I have worked on design and build of space vehicles and I have worked hand-in-hand with operations and the crew office and I know that both sides have tendencies to work in a vacuum if given the opportunity. The best vehicle will be a result of these two groups getting together at the table. There are perspectives that each side has that the other needs. You just need to make sure that the extremes of either side don't dominate the situation. And guess what, pilots are always involved in the design of airplanes (military and commercial), car companies have consumer test groups, etc ....

Then I must assume that you think the governement model for major aerospace or military programs is broken as well since DOD uses the exact same process or is it that NASA just does it poorly?