NASA OIG Is Investigating Human Rating Requirements

Folks:

A quote from the report:

"NASA must balance its role as a partner of commercial providers with its responsibility to ensure that commercially produced vehicles are safe for NASA astronauts."

Quite a departure from the we run the show, the whole show, and we'll pay whatever it takes to get the job done attitude of NASA in the past when it comes to human space flight.

There's a lot of wiggle room in that statement for OIG/NASA but maybe there's hope.

I think that if NASA gives commercial space more freedom in design that it will lead to better spacecraft and launch vehicles. For one thing the hardware won't be designed by hundreds of departments all over the country sometimes with competing motivations. You end up with something like the Shuttle of ISS where every square inch is just covered with hardware, switches, equipment, wires...

When I look at the pictures of the Dragon capsule from Spacex it's amazing how simple and clean the design looks. The inside volume of the capsule starts out as a clean slate which Spacex can configure for different missions. Because they intend to reuse Dragon almost all the flight systems except the solar panels and radiator are intigrated into the capsule. One advantage to this design is that the reaction control system can be used during re-entry for a more targeted landing.

SpaceDevs Dream Chaser could go a long way to bringing back some NASA glory. It would be a good candidate for Pads 39A and B. We'd get our runway landings and walk abouts back (but no more walking underneath though :( ). If Dream Chaser worked out then a larger orbiter could be built based on the HL-42. This would give NASA combined crew and cargo to orbit. The HL-42 would equal the Shuttle in crew as well as mid-deck and MPLM cargo (Though not at the same time).

If NASA wanted to "Co-opt" a spacecraft then Dream Chaser would be my choice. They could even pawn it off as a "second generation Shuttle". It was their design after all.

tinker

Agree with tinker about the potential for commercial, but the OIG doesn't run the programs.

As Wayne Hale's blog pointed out the other day, when the old guard gets involved, they produce thousands of requirements that basically serve the function of stifling any new ideas and approaches. The same thing was done years ago when management of the research on the ISS was to be turned over to an FFRDC type of operation. The requirements were in the hundreds, and the whole thing collapsed under the weight of the bureaucracy.

Sad, because by continuing to do this (for launch services), we are effectively putting the U.S. out of the business and giving it to Soyuz.

I think its a good report. It really is to the point.

I am glad they were accurate about Constellation succumbing to out of control costs and schedule, although they left out the part about requirements and processes which were also poorly controlled and inconsistent between themselves and between that program and the Vision.

I hope US manned spaceflight can survive; but, we might never recover from the damage that was done by the Constellation program.

Meanwhile, NASA infrastructure rots away with NASA kicking the can down the road.

I guess shopping for new furniture, car, etc. is OK in NASA's world even when the roof is falling in and the foundation is crumbling.

NASA's problems run deeper than many on the outside know.