NASA Commercial Crew (CCtCap) test milestones

Yeah, this is just plain "living in ones' own bubble" now. The entire reason that FH has been delayed is down to three factors:

a) The technology that makes FH a thing, the Falcon-9, has seen several evolutions in both ecosystem and iteration, both of which make FH a better and more robust machine overall;

b) An abundance of caution and careful planning on SpaceX's part -- not only based upon lessons learned from Falcon-9 but also because they want zero failures on all components whenever and however possible and are going to extraordinary lengths toward that end;

c) The rather annoying and sometimes unreasonable USAF and NASA parameters and requirements that seem to change or be modified whenever it suits those parties' interests ... and this item really tends to hold up the show more than a) and b). In some cases these parameters and requirements have come at times when SpaceX were nearly ready to ship hardware for testing and certification. I'm sure we remember the one or two instances quite well that nearly got SpaceX taken out of the running to launch NRO payloads such as "vertical payload loading", and so forth, when it was rather unreasonable (and costly for SpaceX) to perform such mating and loading procedures back then.

So yeah. More instances of NASA, MSFC and FAA people living in their own world. /sigh

Yep. It's purely political, and not out of necessity. Pet projects for the pork barrel because Washington and the Mil/Gov Contractors said that they needed more money, and only because of that.

And of course SLS will be inherently more unsafe by orders of magnitude -- anything that uses Solids is going to be, simply from the lack of abort options as well as the "things that go big-time kaboom" factor -- but they don't wanna talk about that ...

Oh, and in a sheer display of "galactically stupid", let's put people in an untested vehicle while we're at it. Yep ... Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. Even though that same brain-trust is screaming to anyone that'll listen that SpaceX's vehicle should be delayed (and already has been) because of the risk to human crews, even though SpaceX has gone over and above to ensure those systems are quadruple redundant in safety. Yep. No fault in the logic tree there. It was a bad idea with the Shuttle, and it's a bad idea with SLS/Orion.

Yeah, there's some true politics at work here. If I were SpaceX, I'd be closing up shop and leaving the U.S. market for good, and flying that big fat middle finger as I left telling Uncle Sam to kiss my rear end as I shut the door. That's how truly ###### off I'd be if I were Elon Musk & Co. with the US Government and the whole lot of 'em that have perpetuated this farce. And you know what? I wouldn't blame him at all. With that kind of scratch, SpaceX would already have ITS (BFR and BFS) just about built and we'd be talking about crew rosters and mission sets instead of the complete waste of time and resources that SLS/Orion have turned out being.

Do I want that scenario? SpaceX leaving U.S. soil out of sheer disgust? Of course not. Could it happen? Unlikely to never. But for anything to truly be any different, things in Washington need to change first. And we've really got some entrenched OldSpace there who are paid very well to make sure that things remain as they are.

So, the short answer is OldSpace will make sure that SLS/Orion remains relevant however they can. It'll get built. It'll fly. Hopefully no Astronauts are killed. One thing that is sure to happen -- insane amounts of money are going to be spent, and there's no amount of logic that will prevent it. And the Senator Shelby's and the ULA's and the Boeing's of the world will laugh all the way to the bank about it, while the rest of us "lesser beings" will be left shaking our heads in pure disgust at the whole thing.

Sorry, sorry. Busy time at Univ. The math is making me crazy. 

So after the upgrades/changes to Atlas to make it human rated, will they need to fly 7 flights?

2 hours ago, IsItPluggedIn said:

So after the upgrades/changes to Atlas to make it human rated, will they need to fly 7 flights?

There is a serious concern in NASA and GAO about flying people Atlas V at all. The issue is the RD-180 engine. GAO calls it “a potential safety risk.”

First, whatever insight we have about RD-180 being human rateable comes from the US license to produce it here. That info is somewhat outdated, the US and Russia aren't on the best of terms, the contract limits the infos dissemination, and the license expires in 2022 so absent a new license it's not a long term solution.

Also hurting confidence is the partial RD-180 failure during a launch last year - RD-180 shut down several seconds early and the Centaur upper stage saved the mission with just a few seconds of propellant to spare. 

As such, they can't close 'black zones,' parts of the S1 burn where the crew could be lost.

Second is cost. The head of Boeing's program said 2 years ago Atlas V's cost made their business case hard to close. He flat out stated they were going to talk to SpaceX about flying Starliner on Falcon 9, which has an engine-out capability Atlas V doesn't have, and there were later statements about adding Vulcan to their stable. The working theory has been they'd fly their contracted Atlas V flights then switch to the alternates.

Surprise to no one: ASAP doesn't seem to be impressed with the idea.

http://spacenews.com/safety-panel-raises-concerns-about-crew-on-first-sls-launch/

Safety panel raises concerns about crew on first SLS launch

WASHINGTON  A NASA independent safety committee wants NASA to provide a compelling rationale for putting astronauts on the first flight of the Space Launch System, a proposal NASA is currently studying.

In a statement at the beginning of the Feb. 23 meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), chairwoman Patricia Sanders said that if NASA decides to put a crew on the first SLS/Orion launch, Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), it must demonstrate that there is a good reason to accept the higher risks associated with doing so.

"We strongly advise that NASA carefully and cautiously weigh the value proposition for flying crew on EM-1," she said. "NASA should provide a compelling rationale in terms of benefits gained for accepting additional risk, and fully and transparently acknowledge the tradeoffs being made before deviating from the approach for certifying the Orion/SLS vehicle for manned spaceflight."

"If the benefits warrant the assumption of additional risk, she added, we expect NASA to clearly and openly articulate their decision-making process and rationale."

NASA announced Feb. 15 that it was beginning a study of the potential of adding a crew to EM-1. Under current plans, that mission, scheduled for launch in late 2018, would fly without a crew, with the first crewed flight, EM-2, planned for no earlier than 2021.

That study is in progress and is expected to be completed by late March or early April. Were going back and reevaluating the trades of why we decided what we did regarding not flying a crew on EM-1, said Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems at NASA Headquarters, during a Feb. 23 panel on human spaceflight held by the Royal Aeronautical Society at the British Embassy here. Theres many reason why we decided to do that, a lot of the related to risk posture, and a lot of them related to budget realities.

"Under the current approach, NASA would fly a relatively demanding mission on EM-1 lasting more than 20 days, really pushing the limits of where Orion and SLS can actually perform," Crusan said. "EM-2, with a crew, would be a more conservative mission to test the performance of the life support system. That approach, he said, would be reconsidered if a crew flies on EM-1."
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16) only one currently flying launcher has first stage engine out capability, Falcon 9, and it has been successfully flight proven during an ISS run. The cargo was delivered to ISS in spite of an engine failure, and it arrived early. Can't get more germane than that.

17) only one ISS-bound vehicle has survived a launch vehicle disintegration intact, Dragon, and it survived in spite of not having a launch abort system. That vehicle didn't have parachute software to deploy under such circumstances and was destroyed on impact with the ocean, but now all Dragons do.

I agree we need 2 crew launchers for redundancy, even 3 once New Glenn arrives, but it's certainly be nice if all had the extra margin  engine out provides. 

There's nothing stopping SpaceX from making a crewed flight before the CCtCap milestone test flights, they just won't get milestone credit for it

Yeah, that'd be a sight to behold.

"Well .. now that that's out of the way. No, worked great. Not a problem to be had. What's that? I don't know, you'd have to ask Mr. Musk about an adapter for CST-100. I'm not the one who makes those decisions."

23 minutes ago, DocM said:

There's nothing stopping SpaceX from making a crewed flight before the CCtCap milestone test flights, they just won't get milestone credit for it

Maybe they should do it anyway, just to show NASA and all the other naysayers up. Start Dragon 2's UTP Missions up on SpaceX's dime, take care of that pesky Certification checklist that NASA can't be bothered to get on the ball with on a timely fashion.

Yeah. That's likely the only reason SpaceX hasn't done so already. That and the OldSpace interests in Washington pulling some kind of stunt like "Antitrust" or "Anti-competitive Business Practice" lawsuit.

Commercial Crew demo flight dates

SpaceX-Demo1: uncrewed, November 11-25 2017 (!!)
SpaceX-Demo2: crewed, May 2018 (~30 days)

Boeing-OFT: uncrewed, June 2018 (~30 days)

Boeing-CFT: crewed, August 2018 (14 days)

Commercial Crew services begin late September, 2018

Awesome news!  I'm sure as that date draws closer we'll get information about the full mission itinerary and checklist of things they want to put the Dragon 2 through. Likely it'll be the full monty, starting with the basics (Control, CC-I/O, LS, Diagnostics, etc) ... gonna be mostly for the Engineers and GSS people this time around. If you're a Space Junkie like we are, I know we'll be marathoning the SpaceX streams like it was the Olympics.  

Can't wait.

"Crew Seat Incline CMPLT"?! They needed a milestone for that?! To incline the [expletive] seats in a more-or-less 94~112 degree angle??

......

............

*chortle* .....

OH. And now we see who's really behind the wheel (read: ever-so-slowly turning, groaning, rusted gears), folks. It ain't ULA after all ... but since we already knew that ... yeah. Here's my shocked face. If it works then fine, whatever -- but I really think they're "milking Bessie" at this point. Orion PLUS Starliner?? Ugh. Someone's got their hands in the till. This should have been done already.

And SpaceX have been nothing but underfunded, stonewalled and hampered from the get-go then expected to be professionals, all the while doing platform upgrades, record breaking, trend setting and R&D -- and they're STILL just about ready to fly Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy despite all of it. OldSpace can't even get it together under the best of circumstances ... it really goes to show who needs the political climate to shift favorably and who needs the swift kick in their collective rear end, doesn't it?

*sigh* Senator Shelby and those who think like him need their heads examined for supporting OldSpace like they do. SpaceX and the other NewSpace companies are the future.