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I mean, he's right. AFAIK SpaceX dropped whatever plans they had to get the F9H man-rated

taylortbb 6y ago
That's less of a "FH can't be human-rated" and more of a "there's not point in human-rating FH right now". FH is heavily derived from the human-rated F9, but what capsule would fly on FH? Crew Dragon flies fine on F9, and NASA isn't looking to fly Orion on FH. If the latter part changed I'm sure SpaceX would undertake the human rating.
- dlgeek 6y ago
  F9 can't fly crew dragon into a lunar orbit though, can it? I thought you need a FH class booster for that.
  - spiritplumber 6y ago
    You could launch a separate kicker on a different F9, but that may be my KSP/BARIS talking.
avmich 6y ago
To me having a particularly heavy rocket to be man-rated is like stepping into Shuttle problems again. That is, trying to make a system both very safe and having a large mass payloads. Why to have a larger than necessary rocket, which has additional problems with just getting stuff to orbit - FH is more complex than F9 - to carry humans, who requires extra care? Much better, from the point of safety, is to have a moderate-sized launcher human rated and specializing in bringing humans safely to orbit. After that it's much safer to use whatever means of travel are brought to space by any other launchers, those with focus on economy and less on safety. A counterargument is usually a variation of "it's very expensive", but that's just, roughly, because human life is valued cheap enough to allow for suboptimal choices.
- njarboe 6y ago
  The new SpaceX Starship super heavy rocket will be the biggest rocket ever built and will carry humans. It probably won't get "man-rated" by NASA before the first humans start going up in it, but I don't know about the legal details of that possibility. SpaceX has a much high risk tolerance than NASA.
chriswarbo 6y ago
Falcon Heavy took longer than expected, but still managed to launch years ago. The only reason they're not bothering to get it human-rated is that they've switched all focus to Starship. This has actually caused some interesting dynamics: - To get F9 human-rated, SpaceX had to perform many successful launches using the same configuration. - Keeping the same configuration essentially froze any further development of F9. - Development focus switched to a green-field successor, the BFR/Starship. - Announcement of BFR/Starship caused an Osborne Effect for Falcon Heavy: anyone considering it (even SpaceX themselves!) would be better off waiting to see if Starship works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect - This stifled Falcon Heavy's market (which was already questionable/nascent), resulting in very few launches - Having very few launches makes it hard to human-rate Falcon Heavy (in any case, SpaceX have bet the house on Starship)
bryanlarsen 6y ago
F9H would be a heck of a lot safer to fly humans on than SLS will be. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancellation-too-good/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancell...

That's less of a "FH can't be human-rated" and more of a "there's not point in human-rating FH right now". FH is heavily derived from the human-rated F9, but what capsule would fly on FH? Crew Dragon flies fine on F9, and NASA isn't looking to fly Orion on FH. If the latter part changed I'm sure SpaceX would undertake the human rating.

dlgeek 6y ago
F9 can't fly crew dragon into a lunar orbit though, can it? I thought you need a FH class booster for that.
- spiritplumber 6y ago
  You could launch a separate kicker on a different F9, but that may be my KSP/BARIS talking.

avmich 6y ago

To me having a particularly heavy rocket to be man-rated is like stepping into Shuttle problems again. That is, trying to make a system both very safe and having a large mass payloads. Why to have a larger than necessary rocket, which has additional problems with just getting stuff to orbit - FH is more complex than F9 - to carry humans, who requires extra care? Much better, from the point of safety, is to have a moderate-sized launcher human rated and specializing in bringing humans safely to orbit. After that it's much safer to use whatever means of travel are brought to space by any other launchers, those with focus on economy and less on safety. A counterargument is usually a variation of "it's very expensive", but that's just, roughly, because human life is valued cheap enough to allow for suboptimal choices.

njarboe 6y ago
The new SpaceX Starship super heavy rocket will be the biggest rocket ever built and will carry humans. It probably won't get "man-rated" by NASA before the first humans start going up in it, but I don't know about the legal details of that possibility. SpaceX has a much high risk tolerance than NASA.

chriswarbo 6y ago

Falcon Heavy took longer than expected, but still managed to launch years ago. The only reason they're not bothering to get it human-rated is that they've switched all focus to Starship. This has actually caused some interesting dynamics: - To get F9 human-rated, SpaceX had to perform many successful launches using the same configuration. - Keeping the same configuration essentially froze any further development of F9. - Development focus switched to a green-field successor, the BFR/Starship. - Announcement of BFR/Starship caused an Osborne Effect for Falcon Heavy: anyone considering it (even SpaceX themselves!) would be better off waiting to see if Starship works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect - This stifled Falcon Heavy's market (which was already questionable/nascent), resulting in very few launches - Having very few launches makes it hard to human-rate Falcon Heavy (in any case, SpaceX have bet the house on Starship)

bryanlarsen 6y ago

F9H would be a heck of a lot safer to fly humans on than SLS will be. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancellation-too-good/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancell...