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Bolden has said a lot of things dismissive of SpaceX, and they haven’t turned out to be very accurate. The Administrator has Congressional political constraints

Bolden has said a lot of things dismissive of SpaceX, and they haven’t turned out to be very accurate. The Administrator has Congressional political constraints and is part of the aerospace old guard that had a sort of learned-helplessness about new aerospace endeavors. Falcon Heavy can absolutely be human rated. There’s also the possibility of LEO rendezvous between a Dragon launched on a Falcon 9 and a filled Falcon Heavy upper stage with a docking port on it.

bryanlarsen 5y ago
Falcon Heavy cannot be human rated under current NASA design guidelines. So NASA would have to change those guidelines to human rate Falcon Heavy. Which they should absolutely do -- being able to closely inspect returned boosters gives far better data than design guidelines based on computer models. That's the plan for Starship. It doesn't follow the NASA man rating design guidelines either, AFAIK. But SpaceX doesn't need NASA human rating to fly non-NASA personnel and have no immediate plans to fly NASA astronauts on Starship. By the time they do compete for a NASA human contract with Starship they expect to have enough flight data to meet NASA's standard of less than 1/500th of a chance of loss of mission using hard test data rather than computer modelling. Even Bolden has changed his tune now that he's retired and doesn't have to answer to Congress. He says that SLS should be cancelled. I wonder if Senator Shelby will change his tune after he retires? Somehow I doubt it.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Can you be more specific about what is strictly outside human rating? Nothing in Starship should be outside of human rating specifications. They have never done those for powered landings but its not outside of scope.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    The most egregious is that Starship doesn't have a full envelope launch escape system.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      Those systems simply don't make sense once you reach a certain scale. There are very few cases in the history of space flight where these escape systems have saved anybody. Depending on where in the flight profile the main engines of the second stage could be uses as an escape system.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  > * Falcon Heavy cannot be human rated under current NASA design guidelines. * Just repeating a false statement doesn’t make it true.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

Falcon Heavy cannot be human rated under current NASA design guidelines. So NASA would have to change those guidelines to human rate Falcon Heavy. Which they should absolutely do -- being able to closely inspect returned boosters gives far better data than design guidelines based on computer models. That's the plan for Starship. It doesn't follow the NASA man rating design guidelines either, AFAIK. But SpaceX doesn't need NASA human rating to fly non-NASA personnel and have no immediate plans to fly NASA astronauts on Starship. By the time they do compete for a NASA human contract with Starship they expect to have enough flight data to meet NASA's standard of less than 1/500th of a chance of loss of mission using hard test data rather than computer modelling. Even Bolden has changed his tune now that he's retired and doesn't have to answer to Congress. He says that SLS should be cancelled. I wonder if Senator Shelby will change his tune after he retires? Somehow I doubt it.

panick21_ 5y ago
Can you be more specific about what is strictly outside human rating? Nothing in Starship should be outside of human rating specifications. They have never done those for powered landings but its not outside of scope.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  The most egregious is that Starship doesn't have a full envelope launch escape system.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Those systems simply don't make sense once you reach a certain scale. There are very few cases in the history of space flight where these escape systems have saved anybody. Depending on where in the flight profile the main engines of the second stage could be uses as an escape system.
Robotbeat 5y ago
> * Falcon Heavy cannot be human rated under current NASA design guidelines. * Just repeating a false statement doesn’t make it true.