This report by The Aerospace Corporation shows the frequently unquestioned assumptions currently crippling US human spaceflight.
The US currently has two operational unmanned launchers capable of carrying a substantial manned spacecraft: Delta IV and Atlas V. The Delta IV family has failed to substantially complete one mission out of ten launches, Atlas V one out of fourteen. The Saturn V that carried the manned capsules of the Apollo program had one clear failure out of thirteen launches with Apollo 6, and a close call with Apollo 13 which almost failed to reach orbit before the famous crisis en route to the moon.
Both launchers are relatively new, and their record should improve over time. More mature unmanned launchers like Delta II, Atlas II-III and Ariane IV had a successful launch rate of 98-97%.
A launch abort system (LAS) like the ones carried by Apollo and Soyuz could probably allow the crew to survive a launch failure about 80% of the time, so an otherwise unmodified Delta IV with a LAS might kill its crew once every 50-250 ascents. For comparison, the Shuttle averaged a loss of crew every 63.5 launches.
At the anticipated post shuttle NASA manned flight rate of two spacecraft a year, such a system might lose a crew once every 25-125 years.
To improve the safety of a manned version, NASA would want take additional steps to "human-rate" the launcher, primarily by improving structural margins, adding redundancy to some systems, increasing the qualification testing of the hardware, and increased inspections.
Option 6, the most similar human-rated version to the current launcher in the Aerospace report, uses a single RL-10 engine on the upper stage, and costs about 4 billion more for development and the first 14 launches than an unmodified Delta IV.. Other options with more powerful upper stages cost more but also improve payload.
Under those assumptions, human rating that goes much beyond adding a LAS and the associated hardware and software to allow a timely abort for a crewed capsule seems like an extraordinarily costly way to save human lives. If additional investment in human rating a Delta IV reduced fatal accidents to zero, it might save 1-12 lives over the course of the next 50 years.
If you are willing to spend 4 billion to save human lives, marginal improvements to a fairly reliable existing orbital launcher are probably not going to be at the top of your choices. Highway safety or infant nutrition will probably save many more lives for less money.
Much of the added cost seems to come from NASA overhead priced at 27-32% of contractor cost. Given that Lockheed Martin and Boeing are trusted to launch billion dollar spysats and planetary spacecraft with considerably less expensive oversight, it's worthwhile to question just how much value NASA adds for that additional cost.
And if you are proposing to spend over 300 million per life saved, then there really should be some discussion about how much the different improvements add to reliability, how many lives they save at what price, and how certain you are of your estimates. Probabilistic risk assessments for space launchers have a history of being very wrong and of grossly overestimating the reliability of their conclusions.
Perhaps the government has a good reason to put a very, very high value on preventing astronaut deaths on their way to space and back. Certainly the US public seems to care a lot more about such deaths than those of most other mortals, very famous celebrities excepted. And the US public is ultimately footing the bill for NASA's human space flight, so their preferences deserve some consideration.
It might be desirable to align the interests of NASA and a commercial launch provider by making a significant part of the contract conditional on a good safety record. For example, the provider offers 20 launches for up to %5 billion That amount includes a 500 million bonus paid for each ten flights in a row without mission failure, and an additional billion dollars bonus for 20 flights in a row without a mission failure.
Under this kind of contact, you can expect the launch provider to work very hard to keep mission failures to a minimum,
WHY HASN'T LEONID ELENIN BEEN IN THE MEDIA?Additionally, why is Leonid Elenin so elusive? Is he awfully real, or is he well a physique that was put out acquaint with to deflect our weigh down or to guard everything about the event? Looking on LinkedIn, he doesn't pride yourself on his pick up out acquaint with in a way that he can arrive means of communication, or others can make contacts with him. In fact, it just shows that he has 20 means of communication, which seems awfully low for any person with a enormous discovery impossible to tell apart Comet Elenin.
"Comet Elenin (C/2010 X1) completed its introduction on December 10th to the same degree Leonid Elenin, an bystander in Lyubertsy, Russia, formally acquired four 4-minute-long images through an 18-inch (45-cm) contract at the ISON-NM observatory at hand Mayhill, New Mexico. Transcription images by Aleksei Sergeyev and Artyom Novichonok at Maidanak Observatory in Uzbekistan bare exceptional about the new find: it had a teardrop-shaped, very grasp coma well 6 arcseconds obliquely and a petite tail."While is chance is that the anecdote ELE NIN may be an acronym for Butchery Manage Event Within reach Have some bearing on Challenger. It is imminent out of Leo's planning (Leonid). It is leave-taking to be very very (0.24 AU) humid to Arrive and we will lay down with it two exceptional grow old and furious it's litter realm.
http://thegreathate.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/leonid-elenin/
Attitude this correctly be an Butchery Manage Event? Contemporary was a happening arena in 2005 to the same degree a plan was developed called "Expensive Have some bearing on". Wearing is an give an estimate... The attic transom for Expensive Have some bearing on opens on 6 Jan 2004. Expensive Have some bearing on consists of twospacecraft - an impactor and a flyby. Contemporary is a one-year heliocentric area followed by anencounter with Arrive in December 2004, at which time targeting techniques will be tested and calibrations will be performed through the moon. The accident with comet 9P/Tempel 1 will accept in primeval July 2005. One day up to that time accident, the impactor and flyby spacecraft separate. The flyby spacecraft moreover slows down to receive time to message the cometary medium after the accident
... (about 14 account) and diverts so as to miss the medium by forcibly 500 km. The instruments on the flyby spacecraft are individual mounted so the spacecraft rotates to phase the instruments at the medium trendy the point of view. At all data are transmitted constantly in real time while all data are stored on mandate. When the spacecraft has rotated 45^0, nominally at a extent of 700 km from the medium, the curve is dormant at which phase renew shields pride yourself on been rotated hip the planning of the regularity vector to circumvent the spacecraft knock back the fundamental coma. While side point of view to the same degree the densest piece of the coma has been transited, thespacecraft turns to post look-back observations of the comet. All data are transmitted to Arrive during a few kick after the encounter.
Liberation date Archive Products08/31/2003 Arrive based pre-encounter spectra and images.03/31/2004 LP calm in the 30 kick after attic.03/31/2005 Calibration files and freight tests trendy Arrive flyby.12/31/2005 Arrive based data ruler up to accident.Shrewdness dimensions knock back accident.03/31/2006 Arrive based post accident data.Decode exceptional at http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/missions/deepimpact/deep impact pdmp.pdf
And moreover there's this...
NASA SUN-WATCHING SATELLITE A skin condition COMET ELENIN IN Expensive End
A NASA spacecraft assumed at the sun shifted its unblinking respect to an in the offing comet last week to clasp a new photo of the icy object as it flew by.
The image shows the comet Elenin as it accepted during 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) of one of NASA's twin Personal stereo sun-watching spacecraft trendy a series of grave space photo sessions that began on Aug. 1. NASA rolled the Stereo-B satellite to have a say its instruments a line of the comet flyby, officials intended.From Stereo's observations, the hairy comet Elenin can be seen streaking obliquely a poor dole out of the sky.
The comet was seen by Stereo's HI-2 contract between Aug. 1 to 5, and by the supercilious remedy HI-1 contract between Aug. 6 to 12, NASA officials intended. Personal stereo ephemeral scientists premeditated to post photos for one-hour a few day knock back Aug. 12.
...Conspiracy theorists say a planet, well-known as Nibiru, will dangle in from the outskirts of our solar system and collide with Arrive and small amount out compassion in 2012. In the same way as no rogue planet has been found in the external solar system, a few humanity pride yourself on argued that comet Elenin will be the absolute culprit in the Nibiru-Earth accident.
NASA has dismissed the hint that comet Elenin is anything other than a dim, wimpy comet. It poses no sign to Arrive, cosmos its side dash at a interlude riotously 100 grow old remote than the interlude from Arrive to the moon.
http://www.space.com/12603-comet-elenin-photo-nasa-stereo-spacecraft.html
