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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
NASA auditors warned Thursday the space agency faces "significant safety and technical challenges" that need to be solved before astronauts fly in private capsules.
In its report, NASA's inspector general office noted Boeing and SpaceX are several years late in transporting crews to the International Space Station. The private capsules likely won't be certified before next summer, according to the report, and NASA should set a realistic timetable to avoid compromising safety.
NASA officials concurred with this and most of the other recommendations in the 53-page audit.
The auditors reported, meanwhile, that NASA overpaid Boeing $287.2 million to keep the company moving forward. Most of this overcharge was unnecessary, they said, a point with which NASA disagreed.
[...]
Boeing and SpaceX have made significant progress during these past eight years, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin and his auditors concluded in Thursday's report.
"However, after more than 2 years of delays both contractors will miss the current schedule to begin crewed test flights in late 2019," they wrote. "Addressing outstanding technical challenges, safety and performance testing, and verification of the contractors' requirements, hazards, and safety concerns likely will take significant time to complete."
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday November 18 2019, @08:49AM (4 children)
NASA certifications seriously emphasize safety. Which is all well and good, but one wonders: Are they really necessary? To a large extent, they come from the era when space was new and risky. We are slowly transitioning to a time where it is simply normal. How many tens of thousands of satellites have we launched? How often does a launch fail in a dangerous way? Do we still need the same levels of caution as in years past? I suspect that the answer is "no".
Equally, I suspect that NASA is incapable of "letting go". Just as we continue to see with the SLS, the bureaucracy has a serious interest in hobbling private ventures. If NASA's contractors had to compete on an even footing, they would never have another contract.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 18 2019, @09:22AM (1 child)
If Starlink produces half of the expected revenue, it will make the billions SpaceX has gotten from NASA look like chump change. Meanwhile Starship will lower the cost per kg to almost nothing. Estimated at $2 million to launch 100-150 tons. Bump it up to $5 million and you're still looking at just $33-$50 per kg. There won't be any hobbling, and you can link SpaceX's current success to an early cash infusion from cargo launches to the ISS for NASA. With cost per kg under $100, there will be a flood of new private space ventures. NASA's safety standards will be largely irrelevant.
SpaceX can get astronauts to the ISS next week if needed. Eventually they will make it through all the red tape and deliver some astronauts. Hopefully by March to May 2020. It will be a sideshow, but it represents a prestige moment for the company and gets them some experience with launching people into space before they do it with Starship.
Point of fact, it doesn't appear that 10,000 satellites [wikipedia.org] have been launched yet worldwide. Although that will soon change.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday November 18 2019, @01:36PM
Ok, I stand corrected on the numbmer. Also surprised.
Meanwhile, if you don't know it, here's a great site with live data on all known satellites: StuffIn.Space [stuffin.space]
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 18 2019, @02:52PM
One should ask, does it work? Such delays can make things less safe rather than more.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @05:40PM
The overall failure rate for space launches is about 6%, however this includes any kind of aborted launch including failure to reach the desired orbit, which in principle would be survivable for the crew. The overall failure rate appears to be pretty consistent over the entire history of human spaceflight: for example, in 2016 there were 85 known launches, 4 of which failed [spaceflight101.com] (~5%); in 2017 there were 90 launches and 6 failures [spaceflight101.com] (~7%),
In the entire history of manned spaceflight there have been a total of four incidents where the occupants of the spacecraft were killed during flight: Soyuz-1, Soyuz-11, STS-51-L, and STS-107. All of these accidents resulted in the deaths of everyone on board the vehicle. This excludes incidents like Apollo-1 where the astronauts were killed on the ground.
Realistically we probably do not have enough experience with manned spaceflight in order to have a good impression of how safe it is. The Soyuz and Shuttle programs represent the lion's share of all manned spaceflights to date, with a total of 276 manned launches between them. For perspective, if airlines were advertising that "only one out of every hundred of our flights has ended with everybody on board dying!" almost nobody would fly in an airplane.