Wednesday, March 21, 2012

SpaceX Gets Astronauts To Try Out Its Dragon Crew Cabin

Sure, the next time you go flying on Delta Airlines, tell me how their safety record is and how they keep killing passengers on every flight they make (or even every once in awhile). While no doubt there are some slackers in the airline industry, there aren't that many.... they simply wouldn't be flying.

Also note that the FAA has jurisdiction over the flying of spacecraft too... from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. While they are admittedly taking reference information from NASA in terms of human spaceflight experience and safety guidelines, ultimately that vehicle can't fly without FAA approval and even a flight worthiness certificate. Since the Dragon spacecraft is also docking on the ISS, SpaceX also needs to meet NASA standards, as well as JAXA, and Roscosmos standards too! If any one of them says "No", it can't dock up there (or rather be "bearthed" to the ISS as the remote manipulator arm attaches it to the ISS).

Your assertion that the first flight is going to end up with everybody dying is not only trolling, but it should be noted that SpaceX has already flown the spacecraft too... although that flight was unmanned as will be the next several flights as well. It will be on about flight six before any crew is even suggested to go up, where any really risky issues should have been resolved. SpaceX also has some full-time astronauts who are involved with the flight safety protocols who also wouldn't mind being among the first of those going up.... do you think those astronauts are going to risk their own necks on something that doesn't work?

Where SpaceX is saving money is both on the procurement costs and construction of the vehicle, because they don't need to send everything out for a GSA competitive bid nor do they have some congressmen poking them in the side to move some of their production to multiple congressional districts to ensure "their district" gets some more pork. On top of that, SpaceX has done an amazing job of streamlining the production process of building spacecraft by moving almost all of the part production in house and even in the same factory. As was said in the 60 Minutes piece, raw metal comes in one door and spacecraft come out the other. That doesn't happen for other spacecraft by the major builders for many of the reason I mention above and others as well.

The Dragon isn't being build with a cost-plus contract in part because SpaceX doesn't need to. There may be valid reasons to offer such a contract, but putting people into space has long been a solved engineering problem where it is possible to even understand the financial risks of putting people into space. That may not have been possible 50 years ago, but it is today.

Besides, it is in the interest of SpaceX to keep its passengers alive as killing off customers is bad for the bottom line. Elon Musk isn't that stupid.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/JAYNVXLvGDo/spacex-gets-astronauts-to-try-out-its-dragon-crew-cabin

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