posted 09-07-2011 11:33 AM               

NASA needs more astronauts, report finds

NASA's astronaut corps is too few in number, posing a risk to the U.S. investment in human spaceflight capabilities, a new report released Wednesday (Sept. 7) finds.

According to the National Research Council (NRC), which conducted the study at NASA's request, current plans for retaining and hiring astronauts do not provide "sufficient flexibility" to reliably meet the projected requirements of the International Space Station (ISS).

"With the retirement of the space shuttle program and the uncertainty during the transition to a fully operational ISS, it's even more important that the talent level, diversity, and capabilities of the astronaut office be sustained," Joe Rothenberg, co-chair of the NRC committee that wrote the report and a former senior NASA official, said. "Making sure NASA maintains adequate training facilities is also essential to ensure a robust astronaut corps."

posted 09-07-2011 03:09 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by cspg:
And a new rocket/spacecraft?

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Although the future of NASA's human spaceflight program has garnered considerable discussion in recent years, and there is considerable uncertainty about what that program will involve in the coming years, the committee was not tasked to address whether or not human spaceflight should continue, or what form it should take...

posted 09-07-2011 04:34 PM            

The end of the shuttle notwithstanding, either NASA astronauts will be commanding commercial crew capsules - if those companies already came to some unspecified contractual agreement? Or the multipurpose crew vehicle and its launch system are a dead cert to happen - more likely than not if it was a 2012 election issue.

I've always wondered whether there were enough suitable volunteers for ISS crews, as NASA is now oversubscribed with military pilots (like ESA and Roscosmos).

posted 09-07-2011 04:57 PM               

Here's the example provided by the Astronaut Office to the National Research Council in January 2011.

Crew Assignment Example — Need 2 Crewmembers
Exp 37/38 [ISS flight engineer (FE) & Soyuz right seat FE] and Exp 38/39 (ISS FE/Soyuz left seat FE)

• 63 astronauts
  
• 30 currently assigned to missions
  • 2 on-orbit
    
  • 15 assigned Shuttle
    
  • 10 assigned ISS
    
  • 3 in 6 month post-flight debrief and reconditioning period
• 2 between 0.5 and 1.5 years from landing (long duration flight)
  
• 12 need additional training (2 EVA; 11 Russian language)
  
• 6 unavailable due to current job assignment
  
• 2 pending medical evaluation/clearance for long-duration mission
  
• 3 in 1.5-year forward plan for assignment as commander on upcoming ISS mission
  
• 2 expected to leave the office soon

Leaves 6 available for 2 mission assignments [only subset of these qualified for Soyuz left seat FE-1 (co-pilot) role].

quote:

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Originally posted by issman1:
NASA is now oversubscribed with military pilots...

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posted 09-07-2011 04:59 PM               

OK, so some will leave because of medical or personal issues, but recruit six astronauts (10 percent) every two years and won't you have enough to rotate people up and down ISS?

posted 09-08-2011 03:57 AM               

Believe me, there will be plenty of good candidates putting their names in should the need arise. People asked the 2004 class (the Peacocks) why would they join up after Columbia burned up. One of them mentioned to me that during their selection interview, no promises were made that they would even get a shuttle flight since those slots were taken. But each one of them to a man or woman decided they would join since they felt it was the best job on the planet and they wanted to contribute to something good, even in a support capacity. It turns out most of them (if not all) did end up getting flights on the shuttle as there was a small mass exodus of sorts that started around 2007.

This report does bring up a key point of attrition anyway in the astronaut ranks. Needs change as an astronaut matures. With the short term spaceflight programs of shuttle, it meant that they knew that the turn around time for getting selected for a mission was likely going to be a year or two, with a five month training cycle, a mission lasting the better part of two weeks and then a cycle back to the end of the line to wait about another two or three years if they wanted to fly again.

ISS on the otherhand has about a three year training cycle minimum. A lot of that features many months away from family and training in Russia. That does take a lot out of a family as it means a couple years where the astronaut parent didn't see their kid grow up, or missed some other event back home. As such, if an astronaut is going to try and fly on multiple flights, that means years of commitment. I could see many doing two long duration ISS flights, but three? And the reality is that even if they are selected for more than one flight, there is likely going to be a two to three year stretch working in some other capacity before they are considered to be a candidate for a future flight, let alone be selected for one. As such, many likely may bow out after just one flight unless the next one offers even more unique challenges (such as an EVA as opposed to just robot arm operations, or command as opposed to flight engineer).

posted 09-08-2011 02:41 PM               

To date, there have been 13 former and current astronauts that became medically ineligible AFTER being assigned to a long-duration mission (Mir or ISS) where the astronaut had to be either temporarily or permanently removed from their flight causing a change in ISS crew assignments on 6 occasions.

posted 09-08-2011 09:41 PM               

The difference is, the training for each flight assignment consumes far more time -- an astronaut assigned to an ISS mission today won't fly for 2.5 years, will fly for .5 years, and won't be available for two years after that (one year rehab, one year in a technical/managerial job).

So if you fly 4-5 astronauts per year, you really have 20-25 tied up in ISS at any given moment.

Our conclusion was that, given the other uncertainties -- short-term medical problems, unpredictable training times (whether an astronaut gets fluent in Russian is still quite a variable), attrition for age and other reasons (really hard to predict), the role and usage of NASA astronauts in commercial programs, etc. -- we thought that NASA had cut to the bare bones minimum, and would be better served by having a bit of a margin... say, half a dozen more astronauts than the current projection.