Space News
space history and artifacts articles

Messages
space history discussion forums

Sightings
worldwide astronaut appearances

Resources
selected space history documents

  collectSPACE: Messages
  Space Shuttles - Space Station
  GAO: Uninterrupted access to space station

Post New Topic  Post A Reply
profile | register | preferences | faq | search

next newest topic | next oldest topic
Author Topic:   GAO: Uninterrupted access to space station
Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 42988
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 07-11-2018 11:30 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) release
Plan Needed to Ensure Uninterrupted Access to the International Space Station

In 2014, NASA awarded two firm-fixed-price contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, worth a combined total of up to $6.8 billion, to develop crew transportation systems and conduct initial missions to the ISS. In February 2017, GAO found that both contractors had made progress, but their schedules were under mounting pressure. The contractors were originally required to provide NASA all the evidence it needed to certify that their systems met its requirements by 2017.

A House report accompanying H.R. 5393 included a provision for GAO to review the progress of NASA's human exploration programs. This report examines the Commercial Crew Program, including (1) the extent to which the contractors have made progress towards certification and (2) how NASA's certification process addresses safety of the contractors' crew transportation systems. GAO analyzed contracts, schedules, and other documentation and spoke with officials from NASA, the Commercial Crew Program, Boeing, SpaceX, and two of NASA's independent review bodies that provide oversight.

What GAO Found

Both of the Commercial Crew Program's contractors, Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), are making progress finalizing designs and building hardware for their crew transportation systems, but both contractors continue to delay their certification milestone (see figure). Certification is the process that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will use to ensure that each contractor's system meets its requirements for human spaceflight for the Commercial Crew Program.

Further delays are likely as the Commercial Crew Program's schedule risk analysis shows that the certification milestone is likely to slip. The analysis identifies a range for each contractor, with an earliest and latest possible completion date, as well as an average. The average certification date was December 2019 for Boeing and January 2020 for SpaceX, according to the program's April 2018 analysis.

Since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, the United States has been relying on Russia to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Additional delays could result in a gap in U.S. access to the space station as NASA has contracted for seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft only through November 2019. NASA is considering potential options, but it does not have a contingency plan for ensuring uninterrupted U.S. access.

NASA's certification process addresses the safety of the contractors' crew transportation systems through several mechanisms, but there are factors that complicate the process. One of these factors is the loss of crew metric that was put in place to capture the probability of death or permanent disability to an astronaut. NASA has not identified a consistent approach for how to assess loss of crew. As a result, officials across NASA have multiple ways of assessing the metric that may yield different results.

Consequently, the risk tolerance level that NASA is accepting with loss of crew varies based upon which entity is presenting the results of its assessment. Federal internal controls state that management should define risk tolerances so they are clear and measurable. Without a consistent approach for assessing the metric, the agency as a whole may not clearly capture or document its risk tolerance with respect to loss of crew.

What GAO Recommends

GAO is making five recommendations, including that NASA develop a contingency plan for ensuring a U.S. presence on the ISS and clarify how it will determine its risk tolerance for loss of crew. NASA concurred with three recommendations; partially concurred on the recommendation related to loss of crew; and non-concurred with a recommendation to report its schedule analysis to Congress. GAO believes these recommendations remain valid, as discussed in the report.

oly
Member

Posts: 905
From: Perth, Western Australia
Registered: Apr 2015

posted 07-11-2018 10:01 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for oly   Click Here to Email oly     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
There seems to be a huge conflict that sets both SpaceX and Boeing up to fail to meet the design milestones. If return to manned spaceflight is the aim, each company would be better served being allowed to identify their systems as experimental, put test pilot astronauts as crew who accept the risk of experimental flight, get the systems to a point where they can conduct manned missions, and get on with the business of developing their systems. All under the oversight of someone who has the authorization, ability, and willingness to authorize each flight and monitor progress and development. Once the systems have all the wrinkles ironed out, more from the experimental to the certified status to carry commercial crews.

By requiring each designer to have certification of each system, subsystem, redundancy, contingency and backup prior to manned flight, was always going to lead to the requirement of redundancies for redundancies, take far longer to achieve first flight, and result in milestone time slip and deadline re-evaluations.

While safety should never be compromised, there needs to be some risk-taking to push these systems forward, otherwise, they will always reach a stage whereby the consideration of the risks that have not been identified can't be quantified but are considered too high, and the system stops moving forward. If this is the path that NASA or Washington want to take, great. However, putting the burden of returning the US manned spaceflight on to Crew Dragon and CST-100 seems unfair when the yardsticks for measurement is undefined or changing.

Get on with the business of spaceflight. NASA has admitted that they have become a risk-averse, and it is understandable. Nobody wants to see another death during a mission, but at this rate, the U.S. runs a higher risk of losing the astronauts in motor vehicle accidents driving to and from work than they do during all the manned spaceflights carrying the U.S. flag since the space shuttle's retirement.

If NASA and their contractors were held to the same standards during the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle, we would probably still be waiting for the first U.S. manned spaceflight. The shuttle's first flight was manned, having never tested any systems through launch or re-entry as a complete vehicle. The Mercury Redstone had its own issues, The Atlas had reliability problems, and the first manned Saturn V was tested around the moon.

These five recommendations change the yardsticks. Recommendation 1 wants Boeing and SpaceX to include reports on information that recommendation 2 and 3 identifies as needing creation or change, recommendation 4 identified that this information does not exist or has not been quantified and recommendation 5 states that the authority to oversee all of this should be restructured. All with the added pressure of saying that return to manned spaceflight had taken longer than it should have and has proven to be complicated.

All times are CT (US)

next newest topic | next oldest topic

Administrative Options: Close Topic | Archive/Move | Delete Topic
Post New Topic  Post A Reply
Hop to:

Contact Us | The Source for Space History & Artifacts

Copyright 2020 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved.


Ultimate Bulletin Board 5.47a





advertisement