http://spacex.com/company.php
KEN BOWERSOX – VICE PRESIDENT OF ASTRONAUT SAFETY AND MISSION ASSURANCE

In what way is he supposed to know how to “design” a vehicle??? GuessWho really has no clue what he is talking about yet he makes strong impassionate statements about someone and something he really doesn’t know anything about.

As for his Air Force “credentials”… “Bowersox received his commission in the United States Navy in 1978 and was designated a Naval Aviator in 1981″ (http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/bowersox.html).

So someday, any day now, GuessWho will take his reading lessons and then he will make compelling cases. In the mean time he forces us to correct his never endig nonsense. Thanks GuessWho.

Your post makes some fine points re: Bowersox though I’ll point out they’ve had foam release and tile damage issues since the very first flight of shuttle, it’s hardly his issue alone. In fact the first manned STS flights had in the neighborhood of 40 heavily damaged tiles and one of the earlier flights had hot gasses enter the wheel well as a result. Furthermore, having lost not only astronauts on his watch, but also some very close personal friends, I would argue that his experience in command of STS during Columbia is all the more reason why he’d be extra cautious with a manned program

As for how many spacecraft he’s designed, that’s, again, an argument for not building any new spacecraft. Aside from a handful of old-timers the only people alive on the planet that have flown a brand-new rocket all hail from Asia. Surely you aren’t advocating we allow the Chinese, Koreans, and Indians be the only ones making new rockets? And again, the same can be said for Orion, which is being built by a company which has flown exactly as many manned missions as SpaceX.

“No economics and the difference between being a Flight Engineer and someone who just waves at the cameras!”

I’m honestly trying to respond to this one so don’t take any offense to this, but it’s hard to understand what this statement means. I understand that the tourist flights are filling extra seats not otherwise occupied. That makes sense and it’s a good point, though I’ll note that, unlike the airline industry, the space community generally charges a per-seat rate for manned flights and doesn’t usually do ‘fill the seats’ rates so it’s still a little odd.

And to the flight engineer comment, I believe I covered that with my quote of Mueller’s resume as one of the leading engine designers out there.

And Chris Thompson’s resume includes supporting “all development and qualification tests on Delta II, III, and IV, Titan IV, and Space Station. The T&V activities ranged from structural, dynamic, space simulation, material and mechanical properties, and complete system tests at Huntington Beach and various government test facilities.” To me that sounds very much like someone who knows a bit about the mechanics and physics of flight components including manned components (space station). He may not have designed them, but I don’t for a second think the leading rocket companies out there would allow someone who just “waves at the cameras” to do the testing for their vehicles. That he was involved in the testing during development suggests even more that he had a close relationship with the design and properties of these vehicles, and even better that he understands the potential pitfalls and problems associated with rocket designs. In engineering, whether it be software, civil, or mechanical, the sign of an experienced engineer is just as much about knowing what can go wrong as it is about good design.

I mentioned Bowersox partly because he used to be in charge of astronaut safety, partly because he used to be an astronaut, and partly because most folks here know who he is. But I did mention other people in the post. Don’t be distracted by the big name and disregard the rest of the post.

How many people at NASA have designed spacecraft, manned or unmanned?

One of the reasons that Mike Griffin said that he wanted Marshall to build a new launch system was to learn how, because few of the people working there had ever done it. The expertise lies in private industry (Boeing, Lockmart, ULA, USA), not NASA.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=17027.msg405660#msg405660

et seq

At least as far as orbital commercial vehicles, I find it astonishing that they have gone ahead and are doing so. Aside from what I consider the pie-in-the-sky prospect of a tourist hab in LEO, we were looking, over the last five years, at a cancellation of US involvement in ISS. Say what you will about the FY11 budget proposal, but it not only provides strong financial support for commercial spaceflight to LEO, but provides renewed commitment to a destination that it didn’t provide for deep space. Commercial spaceflight to LEO now has commitment to a place to go!

The continuation of ISS is, at least from a federal spending perspective, a powerful incentive for commercial space flight. So is cancellation of Ares I, for that matter.

From a deep space perspective, the FY11 budget is not highly encouraging. But the overall here is $$/kg to LEO, and the multifaceted embrace of commercial spaceflight is a huge step in addressing that problem. That will, I would hope, eventually lead to advantages for deep space.

learn some facts

Robert G. Oler”

““Bowersox also served as the director of the Johnson Space Center’s Flight Crew Operations Directorate and as an independent aerospace consultant, serving on the NASA standing review boards for Space Shuttle, ISS, Constellation, Orion and the Constellation Suit System.” -Aremisasling

So SpaceX is relying on the expertise of someone that was central to the organization that Oler credits with killing 14 astronauts. Well, to be honest, it’s not quite that bad, Bowersox was only in his JSC directors role for the Columbia accident. And Bowersox, while a much decorated astronaut with significant time logged in space and an Air Force pilot (heart-felt “thank you” for your service) has designed how many spacecraft, manned or unmanned?

To develop RLVs, the best routes are evolutionary ones that some companies are already pursuing: (1) make ELV lower stages reusable, probably with mid-air capture, then later work on the upper stages, and (2) develop RLVs for the surborbital tourist and science/education markets. Only after we’ve done those two things will we be ready for more advanced forms of orbital RLV.

As Storm pointed out, there are good direct reasons to do R&D on depots on on-orbit refueling: they will allow us to far more efficiently adapt spacecraft to unpredictable events. Refueling provides what MBAs call “real options” which have a financial value that can be computed in the same way as financial options.

A mundane but very important example: satellites end their life either by (1) running out of propellant or (2) with propellant still on board. In the first case we waste perfectly good hardware that often would have lasted much longer, in the second case we’ve launched often far more propellant than we actually needed. So refueling satellites will both give them longer average lifespans and will reduce the amount of propellant we need to launch at the start.

The less predictable their operations, and the more satellites share an orbit, the more they benefit from a mobile depot that makes its way around the orbit giving refills. Many military and certain kinds of scientific operations benefit the most and should be targeted as early adopters. Mission planning will be radically transformed into a far more flexible path (to coin a phrase :-)) In the long run depots in some form, which we can’t currently predict, will also benefit astronaut missions beyond LEO by allowing them to launch without HLVs. But that’s a minor benefit by comparison — there are much more compelling and practical reasons of national security, science, and real commerce (satellites) do depot R&D.

While your comment on Soyuz’s flight reliability is certainly correct, I’ll note that as the most reliable and most frequently flown human spacecraft ever, and one of the better for any spacecraft at all, your argument would be equal justification for having never had a US manned space program to begin with. Shuttle has a MUCH worse record. And Soyuz certainly has a better record than Ares/Orion. If the only thing that was important was proven reliability, and it is important to be sure, the only manned spacecraft that would ever fly would be Soyuz.