Jeez, you’re such a moron you can’t even get his name right.

“The only true ‘risk averse’ entities along the space frontier are the toadies in commercial HSF who steadfastly refuse to fly because the risk for profiteers outweighs the value of the return.”

I’m glad you still have enough active brain cells to pick up new words (i.e. “toadies”), which you had just seen me use on another post (flattery, etc.).

Too bad those same brain cells can’t understand that no U.S. companies are being paid to fly U.S. astronauts (or anyone else) to LEO. Which kind of refutes your allegation of “steadfastly refuse to fly…blah, blah”.

Of course I already knew that this was way over your head, but I had hoped if you could learn one new word a day maybe you could learn one new concept a day too. I guess I was wrong…

Pot calling the kettle black. DCSCA, your posts are void of facts.

: The point I am making is not that the SRBs are unreliable. The point I am making is that the Constellation program’s approach to reliability, and in fact the entire NASA approach, based on component reliability estimation and fault tree analysis, would be considered laughable in most private industry.

I have personally seen NASA civil service safety professionals perform a safety assessment by choosing three “order of magnitude” estimates of the reliability of a component and them simply pick one of the three. I have personally seen NASA safety professionals base a prediction of the failure rate of the Ares I on the specification for launch availability, since of course the contractor would be required to meet the specification.

Can you imagine the FAA using NASA procedures to establish the safety of an airliner? They could do the certification entirely on paper, and take off with a full load of passengers on the first flight.

The NASA approach has very fundamental flaws, not least that they estimate component failure rates without data, assume these failure rates are constant, assume failure modes are predictable (if they were, we would obviously change the design to eliminate them) and assume launch vehicle failures are random (they are usually deterministic).

The Shuttle program was kept afloat by numerous USA contractors who really did know their jobs (not all of course, but a commendable fraction) and who fixed the problems and prepared the viewgraphs for the civil service people to show at the launch readiness reviews. All those people are gone now.

Aerospace safety is a serious business, and there are people who know how to fly safely, even some at NASA. But NASA is obviously no more qualified than SpaceX or Boeing to say whether a launch vehicle or spacecraft is safe.

Thanks for sharing your views!

“I was there in D.C. on July 20, 1989 when Bush I gave that speech. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were on the dais in front of the National Air & Space Museum. Only invited guests could sit up close; we unwashed masses were kept far away behind fences.

The SEI was a precursor to Bush II’s Vision for Space Exploration. Both offered grand visions. Both wound up in the dumper…”

Have the 7/20/89 event on tape but don’t see you waving. Do see Dan Quayle. ‘Nuff said. In fact, the VIP area was set up for Apollo folks and family who made it happen, as clearly seen in the pans across the crowds with wives and astronauts in the crowd. SEI and VFSE withered and died for the same reasons- no bucks. And as we all know, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

The only true ‘risk averse’ entities along the space frontier are the toadies in commercial HSF who steadfastly refuse to fly because the risk for profiteers outweighs the value of the return. …

there are no facts to support that analysis…but you are happy to have your own opinions, they are like anatomical parts…everyone has a few RGO

“Nixon gutted the Apollo program they should have at least retained the F-1A.”

I would’ve said NERVA.

Either way, the reply would’ve been something like; “For what?” They were done with any visions larger than the Shuttle, and it required neither of the above.

@ Daddy:

“Constellation at least offered a vision of humanity establishing a permanent beach-head on the Moon and looking to initiate a resource mining and manufacturing foot hold.”

You can’t afford to ride Constellation to that beach. Fortunately, it isn’t the only way to get there…

“The civil space program, in my opinion, is broken,” [says Chris] Albrecht. And you’re entitled to your own opinion Mr. Albrecht, but not your own facts. =yawn= This from a fella who is trying to sell books, and represents the Bush Administration/GOP POV with a dismal fiscal and executive record of poor decision-making which literally ‘broke’ the US of A. On 1/17/61, President Eisenhower warned of the creeping problems of procurment and ‘influence’ in the councils of government by the military-industrial complex, of which civilian space is a stepchild. Any perceived failings in the bureaucratic operations of the civilian space program lay with the failings of the executive ‘talents’ in previous administrations, such as Albrecht, to keep the agencies and how they’re administered in check. To paraphrase WS, the fault, dear Albrecht, lay not in our stars, but in ourselves.