This Was Inevitable

If a sane and informed group of astronauts are willing to risk their lives in it then it's human rated.

Separating cargo and humans makes sense in terms of mission capability, but to orbit it is like you say, not so important.

If we can put rovers on other planets we have all the cargo capacity we need for any mission anywhere (within sol.) This capability can be upgraded over time without any concern for non-existent crew safety.

What we need are various vehicles for the different environments humans need to travel... ascent and descent(specific to the body) then transit and habitat (which could be a more generalized design.)

A modular transit vehicle that could be provisioned for various mission durations seems to make sense to me.

Frankly, I see private enterprise providing all of these services before NASA ever gets their act together. Which will mean private citizens may soon be able to create their own missions. Missions that will have greater scope than anything government might come up with. Will government be able to control off world activities?

This is more an admission that the Ares 1 is a turkey that will never fly and they are trying to preserve their options for heavy lift. That $35 billion dollars could be spent in far better ways in developing beyond LEO human spaceflight capabilities.

Separating cargo and humans makes sense in terms of mission capability

Do you have any evidence or analysis to support that idea, Ken? Or do you just take it on faith because the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said so?

We don't separate humans from cargo planes, trucks, delivery vans, freight trains, oil tankers, or any other form of transportation.

Space is the only arena where we religiously "separate crew from cargo" -- and the only arena where we have a lack of cargo mission capability. Do you not see any connection?

If we can put rovers on other planets we have all the cargo capacity we need for any mission anywhere (within sol.) This capability can be upgraded over time without any concern for non-existent crew safety.

To what end? What's the point of putting rovers on other planets if humans are not allowed to go there? Is it just to provide the Planetary Society with pretty pictures?

Spending money on a space mission, even an unmanned space mission, has an opportunity cost, which can be translated directly into human lives. If we can justify spending a billion dollars on a rover, instead of spending it on medical research that might save thousands of lives, we can certainly justify risking the life of a few astronauts who might accompany that rover.

Don't forget that astronauts are all volunteers. They *want* to go into space. Separating crew from cargo so astronauts don't need to risk their lives going into space misses the point. It's like developing an automated bullriding machine so cowboys don't have to risk their lives riding bulls.

Forgive me Edward. please let me clarify.

Do you have any evidence or analysis to support that [separating cargo and humans makes sense], Ken?

It's self evident and here is why...

There are two types of cargo, that which keeps the crew alive and that which supports their mission. By realizing that not all cargo must go with the crew we open up missions that otherwise are not possible. Today, we really are not constrained by cargo limits unless we insist it travel with the crew.

Larger vehicles will happen as the economic incentive drives us to them. We create that incentive once we have colonies that demand resources. Waiting has a huge impact on the growth curve.

Or do you just take it on faith because the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said so?

I'm an INTJ, authority means almost nothing to me. I accept good ideas from any source.

We don't separate humans from cargo planes, trucks, delivery vans, freight trains, oil tankers, or any other form of transportation.

Of course we do. Our whole society is based on distributed resources.

Space is the only arena where we religiously "separate crew from cargo" -- and the only arena where we have a lack of cargo mission capability. Do you not see any connection?

Non sequitur. Hey I like the idea of bigger ships as well. Eventually I believe they will happen. But I think we waste a lot of valuable time waiting for vaporware and twiddling our thumbs.

What's the point of putting rovers on other planets if humans are not allowed to go there?

Who said anything about no humans??? My whole point is we need to focus on how to get humans where we want them because we already have the ability to have all the cargo they need waiting for them when they get there. Focus on getting humans there and all missions are possible. This is why I think colonization now is reasonable.

we can certainly justify risking the life of a few astronauts who might accompany that rover.

Absolutely; however, if we can get them there without SOME LONG TIME IN THE FUTURE recreating the combinational equivalent of a Saturn 5 and battleship galactica... then we can go now or in the very near future.

Separating crew from cargo so astronauts don't need to risk their lives going into space misses the point.

You'll have to clarify that point because it's not clear to me what you are trying to say.

BTW Edward,

Would 4500 cubic meters be enough cargo and crew space for starters? Click my name for thoughts about that.

I imagine sending a dozen geologists to the asteroid belt. They get there in a ship that has had dozens of previous missions to other places with very little maintenance required and an indefinite life.

I think I need to take another crack at answering this...

We don't separate humans from cargo planes, trucks, delivery vans, freight trains, oil tankers, or any other form of transportation.

You're talking about drivers I believe. On Earth, drivers are incidental to the vehicle. In space they consume a much greater percentage of vehicle resources. You need more cargo volume than you need humans. So for that reason alone it makes sense to send cargo by itself.

We also dispose of drivers on Earth where it makes sense, and even construct vehicles which are distinct from crewed ones. For example, Global Hawk.

Don't send humans on a space trip if they aren't needed for the mission. The idea of a manned space shuttle as the nations primary launch vehicle, even for basic satellite delivery, was a mistake. But if you have a good reason to send people, I don't see a need to exclude cargo from the same launch on principle.

As long as we're stuck with disposable launchers, some cargo may be launched using rockets not good enough for people. But given a proper reusable launcher, where loss of vehicle is a massive extra expense, any vehicle good enough to last hundreds of flights should be good enough for people.

Another point. Humans prefer to travel fast. Cargo doesn't have that requirement. Anon was an oops.

I think there is something seriously missing in this discussion here. This isn't about "should we send cargo with astronauts", instead it is something more fundamental about spaceflight.

It isn't even about sending humans fast and cargo slow. Let's be realistic here: The only place people have been since December 1972 is in low-earth orbit... and people get there just as fast as cargo. Even travel to the Moon or Mars... with existing vehicles... is going to be at nearly identical speeds. Only with exotic propulsion techniques is there going to be a difference, and even that doesn't explicitly restrict human spaceflight to one mode.

The only reason you would want to realistically separate cargo from passenger space on multiple (aka 2+) rockets has to do with economics and not safety. Simply put, all of the R&D that is spent on developing a launch system for a huge rocket that would carry both cargo and crew simultaneously could be much better spent on a slightly (or substantially) smaller vehicle that would take less time to develop and have a higher launch rate. More flights == more chances to find the bugs in the system and to make each individual flight safer. This also reduces the overall cost of launches, as you don't have ground crew twiddling their thumbs in between launches... you keep them busy by having them do their job and learning how it is to be done by doing it.

If there is a lesson that was lost with the design of the Shuttle, it was the issue with the supposedly high launch rate originally promised when the Shuttle design was originally proposed. In theory, it was to have been launched about once or twice a months... with as many as 30 launches each year. The original army of ground personnel for this sort of launch rate. It should be noted that the most number of launches ever done with the Shuttle was nine, which happened in 1985. A couple years NASA flew eight shuttle missions.

Simply put, the shuttle never has reached the rate of flight that was intended. There are many reasons for this, including a shortage of vehicles (perhaps only four vehicles was a mistake) and some unfortunate compromises to save a little money in the early design phases for options that would be much more expensive during the regular "production" or mission phases of the vehicle life cycle. This also seems to be a problem with the Ares design as well, I should point out.

There are two types of cargo, that which keeps the crew alive and that which supports their mission. By realizing that not all cargo must go with the crew we open up missions that otherwise are not possible. Today, we really are not constrained by cargo limits unless we insist it travel with the crew.

I'm not sure who you mean by "we," but unless "we" have discovered an infinite supply of money, our ability to launch cargo is highly constrained by launch costs.

Those constraints prevent us from doing almost anything useful or interesting in space.

That will continue to be true as long as "we" continue to follow the high-cost guided-missile paradigm based on silly rules like "separating crew from cargo" and destroying hardware on every flight.

Larger vehicles will happen as the economic incentive drives us to them. We create that incentive once we have colonies that demand resources. Waiting has a huge impact on the growth curve.

Who said anything about larger vehicles? You don't need a huge vehicle to accommodate a pilot. Ares V isn't unmanned because it's too small to carry a pilot. It's unmanned for policy reasons. Economics should be driving us to *smaller* vehicles that can fly much more often. A practical, piloted RLV would be much smaller than Ares.

> We don't separate humans from cargo planes, trucks, delivery vans, freight trains, oil tankers, or any other form of transportation.

Of course we do. Our whole society is based on distributed resources.

Take another look. Those vehicles *never* operate without human crew onboard. For very sound economic reasons. Human crew are not "incidental." They are necessary to economical operation. Crewed vehicles are orders of magnitude more reliable than autonomous vehicles. No transportation company could afford the loss rate they would incur if they had to rely on unpiloted vehicles. Global Hawk is not a safe or economical mode of transportation.

My whole point is we need to focus on how to get humans where we want them because we already have the ability to have all the cargo they need waiting for them when they get there.

No, we don't. At least, not at any price that mortals can afford. If we did, ISS would be a bustling hub of activity and we'd have settlements on the Moon right now.

Humans prefer to travel fast. Cargo doesn't have that requirement.

It does if you want the cargo to reach orbit and stay there.

Simply put, all of the R&D that is spent on developing a launch system for a huge rocket that would carry both cargo and crew simultaneously could be much better spent on a slightly (or substantially) smaller vehicle that would take less time to develop and have a higher launch rate.

Robert, you will never get a high launch rate if you keep having accidents and losing vehicles all the time. High flight rates are possible only with vehicles that are safe and reliable.

I don't know where you guys get the idea that a piloted vehicle must be huge but even Ares isn't following that model. They're putting the crew and passengers on the smaller vehicle and making the cargo vehicle much larger.

Robert, Ken, please look at this as an example of a possible near-term vehicle that could carry both a pilot and cargo (or passengers).

http://www.tour2space.com/archives/bearcubx/bearcub.htm

Such a system would be tiny compared to Ares.

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already said 30 months ago

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I know this is tangential to the main point, but I can't leave it unanswered...

Edward Wright wrote:
No transportation company could afford the loss rate they would incur if they had to rely on unpiloted vehicles. Global Hawk is not a safe or economical mode of transportation.

The Northrop Grumman (originally Teledyne Ryan) Global Hawk has had only two losses in over 10,000 flight hours in theater. One was due to a maintenance error which would have brought down a manned aircraft as well; the other was caused by a mission planning error that caused controlled flight into terrain - this again would have brought down a manned aircraft that did not have active terrain warning systems. Both of the losses were on aircraft built during the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) part of the program; Global Hawk was pressed into service during the ACTD program within a few months after 9/11. It has only been in the last few years that actual production airplanes have been in theater. There has been well over 5000 hrs in theater with no losses.

I don't have the cost numbers, but the canard about GH safety needed to be answered.

Robert, you will never get a high launch rate if you keep having accidents and losing vehicles all the time. High flight rates are possible only with vehicles that are safe and reliable.

I side with Robert here. As I see it, nobody has experience building high reliability launch vehicles. I see a high launch frequency vehicle as a necessary precondition in order to build up the knowledge for a high reliability vehicle.

I generally agree with your fuel depot analysis as well. Fuel depots are a generation ahead of where we are in space right now. I think it would be great to work on the individual subsystems which will have to be eventually incorporated into a full fledged fuel depot design, such as upper stage fuel storage, fuel scavenging, fuel transfer, and fuel delivery, within the low earth orbit framework which will must now necessarily revert to after the failure of ESAS to develop a viable post space shuttle architecture.

But to posit fuel depots as a savior or alternative to Constellation is just more wishful thinking right now.

Such is the state of our fiscal and technological maturity. We need to make the most of our eight year term in the penalty box right now, and certainly fuel depots qualify as a useful endeavor to pursue, but the near term problem is shuttle transition to a successor, and Constellation is not that successor. So thinking needs to be directed a little closer to that near goal.

The Northrop Grumman (originally Teledyne Ryan) Global Hawk has had only two losses in over 10,000 flight hours in theater.

"Only" two losses."Over" 10,000 hours. That's like saying ISS "only" cost $100 billion. You need to compare those numbers to real aircraft, not just swallow hype from UAV marketers whose figures are never questioned by the press.

As of 2005, the F/A-18 had logged over 6 million flight hours -- 600 times more than Global Hawk. If the Hornet were as "safe" and "reliable" as Global Hawk, operators would have lost over 1,200 aircraft -- which is almost every Hornet ever built.

In the civilian world, a Southwest Airlines 737 flies an average of 4,745 hours per year. The Southwest fleet flies 7,000 hours per day.

If Southwest were flying Global Hawks instead of 737s, they would lose 511 aircraft -- and over 60,000 passengers -- every year. They would lose their entire fleet in a little over a year.

That is neither "safe" nor "reliable."

And in case you're about to tell me we shouldn't expect spacecraft to be as safe and reliable as aircraft, the Space Shuttle fleet currently has over 27,000 flight hours.

If the Shuttle were as "safe" and "reliable" as Global Hawk, NASA would have lost the entire fleet by now, instead of only two orbiters. The Shuttle's reliability is pretty bad, but it's not that bad.

One was due to a maintenance error which would have brought down a manned aircraft as well;

Nonsense. Piloted aircraft are maintained to a much higher standard than radio-controlled models. When there are no humans onboard, people get sloppy and think they can "afford" a lower standard of reliability. That's shown not only by operational figures but by comments about cargo vehicles made right here.

I don't have the cost numbers, but the canard about GH safety needed to be answered.

Here, let me help you out.

According to the Boeing website, a 737-700 costs $57-67.5 million. If the 737-700 were as "safe" as Global Hawk, it would last an average of 384 days in Southwest service.

Replacing 511 Boeing 737-700s every year would cost $29-34 billion a year.

That's about three times Southwest's annual operating revenues ($9.9 billion in 2007). So, they'd have to raise their ticket prices by a factor of four just to pay for all the replacements.

Of course, they would be ought of business in about two days if they were losing that many airplanes because passengers would refuse to fly with them and their air cargo business would dry up. (Yes, cargo shippers do care whether their packages arrive safely.)

Further note. A Global Hawk costs $35 million (marginal cost -- $123 million, if you include R&D).

An F-16E/F cost $26.9 million in 1985.

Global Hawks in Iraq and Afghanistan showed "a failure rate per hour flown over 100 times higher than the F-16 fighters flown in the same wars."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk

Of course, the F-16 is capable of carrying out combat missions and the Global Hawk is merely a sensor platform, so this isn't a fair comparison. Neither does the F-16 have the high-altitude long-duration capabilities Global Hawk does.

Scaled Composites built a high-altitude, long-duration piloted aircraft that was originally designed to carry the Global Hawk sensor package. It was called Proteus and cost about $3 million (although admittedly, that did not include the sensor cost).

Hi Robert,

"Even travel to the Moon or Mars... with existing vehicles... is going to be at nearly identical speeds. Only with exotic propulsion techniques is there going to be a difference, and even that doesn't explicitly restrict human spaceflight to one mode.
The only reason you would want to realistically separate cargo from passenger space on multiple (aka 2+) rockets has to do with economics and not safety."

I have to disagree. The improvement in the economics of slow cargo flights and the improved safety of fast crewed flights mandate separation of cargo from crew.

Even using an indentical means of interplanetary transport, for example the Earth Departure Stage of the Ares V launch vehicle, there are dramatic differences in delivered payload based upon travel time. The margins are so small and the math of rocketry is so merciless that a tiny bit of speed makes a huge difference. And if you add on top of those speed differences the payload gains possible from time-consuming gravity-assist trajectories then cargo vs. crewed missions become even more different. Slow cargo flights are the way to go.

And you do want to zip a crewed spacecraft as fast a practical to it's destination to minimize numerous problems a crewed spacecraft must deal with ranging from the mass of consumables required to the reliability of life support to deep space radiation shielding to human tolerance of zero G conditions. The more fragile a human crew tends to be (for example artificial grav might be neccessary after all) the greater the differences between a cargo mission and a crewed mission. Combining the cargo and crew could lead to an enormously costly and inefficient 'Battlestar Galactica' behemoth.

These principles are why vitually all the most recent architectures for manned missions to Mars have separate cargo and crew flights.

Ken:Today, we really are not constrained by cargo limits unless we insist it travel with the crew.

Edward: I'm not sure who you mean by "we," but unless "we" have discovered an infinite supply of money, our ability to launch cargo is highly constrained by launch costs.

Yes, of course cost is a constraint, but I was referring to capability. For example, we are capable (assuming funding availability) to put more than enough provisions on Mars or other bodies right now. We are not able to send humans (alive, dead humans we could send right now.)

Edward: Those constraints prevent us from doing almost anything useful or interesting in space.

The constraint isn't funding, but vision. Property rights alone would provide the funding and that's only an insignificant percent of the wealth that awaits.

The Wright flyer isn't much to look at, and ridiculous from an economic perspective, unless you have the right vision. Rockets today will be replaced by better vehicles tomorrow, but they do have the capability they have today which is more than what we ask of them.

That will continue to be true as long as "we" continue to follow the high-cost guided-missile paradigm based on silly rules like "separating crew from cargo"...

I think Brad covered that well.

...and destroying hardware on every flight.

Long term, absolutely true; but you have to keep perspective on where we are now in the stream of time as well as appreciating the significance that growth is a curve and not linear. So called 'waste' at the beginning of a growth curve pays off tremendously if it moves us up the curve (of permanent activity in space.)

Under the right conditions destroying hardware makes sense. Destroying hardware to establish a self sufficient off world colony qualifies (and history will eventually confirm this.)

You don't need a huge vehicle to accommodate a pilot.

Which is part of the argument for the separation of crew and cargo.

Economics should be driving us to *smaller* vehicles...

In the case of crew yes, in the case of cargo no.

... that can fly much more often.

Certainly this would bring down costs.

Human crew are not "incidental."

"incidental" wasn't quite the right word I was looking for. A driver makes sense when the alternative is more expensive. Drivers are a major expense in space.

Ken:My whole point is we need to focus on how to get humans where we want them because we already have the ability to have all the cargo they need waiting for them when they get there.

Edward: No, we don't. At least, not at any price that mortals can afford.

Ok, you are focusing on cost and I'm looking at capability. I understand your point. With reference to cost, cargo is time related. At the beginning of a growth curve you need more cargo per capita than later.

If we did, ISS would be a bustling hub of activity and we'd have settlements on the Moon right now.

If the economic return were sufficient, it would make sense to 'waste' some money now to get there. I don't think it is regarding the ISS. The Moon long term is, but perhaps not short term. I believe a colony on Mars, starting now, would have huge economic returns, although I can't prove that until after the fact (and done wrong wouldn't support my argument either.)

Ken: Humans prefer to travel fast. Cargo doesn't have that requirement.

Edward: It does if you want the cargo to reach orbit and stay there.

I already said, "but to orbit it is like you say, not so important." Again, Brad makes the point well.

Cargo isn't all the same either. Maybe someone can tell me how much increasing reliability from (say) 95% to 99% increases vehicle cost? I am talking here about disposable launchers, of course.

There is an awfully big difference between such items as comsats (so expensive they ought to be measured in carats) and items such as big tanks of propellant/water/food/oxygen and structural beams. The latter needs much less reliability than the former. Why? It ought to be obvious, but if you're chucking up a tank of LOX and it blows up half way up, so what?

Just another case of matching the vehicle to the mission.

Getting back to my premise that launch vehicles make no difference in terms of manned spaceflight (and in response to "Brad") we simply don't have these new and exotic vehicles that are going to be traveling at different speeds to Mars. Since manned spaceflight to Mars hasn't ever happened, it is impossible to know with certainly what will work out "best", and at the moment that is all science fiction (or even pure fiction) anyway.

The only place anybody has gone for the past 35 years is to low-earth orbit. The Russians, the Chinese, and perhaps the Indians are only thinking of low-earth orbit. Even NASA has only been to low-earth orbit. Yeah, the Chinese may (and I'm skeptical here) get to the Moon in the next decade or so, but that is with a re-creation of Apollo hardware. Again, getting to low-earth orbit with existing technologies is going to be just as fast via manned vs. unmanned vehicles. There is no difference here.

One of the reasons why large vehicles are attractive is two fold: Larger launch vehicles can carry up cargo in one piece, reducing problems for construction once you "get up there". There is also a huge margin of efficiency in terms of the amount of payload delivered for larger rockets compared to smaller rockets. This is most pointedly demonstrated with the cost of the Falcon 1 vs. the Falcon 9 rockets that SpaceX is producing.

Still, there is a compromise size that vehicles start to get so large that they can only be used for one function. That was essentially the problem with the Saturn V, because the only things it was good for was a lunar mission sent up all at once, or for launching Skylab. How many launches did the Saturn V have? You can see each and every one of them is this single photo:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Saturn_V_launches.jpg

This is one of the most expensive ways to launch people into space, where the vehicle you are using is essentially unique, and that you throw it away when you are done with it. You certainly can't say there was much in the way of economies of scale with the Saturn V, and there were tweaks and changes to each successive mission to fix "problems" found with previous flights.

How often when you get on a 737 do you see a whole team of aeronautical engineers (not just technicians and mechanics) waiting at the airport when the jet lands there, to grab the flight data recorder, review the data, and "fix up" the airplane before it goes up again with substantial design changes to the vehicle, including perhaps new wings and tail assemblies, and perhaps swapping out many or all of the components in the cockpit?

Yet this is precisely what NASA has been doing with all of their manned spaceflight launches, or even going one step more and simply replacing the vehicle completely. It is this practice that gives us $100 million + per astronaut just to get to low-earth orbit. I sure wouldn't want to fly on a commercial airline that engages in this sort of engineering practice.

Neither the Ares I nor the Ares V is going to fix this problem either. And that is the real problem.

BTW, for a return to the Moon, I think the Earth-orbit rendezvous architecture is the best way to not only get there, but build the proper infrastructure necessary to get us there as well. This is something that IMHO would be even more important for a Mars mission... and the fact that you could build a Mars vehicle nearly as big as you would like by assembling the pieces in orbit first from smaller components launched on cheap rockets.

Anybody who proposes launching an everything including the kitchen sink vehicle from the surface of the Earth, go to Mars, plant the flag, and return back to the Earth is simply being delusional. There is also no reason for all of these pieces to be launched into orbit with manned personnel sitting at the top of those rockets either, even if some of them do include manned launches not directly related to the final mission profile.

Simply put, you need to come up with a cheap vehicle that can have a high launch rate to send lots of "stuff" into orbit cheaply. A high launch rate will give you increased reliability, as you will have discovered all of the problems. This is also precisely why the Soyuz vehicle is so reliable... as Russia has flown this vehicle hundreds of times and knows everything that can (and sometimes does) go wrong.

The cost per launch is the real key here, and everything else follows from that. Let's get rid of the experimental thought processes that go with rocketry, as getting people & other stuff into low earth orbit shouldn't be something different and new.

I would be surprised if the Ares V has more than a dozen launches or so, ever for its entire history. I only wish I could be proven wrong on this assertion as well.

Yes, of course cost is a constraint, but I was referring to capability.

There's no capability unless you can afford it. Today, we can't afford to do anything useful in space beyond a few communication satellites.

For example, we are capable (assuming funding availability) to put more than enough provisions on Mars or other bodies right now.

"Enough" provisions for what? To run a little robot car? Yes. To do a flag and footprints mission? Perhaps, at the cost of a small war. To do anything economically viable? No.

We are not able to send humans (alive, dead humans we could send right now.)

Of course we do. Even Bob Zubrin admitted that. In one of the latter chapers of The Case For Mars, he talked about how we might assembly a Mars ship from components launched by Atlas, Delta, or Proton launchers. The problem is the cost.

The constraint isn't funding, but vision.

No, I can envision many, many things that I cannot fund. Most people can.

...and destroying hardware on every flight.

Long term, absolutely true; but you have to keep perspective on where we are now in the stream of time as well as appreciating the significance that growth is a curve and not linear. So called 'waste' at the beginning of a growth curve pays off tremendously if it moves us up the curve (of permanent activity in space.)

Expendable rockets haven't moved us up the curve in 50 years. How much longer do you think we should stay stuck before we dare to try anything new? 100 years? 500? 1000? How long do you expect to live, anyway? We can open the space frontier in *our* lifetimes, Ken. Let's do it!

You don't need a huge vehicle to accommodate a pilot.

Which is part of the argument for the separation of crew and cargo.

A bad part of a bad argument. Since you admit pilots do not add a huge amount of weight, there's no reason to exclude them from cargo launchers -- except the religious "unmanned space" argument.

Economics should be driving us to *smaller* vehicles...

In the case of crew yes, in the case of cargo no.

Sorry, Ken, but cargo rockets are not exempt from the laws of economics. There's a reason why the Spruce Goose failed as a cargo vehicle while the (tiny) DC-3 succeeded. It's the same reason why Von Braun's "great big rockets" have failed to open the space frontier.

... that can fly much more often.

Certainly this would bring down costs.

Yes. In fact, it's the only thing that will bring costs down.

"incidental" wasn't quite the right word I was looking for. A driver makes sense when the alternative is more expensive. Drivers are a major expense in space.

Sigh. Ken, you keep making dogmatic statements without any evidence. "Drivers" (can't you even bring yourself to use the word "pilots?") are not a major expense if they allow a vehicle to be reused, bringing costs down dramatically. Two separate studies by the Air Force and General Dynamics compared the X-15 to unmanned vehicles developed at the same time and came to the same conclusion -- having a pilot dramatically increased reliability and reduced the cost of the program.

Ken: Humans prefer to travel fast. Cargo doesn't have that requirement.

Edward: It does if you want the cargo to reach orbit and stay there.

I already said, "but to orbit it is like you say, not so important." Again, Brad makes the point well.

I would agree with that, but suborbital is not sexy enough for a lot of people. Besides, let's not kid ourselves. Suborbital vehicles may not be fast compared to orbital vehicles, but even Mach 3 is a pretty good clip.

I don't see how this relates to your previous statements, though. You were talking about sending missions to the Moon and Mars. That requires orbital launchers (and then some).

Perhaps you're thinking of terms in-space vehicles, but as Rand explained, that's not what we're talking about.

Put not your faith in Brad, for Brad is not God. Look instead at the facts.

There is also no reason for all of these pieces to be launched into orbit with manned personnel sitting at the top of those rockets either, even if some of them do include manned launches not directly related to the final mission profile.

Robert, returning to your 737 analogy, how often do you see a 737 take off without a pilot onboard?

I think the problem is that you and Ken and Brad are thinking of humans as merely passengers who are along for the ride. That's only partly true. "Personnel" may be passengers, pilots, or other flight crew. (Contributing to the confusion may be the fact that NASA misuses the term "crew" to include passengers as well as pilots.)

Separating passengers from cargo may indeed make sense, in some circumstances. You don't find many passengers on oil tankers, air freighters, or cargo trucks. Separating crew from cargo is another matter. There are indeed good reasons why we have pilots on cargo aircraft, and those reasons apply to spacecraft also.

A high launch rate will give you increased reliability, as you will have discovered all of the problems. This is also precisely why the Soyuz vehicle is so reliable... as Russia has flown this vehicle hundreds of times and knows everything that can (and sometimes does) go wrong.

The reliabilty of Soyuz is overstated. Statistically, it's no better than the Shuttle. The basic *design* of Soyuz may have flown hundreds of times, but each Soyuz serial number flies only once. There's no such thing as an acceptance test flight for an ELV, much less a low-speed taxi test or incremental envelope expansion. Its first operational flight is also its first test flight, so there's still plenty that can go wrong.

Thanks for the endorsement Rand. As for Robert, I gave it my best shot. But I can't force anyone to pay attention, that is up to them.

Robert, returning to your 737 analogy, how often do you see a 737 take off without a pilot onboard?

In reality.... there is no practical reason for needing a pilot on board any more for many aircraft flights. They do indeed pretty much fly themselves... with the exception of major mechanical break-downs and extreme conditions that could otherwise be avoided. The 737 and other similar-classed vehicles have so much automated equipment that pilots are currently the "backup equipment".

This has indeed been discussed within the aviation industry, however it is unlikely that many people would be willing to fly on such airplanes as passengers. There is also the little itty bitty problem of pilot labor unions, as there are situations that do require a pilot to intervene. This is a politically toxic question that is better left unanswered otherwise.

As for Brad, I am trying to "pay attention". Give me a reason to note when or even **IF** a mission to anywhere other than low-earth orbit is going to happen, then such a separation may make a little bit of sense. It simply doesn't apply to the current situation for manned spaceflight and won't for decades. In other words, all of the arguments you've made for separate vehicles is a moot point and irrelevant. There may be some validity to your arguments, but it has nothing to do with the manned rating of the Ares V or what ever architecture is going to be designed in the near-term.

I certainly don't see any votes in Congress to authorize a return trip to the Moon, much less the half trillion dollars necessary (with the Ares/Constellation infrastructure) to get to Mars. Public support for spaceflight of any kind simply isn't there for this scope of a mission.

In reality.... there is no practical reason for needing a pilot on board any more for many aircraft flights. They do indeed pretty much fly themselves...

You are seriously misinformed. Don't believe everything you see on teevee.

This has indeed been discussed within the aviation industry,

Discussed and dismissed. You're repeating old marketing hype from Airbus. Even they've stopped saying that, since the Scarebus started experiencing software problems.

Why would NASA at this time, be thinking of "Human rating" Ares 5? Is this a sign of concern, that Ares 1 might not be able to achieve it's desired function? Or is it concern that the in coming President may cancel Ares 1?

What happens, if Ares 1 does get cancelled? Does that then mean we (the US), have to wait until we have built Ares 5, before we again have access to LEO, after the shuttle is retired?

Even if we can get Ares 5 built in the next 12 years or so, what kind of vehicle is that to use to go to LEO? Obviously, that would be way over-kill. Extending the shuttle, for all those years, would be very impractical for many reasons.

1. Staying power, the shuttle can't stay on station, so we will still have to use the Russians.

2. Cost, a substantial extention of the shuttle, would create the need for extensive safety modifications.

3. Between the cost of continuing the shuttle, the cost of updating the shuttle, the cost of paying the Russians to stay on station as a life boat and the cost to build Ares 5, there would be no money left to build a cost effective "human rated" transport ship to take astronaunts to the ISS. Not to mention the financial mess this country is in, leaving in doubt any substantial increase in funding.

There is also the fact, that any smart company, would have a back-up plan, should Ares one not work out. What is our back-up plan?

We need to impliment a back-up plan immediately, so it can be ready. To me, the simplest back-up plan, is to fund COTS D. The cost to fund it, is extremely modest. If NASA funds it now, Planetspace or Spacex could have a "human rated vehicle ready by 2011, or 2012. If people are concerned over reliability, they can fly as cargo only vehicles, for the first year or two.

Yes, Spacex did lose its first 3 rockets, but in the early years of the American rocket program, we lost many rockets. These rockets are inexpensive, compared to Ares and their reliability will increase with use.

America needs a back-up plan and they need to fully utilize its' commercial space industry.