is now come to order this hearing to this morning is the latest in a series of hearings at the subcommittees holding on a critical issue an issue that will have to take into consideration as members of congress and also the white house in considering the future direction and funding for nasa in many ways the topic of today's hearing is one of the most important issues confronting us namely how to ensure the safety of those brave men and women whom the nation sends into space to explore and push back the boundaries of the space frontier of course i'm not under any illusion that human space flight can ever be risk free nothing in life of course is but the apollo one fire challenger columbia these fatal accidents as well as other spaceflight incidents that could have led to loss of life have driven that point home in stark and tragic terms indeed this subcommittee is holding today's hearing because we need to be sure that any decision being contemplated by the white house or by the congress are informed by our best understanding of the fundamental crew safety issues facing our human spaceflight program and in making those decisions we should not let either advocacy or on examine optimism replace probing questions and thoughtful analysis that is why the subcommittee has invited this distinguished guest panel witnesses to appear before us today we need to benefit from your perspective and experience as weak salmon critically important issues that congress will need to have answered if we are to assess the various proposals that are being put forth much has been said about the potential future plans for exploration in recent months but there has been precious little discussion about safety today's hearing is the first step in rectifying that situation let me list just a few questions that we hope that our witnesses will answer today as several of the witnesses have put in their prepared testimony the constellation program strove to respond to the recommendations of the columbia accident investigation board that the design of this shuttle system that replacing the shuttle should give overriding priority to crew safety the result is a system that is calculated to be significantly safer than the space shuttle and two to three times safer than the alternative approaches considered by nasa given that we hope that our witnesses as to whether we will hear from the whether or not they believe the burden of proof should be put on those who would propose alternatives to constellation to demonstrate that their systems will be as least as safe as aries and arayan alternatively we would like to hear whether or not would be acceptable to reduce the required level of crew safety and commercially provided crew transport services used to transport us astronaut much below what it looks like to be achievable in the constellation program in addition we need to hear our witnesses views on whether the timetable suggested for the availability of commercial crew transport services is realistic or is not that is when one takes into account all of the steps not just those that are explicitly safety related that will need to be taken before the first nasa astronaut can ride to the huge international space station on an operational commercial crew vehicle to our witnesses believe that such vehicles will be available in time to meet the significant fraction of nasa as i assess crew transfer and crew rescue needs prior to two thousand and twenty or not similarly given those required steps to our witnesses believe that would be commercial crew transport service providers would be able to garner sufficient revenues from non nasa passenger transport services to remain viable over the same time period or not i ask these questions and you'll hear other questions of course from our members because it's going to be difficult to make reasoned judgments about the wisdom of investing significant taxpayer dollars in would be commercial providers or altering congress's commitment to the existing constellation program in the absence of clear answers finally what are witnesses considered to be the most important safety relate issues that we need to be dressed if we are to make our decisions on the future of nasa human spaceflight an exploration program and at the end of the day what will congress need to do to have the insurance that we have done all that we can to ensure the safety of our nation's future human spaceflight activities this is not a hypothetical question is fundamental for fulfilling our responsibilities and members of congress with so much for our subcommittee to consider today i'm comforted that we have a very distinguished panel who can speak with conviction and knowledge about safety issues and everything that needs to be considered so i welcome all of you to disease hearing all of us to hear of course your passion about space whether in the private sector the public sector we want the best possible future for our nation in its space endeavors so i hope that this morning's hearing will help us chart a productive and responsible path forward and finally be not room ists if we did not acknowledge the unique contributions of one of our witnesses to the advancement of safety in human spaceflight and i want to welcome each of you to our hearing but particularly general tom stafford a veteran of gemini apollo a policy to use shall return to flight countless other spaceflight efforts he can speak as a true national hero and honest already so in closing i know that my colleagues join me in saying that we all joe oh general stafford a great round of debt for everything you have done for our country and we're honored sir that you're here with us today the chair now recognizes mr olson for his opening statement the safety in that we're going to be talking about today and i want to thank you for for allowing me to make this statement then for holding this hearing it's one of the topics that i think i'm most passionate about and that's safety of our crews and it simply has to at the heart of everything that's and is in space i also want to sincerely thank all of today's witnesses for taking the time and effort i know it takes time you prepared yourself back during your lifetime for this presentation to when you're the very type citizen that comes here that gives us information from which we glean the ingredients that go into the bales and we know it takes your time your time you and suffered to get here but you paid the price to get here and we're very honored to have each one and i want to sincerely thank all of you for taking the time and effort and i especially want to welcome a friend of mine there and take him the liberty of santa word baby but i've called on him for a lot of information on many occasions and we've exchanged personal letters through the years most recently when he chaired the stafford return to flight task force that was the stabber is to ensure the columbia accident investigation board recommendations were carried out and we have a lot of important issues to cover today the columbia accident board gave nasa many safety recommendations and principles to follow in the design future launch vehicles in may of two thousand and four after carefully reviewing the findings astronaut office published their position on the safety of futures systems one recommendation was to include a crew scape system part of any new launch vehicle then the nasa authorization bill two thousand and five many of us work together to ensure that such a system was part of nasa has planned for the next human exploration vehicle and i know we all will say another word or so about tom stafford he graduated from u s naval academy ten years after sam rayburn came to my breakfast table to talk to my mother to tell her why i couldn't a point made to the naval academy they were in school together at mayo college there is now texas a and m and commerce but they were friends forever she was part of the first and ever get sam rayburn to run for office and she want him to for me to the naval academy said just for raisins and all for reasons are his grades as later that came madam chairman came home to me because they read article in the paper when i was running for reelection for judge the highest speed ever attained by man or woman i'm sure twenty four thousand seven hundred ninety one mph during the re entry of apollo ten is instrumental in their early space missions with the russians he logged over five hundred seven hours in space and flew four different types of spacecraft the it tended to rank a three star general and he served as a defense and manager and one of the great presidents of the century president ronald reagan and the u five gentlemen we one thank you for calling this morning's hearing on the topic of paramount importance to the future of our human spaceflight program the issue of safety is really the starting point from which all discussions about the course and purpose of our nation's human spaceflight program should begin i'm certain we have a line up people out the door to test drive a new rocket that pioneering spirit is in the fabric of our nation but we must not take it for granted not cheap it by failing to provide the direction or performance performing the diligence necessary to ensure the astronaut safety i'd like to thank our witnesses for their parents for the subcommittee that i recognize that each of us but considerable time an effort preparing for this hearing and in some cases traveling long long distances to be here and we're not going to calculate general stafford's distance that he's traveled because he's got a big advantage over the rest of us but please know that the subcommittee appreciate your efforts as well as the wisdom and experience you bring and that refer to your guidance in the coming months and years ahead that's going to goes forward nasa space the transition away from the space shuttle the constellation program a program that is in the midst of testing  i desperately needs more funds and thank you mr hanley for all you've done for the constellation program but there's a theme across our entire spaceflight program human spaceflight program and increas resources what hansie abilities and capabilities of the commercial sector to allow their increased participation is well i fully support all of the current endeavors including commercial cargo but sadly from my position fully supporting and fully funding are not synonymous i truly wish they were safety is and must be on the minds of the men and women  i would like my brief time to focus on an area of concern to me that is just as critical as design standards human ratings requirements air worthiness to name a few and that is the issue of culture culture is difficult  find i know that but it is something that the columbia accident investigation board spent a great deal of time it found that this is a quote the nasa organizational culture had as much to do with this accident to continually introduce change it must not be lost on this committee that the increased participation of commercial providers will necessitate a change in business as usual at nasa we cannot take that lightly changing the way a bureaucracy operates is not easy in many cases it's not advisable and frustratingly in most cases not achievable but make no mistake i am not for letting the status quo dictate the way our government runs i'm just saying that in this case a change like this brings challenges and risks that we must not overlook the agency faces limited budgets massive contractor layoffs and the retirement of a signature program and perhaps a new way of doing things a good a new way of doing things is not inherently bad i'm not saying that i'm just saying that will bring forth challenges to a work force in the systems and processes that are every bit as difficult as design iraq it's i did up leave the cave report is a historical artifact but a guiding document the constellation program was designed with the cape freshly in mind they must keep that report fresh at ours as time goes on the challenge of a lack of funding permeates the every discussion we have about nasa but not a distant second is a lack of commitment to a defined program we have a program before us it's time we committed to it with our actions and the funding necessary to see it through in my mind the cost of not doing so far exceeds the amount needed needed to complete the task we are a nation founded by great explorers who are willing to take great risks great success is achieved the willingness to make great sacrifice however as a nation especially at taxpayer expense we must be diligent in making sure that the promise success is worth the promise sacrifice you because we anticipate votes probably occurring in about forty five minutes i'm going to ask that if other members have additional opening statements that we submit them for the record at this point we do have a distinguished set of panelists today i like to introduce them  o'conner is here he's a veteran of two space shuttle missions and is currently the chief of safety and mission assurance at nasa he will be discussing nasa says processes and plans for resolving safety and human radiant issues next we'll hear from m program manager for the constellation program at nasa he will be discussing the steps taken by the constellation program to maximize crew safety in its aries arayan system we will also hear from mr john c marshall who is a council member  aerospace safety advisory panel he will provide the perspective of the agency's outside safety advisory board we also we will hear from mr breton alcohol xander who is currently the president of the commercial spaceflight federation he will provide the commercial industry's perspectives and plans for addressing the issues welcome dr joseph or gola who is vice president of balad or incorporated he has more than forty years experience in risk analysis in the aerospace and nucular industries and will provide his perspective on the issues involved in ensuring the safety of both government and non government crewed space transportation systems a true expert welcome dr fogle and of course  dr general tom stafford who has been introduced a couple times already very very delighted that you are here as our witnesses should know you will each have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will include the record for the hearing and when you completed your spoken thank you chairwoman giffords members of the subcommittee i appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to discuss how nasa works to ensure the safety of human spaceflight and your letter inviting me to testify at today's hearing you ask that i address a number of questions related to the office of safety and mission assurance that nasa and how we work with safety of human spaceflight my statement will address those questions and provide additional context office of safety and mission assurance provides policy direction functional oversight and assessment for all agency safety reliability and quality engineering activities we are responsible for the agency safety and mission assurance requirements and standards and we serve as principal adviser to the administrator on matters pertaining to human space flight safety and mission success in the past several years my urbanisation has sponsored several initiatives to take advantage of our lessons learned from the past fifty years of human spaceflight included our increased emphasis on the qualifications and credibility of our professional work force formal technical authority for associated safety and mission assurance requirements as well as the authority to determine safety risk acceptability for designs and for operations including human spaceflight launch increased emphasis on safety culture throughout the human space flight programs this includes more open communications including encourage meant for dissenting opinions clear appeal paths all the way to the administrator as necessary for safety dissenting opinions and something we started recently called the yes if initiative it's incentive that promotes the ideal that credible and capable safety and mission assurance professionals don't simply just know the rules but they understand the rationale behind those rules to the point that they can help the designer and the operator with alternative approaches consistent with safety and mission success improvements in critical software independent validation verification and improvements in our knowledge management systems a significant portion of these activities as well as improved audit assessment and mishap investigation procedures and capabilities in the agency are primarily managed at the navy the new nasa safety center which we established two years ago in cleveland near the glenn research center as i mentioned much of our current thinking comes from hard lessons learned from the past the columbia accident investigation board documented for us once again the inherent risk of human spaceflight noting that quote the laws of physics make it extraordinarily difficult to reach our earth orbit and return safely to justify that risk the cable called for quote a national mandate providing nasa a compelling mission requiring human presence in space they also recommended that the design of the shuttle replacement should give overriding priority to crew safety rather than to trade safety against other performance criteria such as low cost and reusability or against advanced spaced operations capabilities other than crew transfer the x fifteen incidents the apollo fire the challenger the columbia accidents have caused us to insist on clear lines of accountability and what we do on strong checks and balances capable systems integration and a strong safety culture with open communications in all directions we treat every crude spaceflight like an engineering test flight retaining adequate program resources to thoroughly prepare for each flight and to analyze and lot working with our russian counterparts beginning in apollo so use and contending with shuttle mir and the international space station about the challenges of space flight and safety of human space flight for example we note in the aboard the columbia crew survival investigation report prepared by nasa spacecraft spacecraft crew survivability integrated investigation team and released last december is a comprehensive study of crusade the equipment and procedures used during the space shuttle columbia accident we've made this report available to the constellation program as well as to industry for use and guidance in their design for survivability finally as we review the options presented by the augustine panel we are considering how best to address their suggested commercial crew transportation options we are using fiscal year two thousand and nine recovery act funds to supplement or to support activities related to technologies that enable commercial human spaceflight capabilities we are also investing recovery act funds to begin development of a more concise set of human rating technical requirements that might apply to non nasa developers and we're looking at appropriate oversight and insight approaches to be used for such an adventure in closing the office of safety and mission assurance plays a significant role in ensuring safety of human spaceflight chairwoman giffords i would be happy to respond any questions you or other discuss nasa's emphasis on the continuing on the continuing effort to improve safety factors for our most valuable commodity or nasa astronauts simply put safety is a top priority and this is constellation program my testimony today will outline how the council ation program has sought to improve crew safety above that achieved and previous crew spacecraft this has been accomplished by incorporating safety into the constellation design process from the very beginning and in doing so we are ensuring that the constellation vehicles are being designed to account for future missions beyond low earth orbit as well as the less challenging requirements of our current space station missions however before we delve too far into  constellation programs risk inform design process i think it is first important that we take a look back where we came from many of you have touched on on some of that foundation here this morning already following the loss of the space shuttle columbia the columbia accident investigation board to provide the agency with the guidelines for moving forward with our return to flight activities mr mr o'connor cited the finding in their report and i won't repeat it here again that that informed our design efforts going forward from there the crew office also put out a memo then in two thousand and four weighing in on the discussion about how the next generation human spaceflight system should be designed stating that an order of magnitude reduction quote in the risk of loss of human life during ass sent compared to the space shuttle is both achievable with current technology and consistent with nasa is focus this on steadily improving rocket reliability and should therefore represent a minimum safety benchmark for future systems unquote nasa's exploration systems architecture study of two thousand and five use this guidance in recommending that nasa select a single solid first stage concept that would later become known as the aries one crew launch vehicle today the constellation program has a design goal of increasing astronaut safety tenfold relative to shuttle missions and we believe that this goal is achievable for four key reasons first constellation is utilize and utilizing a multifaceted design approach that remains unchanged since apollo designed the system to be  inherently safe as we can make it eliminate known risks and hazards where we find them and then add back up such as an abort system to mitigate the residual risk in addition to leveraging systems that with human rated heritage such as the space shuttle solid rocket motor masses utilizing improved computer modeling to help identify reduce and eliminate hazards and risks where we find them second unlike the space shuttle the arayan capsule will have a launch abort system during apollo nasa had comparatively little experience and computational capability and the abort effectiveness of such a system was only estimated today we can use advanced simulation tools and computers to test within the computer so that nasa can conduct a more thorough analysis in addition to utilizing test flights third constellation has chosen to tightly interweave design and safety team members into the design process the team is actively worked with design engineers to provide expertise and feedback to be a various assessments and analyses throughout the design maturation process and that process is ongoing and continues and finally constellation has used the agency's active risk management approach that identifies technical challenges early in the design process and aggressively works solutions technical risks are identified by likelihood of occurrence and consequence allowing designers to modify the emerging design to reduce or eliminate hazards currently the constellation program is progressing through an active phase of hardware and software tests and as tests are completed and dana analyzed our models will be updated allowing us to improve safety and improve systems performance at the same time we are investing heavily in risk reduction hardware and act that will help better calibrate and refine our models and simulations data that is essential to uncork to incorporate as early as possible into the aries one of the ryan designs nasa is also developing an integrated test and verification plan as part of its program preliminary design review next calendar year that includes a series of developmental tests to further refine and validate our designs for example on october twenty nasa completed the aries one x test flight at the kennedy space center in florida and although the data is still being collected and processed for more than seven hundred on board sensors the data is already providing tremendous insight into the  acoustic structural vibrational and thermal forces that aries one will expect is expected to experience knowledge that will contribute substantially to the reliability and safety of the aries one design in closing i would like to reiterate the safety is and always will be our number one priority in everything we do and that everyone at nasa is dedicated to ensuring that our astronauts are equipped to safely conduct the missions asked of them and that they are able to return safely home to another distinguished members of the committee good morning thank you again for inviting the asap to testify before your subcommittee today as you may know today's topic has been an area of interest that the a step is focused on for a sustained period most recently we've visited space x orbital science both currently commercial providers to nasa for logistics resupply to the space station discussed first hand their approach towards integrating safety into their vehicles of course interest in using commercial space industry phil nasa screwed delivery services to low earth orbit spike because of the recent augustine report recommendations that appropriate consideration be given to turning the service over to the commercial sector in making this recommendation they also noted that while safety never can be absolutely assured safety was assumed to be a given that believes this assumption was premature and an oversimplification of a complex and challenging problem and that there is no cookie cutter approach to safety in space nor is it a quote given nasa procedural requirements n p r eighty seven zero five point two b identifies the human rating process for nasa space system it specifies a risk based approach to evaluate a system against pre established requirements it does not however establish what those requirements are nasa emphatically intends this document to be a starting point with detail requirements to be tailored specifically for each nasa human spaceflight program including a possible nasa crude cots mission because it is illogical to rely on commercial providers to develop their own requirements for contractual services on human space flight to nasa the asap strongly believes that specific criteria should be developed to establish how safe is safe enough for these services in addition it is imperative that the cost enterprises understand in detail how verification of compliance shall be demonstrated this just now is being developed by nasa with the above background now briefly address the four questions that you asked us to talk to first was what do you consider to be the most significant safety related issues that will have to be addressed if nasa were to consider using commercial providers for crew transportation and station crew rescue services that believes that ensuring the safety of nasa astronauts that we sent into space may be the hardest part of commercialization of the crew trans mission the significant challenges to be solved include first establishing detail safety requirements that nasa deems essential to safe flight there must be clear and enforceable form that can be placed into a contract and tested for compliance second because no launch vehicle can be considered truly safe in the conventional sense of the word establishing minimal acceptable safety levels to guide system design and the baseline for both nasa and their contract as to what is safe enough is critical third much of the inherent safety of spacecraft designed pan's upon choices and decisions where risk are weighed against performance cost and schedule a process to ensure that all the potential hazards are properly vetted by both the government and contractors is important this will require more than the hands off approach that some in vision and finally establishing disciplined process related checks and balances so that nasa can verify that the contractor has demonstrated compliance with a lot of the designs requirements is necessary the next question was what safety standards should commercial entities have to meet if they are chosen by nasa the u s government astronauts to low earth orbit and what will be required for verification as noted previously nasa is n p r procedures prescribe a human rating process for nasa space system this document change in two thousand and eight represents a significant and substantive stiffed from the perspective approach one flies to good engineering standards and judgements prescriptive standards describe how things get done and are applied rigidly good judgment approach offers less specific direction and guidance advantages in both but with a clear need for written guidance record of change and direct connectivity to establish  time tested engineering standards in this regard position that any new standards for a commercial entity should begin with nasa's n p r and that the human rating for each system must appropriately be tailored to combine robust design solid engineering testing along with a system safety approach for examining options to minimize the probability and impact of doing so will in the end provide both higher reliability and safety for human life with each of these actions three what would be required to certify the air worthiness of any commercially provided through transportation system or station rescue service prior to its use by u s government astronauts how long do you anticipate such  have been satisfied to protect the safety of the crew passengers and the public from harm due to a design or operational flaw in the functioning of the vehicle for certification of any commercial or government space transportation system it is clear that the human rating standard would have to be understood by all of the participating party once those standards are known and it is incumbent on any party presenting a vehicle for use to present compelling evidence that the standards have been met that evidence can take several forms most of which are covered by standard industry practices in the case of flu crew delivery cargo delivery rescue from the station its well to remember that it must not only be certified for its own safety operations in itself but it must also be able to approach docking interface with the station without presenting a hazard to that because well response to the question of how long such a process would take our experience indicates that this is a function of two things first must be clarity and mutual understanding the requirements  processes and bearing the requirements have been met second there must be an openness and agree a sharing of cooperation of the design process to the reviewing authority of course the completion of the review remains directly proportional to the complexity and uniqueness of the proposed system finally in the annual report published for two thousand and eight the asap is concerned about human rating requirements substance applications and standards nasa wide as a basis for this concern the basis for our concern is that more than two years into the cops program efforts to develop human rating standards for cops the like program have only just begun and no guidance thus far has been promulgated therefore it is premature to consider any potential cost stevie ical as being human right and if cops and gents are to ever provide a level of safety expected for nasa crews is imperative that nasa is criteria for safety design of such systems quickly be agreed upon and provided to current or future providers i'd be happy to respond to any other questions you or any other members may have thank you mr marshall good to have you back mr alexander chairwoman giffords ranking member olson distinguished members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify morning on behalf of the twenty member we're going to say sions of the commercial spaceflight federation we appreciate the committee's longstanding support of commercial space commercial crew transportation as complimentary not competitive with nas mission and is crucial to the future of our nation's human spaceflight program for several reasons first after shuttle retirement the united states will not have the capability to launch humans into space for likely six to seven years during this gaffe we will send billions of dollars overseas as we purchase seats on russian vehicles at fifty one million dollars a seat and rising commercial crew can help prevent future russian price increases preserver done an access to the space station and potentially shorten the gap second enhanced commercial commercial enhanced commercial spaceflight will allow us to more fully utilize the space station which is just now being completed third commercial missions to lower thorp it will allow nasa to focus its resources and expertise on exploration beyond low earth orbit commercial piro has been endorsed by a long line of presidents and congresses from the two thousand and four vision for space exploration to the alders commission that same year to the two thousand and five and two thousand and eight nasa authorization should come as no surprise that the augustine committee stated quote there is little doubt that the u s aerospace industry has the technical capability to build and operate a crew taxi to lower the orbit and quote just as important the committee stated their unequivocal belief that commercial spaceflight could be done safely indeed safety is paramount to everyone in this industry a group of thirteen former nasa astronauts recently wrote in the wall street journal that quote we believe that the commercial sector is fully capable of safely handling the critical task of low earth orbit human transportation and quote a taxi service to lower thought of it is a less less difficult more narrowly focused mission than that of a ryan crew exploration vehicle and can therefore have more robust margins for these reasons commercial vehicles can be more cost effective for space station operations without sacrificing safety in order to meet stringent safety goals nasa and industry must agree upon a detailed thoughtful plan torsion space flight industry believes the following four principles are key first demonstrated reliability through a robust test program is crucial robust testing throughout development and production is necessary to demonstrate confidence in the overall system commercial crew systems will only begin crude flights once reliability has been demonstrated through multiple successful test flight without crew demonstrated launch reliability is essential for overall safety the atlas family for example has had over ninety consecutive successes that was five has a perfect record of one thousand nine hundred sets for launches and the falcon nine will of launch more than dozen times for cargo and satellite missions before crew missions begin second robust safety it will require additional human rating of the launch vehicle and a reliable crew escape system to protect the crew in the event of a launch vehicle anomaly third clear safety standards and requirements are crucial it is vitally important that nasa and industry agree on the safety requirements up front and this dialogue must begin in earnest now nasa is human rating requirements document will serve as a starting point for this dialogue but must be tailored for commercial systems just as it is for nasa developed vehicles nas currently reviewing their application to commercial systems and the commercial spaceflight industry is also conducting a similar review finally let me address government oversight any commercial crew program must be conducted under the current regulatory regime established by law namely f a a licensing f a a licensing is important to ensuring a consistent regulatory regime for both government and commercial missions which is key to attracting private investment and non nasa customers while the f a a would retain overall licensing authority nasa would maintain oversight as a customer in particular nasa would establish astronaut safety requirements in consultation with industry and stablish mission unique requirements such as crew capacity and requirements for space station docking and most importantly have final approval of the already over the launch of nasa astronauts which would be granted only after nasa is satisfied that the vehicle is safe just as nasa does for today shuttle missions in conclusion we firmly believe that nasa and commercial industry can and must work together to develop safer human spaceflight capabilities we must begin that dialogue now thank you for the opportunity to be here today and i want for your questions thank you mr alexander four simple laws for safe space launcher design the first floor as been referred to before and that is to make the design is inherently safe as possible that involves two important aspects first to make the launcher reliable and second and this is four times not mentioned in discussion to make sure that the failure mode of the launch vehicle present benign environment second separate the crew from the source of failure as far as possible in the design or as i like to say put them on top where god meant them to be third establish a credible abo triggers and doing so balancing the warning time available with the threat of false positives against the g loads on the crew fourth including abort system that is tested and verified for robustness to allow for a safe crew escape and recovery i would mention that from my experience the aries one vehicle is the singular vehicle that has been designed from the very low of its conception with safety in mind what i mean by that is that other launchers for example emphasized launch reliability but investigation subsequent to action and conditions allowing for abort is something they usually don't address and the reason for is very simple they're interested primarily in payload to orbit when a payload fails subsequent conditions of there are no matter to the person who pays for the payload when a crew launcher fails the conditions subsequent to that launch failure are important to the payload which is the crew we hope that the alternatives to the aries one will follow the remainder of the rules that we mentioned but in most of the literature discussing it the importance of it of an abort system and the testing of an abort system independent of the number experiences of the launcher has not really been addressed many times for example we speak of successes in terms of maybe one hundred sixty s as on the atlas five which is a credible wonderful reliable record but i remind the committee that the space shuttle had twenty five successes prior to the challenger accident one of the things to remember in the design of a new launch vehicle or the application of an existing launch vehicle to crew is to understand that they invariably in modifications of designs of the development of new designs we have an issue of reliability growth in mature designs need time to become mature and that is why the board system testing and integration into the design and the benign nature of the failure initiated it's extremely important for crude launcher now as was mentioned we did an independent assessment of the areas on an apples to apples comparative basis to all the other alternatives we were provided and i showed this on a slide this presented there and a comparative basis you can see from the standpoint of loss of crew the aries vehicle is somewhere between two to three times safer than all the alternatives and cases more than three times safer alternative vehicles if we look at this people often mention yes but there's a certain amount of uncertainty there certainly is uncertainty but even within the uncertainty take into consideration the loss of crew benefits from the aries one vehicle significant above the alternative the reason for it is not only its inherent reliability in the first stage proven in two hundred fifty five successful shuttle launches but also the nature of a solid rocket booster the predominate failure mode by f a singular solid rocket booster present a rather benign abort environment to the launch abort system it is the combination of this inherent reliability and its inherent abort the nine abort conditions that make the aries one such a safe launcher and that's the reason why it was designed from the beginning in that way thank you thank you dr michael general staff ranking member olson distinguished members of the committee many old friends water to be invited here to appear before you today to testify on the matter of crew safety and human spaceflight as a result the augustine committee report past years mr augustine invited me to be the first presented to the committee did a fact that i presently chair the i s s independent advisory task force and brave asli and chaired the shuttle mir task force i'd also chaired a year long study at the direction of the vice president now and nasa should return to the moon and go on to mars in a safer better and a more rapid timeframe at a minimum cost the study was title return to flight task group to review the columbia accident investigation board recommendations to ensure that these recommendations were carried out by nasa before the space shuttle return to flight and today i want to vol performed by the augustine commission to cover these broad based subject generalities short period of time after my own extensive examination of the committee's reports i strongly agree with the majority of their findings however on a few i disagree i would strongly agree that nasa administrator who is assigned responsibility for the management nasa needs to be given authority to manage the agency this includes restructuring resources the workforce and facilities to meet the needs the augustine committee has pointed out to some of the underlying concerns and all the deliberations on the future of u s human spaceflight program are that nasa funded for many years and on this point i strongly agree i certainly hope that this year a satisfactory appropriations bill for nasa will be asked i agree with the committee recommendation remaining space shuttle flight should be launched on a schedule that is compatible with the normal procedures that are used for safe checkout and test for launch operations and which makes then the flights into two thousand and eleven the committee wisely recommended the continuation of the u s participation in the i assessed to be extended to two thousand and twenty we must remember that the us cannot make a unilateral decision to end in new york the international space station however the i s s will never be fully in affectively utilized unless researchers and all the i s f international partners have confidence that the facility will be supported and sustained as long it is operationally viable and technically useful defective uses great international laboratory the i s s requires a guaranteed cargo and crew delivery to be available as soon as possible after the space shuttle retirement however the cargo dimensions are somewhat limited the commercial transport of government crews to the i s s has major implications of which i have a very different view i would like to differentiate the two cargo delivery to the i assess and for karsh commercial cargo delivery the first issue is development of a reliable booster to low earth orbit the second issue is to develop an autonomous transfer vehicle to and the japanese h t the the development of the transfer vehicle is in itself a significant challenge the european space agency route recently delivered their first a t v payload approximately four years i certainly wish the two us energy success in meeting their nasa milestones were cargo delivery since i assess is dependent upon continued supply of cargo delivery by the partners with respect to commercial one b and lerma giant saturn five and over the period of thirteen years i experienced and participated in development of high reliability human rated boosters human rated spacecraft and launch abo right i would not be here today madam chairman you have been reading about me in a bit you were a column but i was also backup commander for the second block one apollo flight and have my crew performing this a similar test in the sr spacecra at the same time the apollo one x in occurred and the apollo one crew died in a far to cape i was a backup commander on the first apollo block two spacecraft apollo seven and again spent considerable time in the factory and it was undergoing tests and fabrication at that time and there was concern numerous nasa engineers inspectors support technicians to facilitate this effort i was in command of apollo ten the first flight of the litter  the launch abort system successful integration of all three elements and the process of requirements design and construction of all these parts starts with a nasty safety and mission assurance requirements there also has to be a process where there's not excessive creep in these requirements which could result in cost increases not schedule unfortunately the augustine report gave just a very brief mention of crew investment and have a satisfactory return a major issue is who assumes liability for the save government crew delivery if it is commercial what insurance be available and what cost if saved commercial and that statement in the cell has a huge financial implication for both the government and the commercial providers as nasa is by a government crew ride rather than a spacecraft then by  today we are really blessed to have such a star studded group of individuals with lifetime's worth of knowledge and expertise we are going to begin our round of questions now i'm going to start with five minutes and because we have so many members i will try to really make sure that we all speak for five minutes and including cutting myself off let me begin by something that dr fogl i had put in his testimony and touched on what the slides that you had stated that it was your belief that the areas one launch vehicle because of its inherent focus on being a safe is achievable from the very beginning has the best chance to be outstandingly safer and terms of being a crew launcher you talked about that as a good way to begin from from just the very start given the fact that we are under enormous budget constraints here in the congress and that funds available for nasa human spaceflight an exploration program are always going to be more constrained that we would like we need to see that we did think about how we prioritize and i'd like to hear from i think general staff or to mr marshall of how important a factor should the inherent safety of the aries one vehicle be for congress to consider as we make a decision on which launch system or system to pursue immediate nasa's international space station and exploration needs i'd also like to hear whether or not this should be the inherent safety of the aries one should this be a significant discriminator when choosing among all two bernadette's and also who should carry the burden of proof general let me start with you requirements that they reliability of the crew from launch orbit is three nines in other words you haven't they are no more than one out of ten thousand i did my own review and i have my best memory back from apollo operations and then was later center director and he said that they were striving for four nines and as was in fact dr craft said he'd like to have a few large just of his know that the life of the individual depends on this is truly a first level engineer the lead designer the chief engineer the program manager in the company executives this is also true of the machinist the contract buyer the piece parts selector in the safety law building quality control experts and the test engineers and eventually by the person who has to stand up on launch day and say go when that launch director asked in my opinion that is the case for the areas we learn to ride it is not a case where the cots crude government vehicles this think that just a large dedicated oversight group could provide the same amount of credibility and reliability safety and quality for a machine is to say that the first paragraph was misunderstood and is probably not but experience so it starts right from the very start and i know from my own experience the titan too had several dead zones  well first of all as you've heard today from this panel i think everybody agrees that safety is got to be an integral process of selection and enforcement any vehicle that you use in the future for  human flight to provide astronaut travel to any place in that low earth orbit or beyond so i think that that's an absolute given it has to be fundamentally thought through from the very beginning that said the  had the opportunity to look and observe the evolution of the aries process we've challenge jeff and his team on numerous occasions and we've been very very impressed by the product and the processes that they've employed the commercial side is just now beginning and as i noted in my opening statement we believe actually that nasa is behind because they haven't articulated what the requirements are from a human ratings requirement we find good receptivity from the commercial providers thus far but the truth is they're building vehicles today and we will would rather have had those reading requirements articulated so that they could be integrated into the design process at the moment rather than let them transpire and move forward for integration at some other time so we're very concerned about where the cots deprogram  like or similar name is in this particular case so the basic bottom line is safety has to be a primary consideration in any selection of any vehicle thank you thank you very much madam chairwoman and i'd like to follow up on the mr marshall's comments but with you mr o'connor i mean that is one of the criticisms we've heard about the cuts the program nasa has any commercial space is that gas is behind in getting the information to the industry as to what they need to do to become human rated and so could you briefly explain how nasa uses its human grade requirements to tailor the design of a particular crude system such as the areas  if again follow up on the other lot of question mr marshall's comments if the human race requires a top level requirements how would a potential commercial provider gain the insight to design a system that meets that his requirements e commercial crew transport there is currently there is no formal start of that program we've been talking about it we've asked for people to commercial companies to give us information on how they think they might go we've made our regulations our policies our requirements known all that have asked for them have we made them available as i mentioned even those things that are not yet  transformed into requirements and standards the results of the survivability study that we did in two thousand and eight that's not yet been flowed into a set of standards we tried to make that available  well the human rating requirements document at the top level is thirty one technical requirements or what i call shell statements it's very limited it's very top level it's the kind of thing that's the shelf having a board escape system  you shall have failure tolerance in your design but in the beginning of that document it says that there are three pieces to this the first piece is that you're expected with your design to do all the things in the nasa development that are required throughout the whole set of standards and requirements not just those thirty one but all the mandatory standards and requirements are given before you get into this human rating requirements document  this is where tailoring comes in we spent six to eight months with the constellation team and my team going over the flow down of all the safety and mission assurance requirements these requirements come in the form of  documents that are called mandatory standards or mandatory requirements but in order to know which of the shall statements that are embedded in those things really apply you have to go through a pretty thorough flow down activity and we did that with constellation it took about six  to go through that tailoring process to figure out for this particular concept for this particular mission for this particular design which of our shell statements would apply we also invited the team to come in with alternatives there is a nasa standard but there's also alternatives industry has some standards for example on how to do soldering and so on we start with the nasa standard but we invite our contractors in our projects to come in with alternatives if they think they can do it just as well this is part of that yes if thing i was telling about earlier now as far as something that we don't design because our nasa says human rating requirements document is as for a nasa standards of the day it was built to russian standards back in the sixty's the process for building and assembling and launching the soyuz was not to nasa standards it was a longstanding russian procedures to get  comfort level we needed to fly our person on their on their mission we spent about three years with some of our best engineers working with the russians to understand the equivalence of their system we know they don't do things exactly the way we do but can we get confident about it and we took some time and a lot of good people to develop that confidence and in the end we got to the point where we believe that even though they may not do things exactly the way we do we are confident to the same level that we would if we are flying them on one of our  systems this business of acceptability of risk is part meeting requirements it's also part building the confidence where the requirements don't exist or whether someone else is requirements we need to do a risk briefly i just want to report that we have followed up with nasa as to where they are we received a detailed briefing in november and are satisfied that the approach that they're moving forward is now appropriate and timely each each time the aries one comes to the top as a respected and well thought out plan for five years in the making the successful test of aries  achievement that we truly truly appreciated and with the seven hundred sensors that were mentioned in the data that's going to be collected it seems to me that the the commercial aspect of this was an introduction into the augustine report that was fascinating and it's greatly discussed but it is not not hard science as we have now today with documentable evidence of safety it's probably three maybe four or five years out and it seems that we could achieve our commercial aspirations in space by developing the aries one to the point where it is reliable consistent our solid fuel engine is reliable our liquid fuel motor is reliable our iran capsule is going to be roll obl we have every reason to believe that it is and it seems like our stepping stone into the commercial venture is successful development of areas where it can be ensured where we can be confident that our human spaceflight our astronauts  can be insured and it can be successful my question is why wouldn't we take the approach of asking our government to fund the constellation project with the idea in thirty six months or forty eight months we could transform much of that information into the commercial sector with a great deal of confidence and not delay the challenge that we're facing with china india and japan mr alexander would you address that please first of all i think it's important to remember that aries arayan particularly ryan is designed for exploration beyond leo it is a spacecraft that prime purpose is to  originally designed to take people to the moon and back and the space station if necessary if there were not alternatives as such it is a a more complex spacecraft and more expensive spacecraft i think what you would want to do  commercially as for the aries one rocket in terms of commercial use i think you also have an infrastructure per flight cost that would be prohibitive from a commercial perspective  that being said the commercial spaceflight federation takes no position over whether the aries one program should continue as is or should be changed or ryan for that matter i personally believe that you know this country needs an exploration program it needs a crew exploration vehicle like a ryan to go beyond low earth orbit that's very important for the for the nations human spaceflight program but at the same time we don't need to be serving all missions with the same vehicle because then you're not optimized for any one mission and i believe and i think the augustine committee found that the capability or the technology the knowledge s industry to do crew transfer and cargo transfer to low earth orbit and that if nasa wants to get on with the business of exploring beyond low earth orbit it needs to transition operational tasks like that so that is not continually taking on more obligations than it can afford to take on thank you mr hanley the time frame for a human writing an atlas or  delta for the astronauts would be what what would we look at if we said today that we're going to develop the commercial sector with taxpayer funded money  i'm going on memory now we can get an answer for the record of five if i misstate this but i believe this on the order of six years from start to develop a system that would have been derived off the delta four heavy heavy launch vehicle that that booster as aerospace studied it would have used the existing core stage and a new upper stage not included in that study of course where the implication orion if iran had to change at all and that would be something that would have to be further studied thank you q can i follow up on that please that that study was as  described by mr hanley was talking about a delta four heavy vehicle that is for the iranian spacecraft a low earth orbit twenty five metric ton spacecraft it did not address or at least in the in the comments to now address the at was five version  vehicle which has flown one thousand times successfully which would be used to put commercial cruise capsules that are on the order of eight to twelve metric tons up into low earth orbit so it's not an apples to apples comparison to talk about a six or seven year human rating for one vehicle when in the commercial world we're talking about a different vehicle that has already you know achieve a certain demonstrated reliability three human rating process but it's certainly not at the six to seven year time frame but what would be your estimate  other than the six to seven years would you say three i would say that i think that the capsule's what's going to drive a timeline not the human rating in the launch vehicle the town of general general the experience we had with the gemini titan and that was an all out push was thirty nine months is over three years and we had some dead zones in that and i don't see how this could be any sooner it will probably be longer one thing i might add about this gap and i would rather not transfer money to russia just like anybody on this committee would but i think one thing that there look what's occurred is that the o m b to me and defacto has set space policy when they came in and got money back and said you'll finish the first originally came in just a personal or second level  finish it by fifteen flights two thousand and eight they said but the president said we're going to complete the space station phase out the shuttle said maybe so but here's what it is so to maybe there needs to be like  we would have had the aries aligned ryan flying in two thousand and twelve or thirteen so there would not been too much of a gap and i don't know that the president ever really got the word back because he had other major issues on his you know stafford you worked in the space program for many many many years and you spend a lot of days of apollo to the current shuttle program and i think you're about as knowledgeable as anyone i know and you know we're looking for a way to savor the program that i guess the last four five or six congresses have agreed to pursue and that involves having to address that four year gap in there and if i may be wrong probably am but seems like to me that we need about two billions a year additional for about four years to make that happen and what that would do would preserve our leadership in space would preserve our space station would preserve our our friendship with some partners that that have been good partners in space what was your experience during the apollo program and working with congress and the administration on program management and scheduling issues and could you highlight the major distinctions between then and now it was a lot easier then than it is now and i think we just have to keep we just have to keep insisting that the president either in the next address to the nation comes onin and and recommends the  in a minute or so if you can just kind of compare those times with today thank you mr all the the president's policy was carried out completely with the help approval of the congress is setting space policy and this is one of the real issues also we have today continued resolutions that we didn't have in those days but present such a policy should be carried out in then you said i would certainly do it so we could have had the aerial ryan fly in two thousand and twelve or thirteen so there wouldn't have been much of a gap in this like us or any other want to make any comment on that you're all experienced and you've been around a while you know not too many years ago we almost lost the space program by one vote in congress and that a program something over one hundred votes hundred twenty or so but then we all got together on it and i'm just wondering what kind of pressure when put on the president the united states to come out with a recommendation of course back in those days we that's before katrina and before the assist to the nature and set us back and several of our of our states and nine eleven eight nine years of war we're in a little different situation but you know if you can throw away three hundred fifty billion dollars on a not even know where it's going or not ever receive an accounting for it they could find two billion a year for the next four years for us to save a program like the space program it's a lot harder to do now but you you six man one two three four five six our leaders and more knowledgeable than anyone i know this is the best panel i've seen up here in a long long time to put your shoulder to the wheel and every chance you get up to the president talk to those or talk to the czars or who every have to talk to that to get into it but we need to save this program we need to awfully good place for one right now save a program i've even thought about trying to learn all the spooky ordering of america for writing and to get them to write in what they think about it because they're there the r benefits benefactor beneficiary of what you do and what we're what we're going to what if congress is going to do this year and next year with regard to the space program but do you see a lot of difference in then and now don't you t thank you mr hall one of the reasons why we've held so many hearings and the two hearings ago we had a fascinating panel of experts to talk about tech transfer from nasa because in so many ways the accomplishments of nas go beyond just exploration or go beyond what we can physically see up to space right now but from the airlines industry to the medical industry computers it's been extraordinary the gift that nasa has given to our country into the world and so part of our job on the subcommittee is to make sure that the american people the president other members of congress understand that as well next we're going to hear from this edwards thank you madam chairwoman and thank you to the panel every time we have these hearings i learned something new in the my mid twenty's i recall sitting in front of a monitor at goddard space flight center the elation of a launch in january one thousand nine hundred six the confusion thinking that there was something that we had done wrong in our communications on that day and then the absolute silence of silence and unlike any i've ever heard of her are our colleagues as we realize the disaster that happened with the challenger and i think at that time i think all of us no matter what we did believe that we paid great attention to safety and obviously the investigations that followed demonstrated that there were huge ga in safety pockets where there was a lot of attention to safety and other pockets where there wasn't and we even to this day and after the columbia disaster continue to point to those some of those same gaps and i think you know safety has to be north south east and west in nasa weather services are and work is being performed by a contractor or internally at general stafford pointed out and so one of the questions that i have really is especially with the principles that i think dr for goal you outlined how you would take those princip today and actually even apply them to challenge your and to columbia to see whether you know these design systems for example that had been you know launched i don't know twenty five times i think when the challenger disaster happened then we would have described those as you know pretty reliable but whether those principles applied today would allow challenger and columbia to meet the mark as you've indicated that perhaps in the design and the concept of the aries you think that that would meet the mark the the principal problem with the space shuttle the lack of abort system the lack of being able to address the recovery of the crew given an incident the shuttle as a launch vehicle is among the best if not the best in the world as a reliable vehicle but the shuttle points out very dramatically the difference between reliability and safety and i'd also like to point out having been involved in the original shuttle competition the reason one of the reasons we saw the shuttle was we were concerned at the time about recovery for the a pow camp so we had had one failure we lost one parachute and we were concerned about that system and we were therefore interested in designing a system that would address the failings of the past and so we felt that a landed system a system with wings would improve on the on the recovery and it certainly has reproved on the recovery but it's increased the vulnerability in accidents and increase the vulnerability in other areas so one of the things that i think we should learn from this is that we can't in to support all the unknown unknowns in the system and that's one of the reasons why it's essential to have a robust and well tested system that able to survive and abort safely we didn't do that on the shuttle so mr marshall i wonder if you would describe for me how it is that we could apply a set of safety standards and principles both within nasa and also in a commercial environment given our experience well you heard earlier that ought to be the licensing authority for a commercial venue we certainly agree with that and we think that there's a need to really aggressively develop that process i'm not an expert on that and haven't participated but my understanding is that the process is just beginning process really needs to be accelerated from a commercial perspective if there is going to be movement and direction in that particular arena so we think that the combination of both the licensing authority and the user of that which is the nas to the constellation concept i think that from what i have seen that there ryan is an aries system has a role to play i'm a bit worried that what we have here however is a mindset that i've seen before that a mindset that's failed before and that is trying to have one system that will serve all needs and thus actually bringing down the chance of success of that mission or the ability of that mission to actually do a very great job in a specific  area i remember the edsel car was supposed to be something for everybody and they turned out to be nobody in particular really wanted it because everybody it was designed for everybody i remember the app one eleven which was an aircraft that was designed supposedly remember that during the early sixty's and it was supposed to be something that could fulfill every mission but then once they built it none of the military people really wanted it because it really didn't fill any of the missions as well as they had hoped was what was what they wanted i would hope that area ryan and we're not making that same mistake trying to say that we have to have the same rocket and transportation system for low earth orbit that we have to have for other missions later on the moon i nation that's why i think maybe the aries ryan system is important in the long run sir this is a this is a decision that was made some time back when we were looking at the vision and what we wanted to do with human spaceflight and in the context of the mission which was to have something that would take our astronauts to the moon as a as a stepping stone to further out the concept included two different launch vehicles one heavy and one light and the light one was carrying cost effective and the most efficient way of doing it right and i agree it had to do that as part of the lunar mission and if you simply said let's not worry about the lunar mission let's do something just to themselves in terms of actually launch systems i don't know we haven't put people on them but they've proven very reliable and again i don't by the way i support the moon mission i think the looked at it harder than i have but just from my view as a safety guy it seemed to me that either one of those two options was an f one eleven equivalent the atlas and delta are not designed to carry people in space they don't have the structure for it they were requirements of constellation are the preponderance for the lunar mission so we selected it because where we want to be taking our risk is on the lunar surface not in the first hundred miles and and we leverage off of the decision that we to the american public as we move forward and make every effort to maintain our leadership in space exploration for all the reasons that are obvious to us and that we attempt on a regular basis to make obvious to others so we thank you for being here  no question about the fact that safety is a very important concern i want to chat with you a little bit about an article that was in today's orlando sentinel i'm from some central florida where the and so it's a big issue for us in our district with regard to what the next phase of space exploration will be and and also a great concern of course for the gap but nevertheless safety of course is is very important the story in today's orlando sentinel discusses the two thousand and five architecture study the sas recommendation that after two test flights the first five flight of the new rocket and capsule deliver only cargo to the international space station to establish a record of reliability before putting humans on board that you said stated take five flights in addition to the two test flights to surpass the shuttle safety level of one and one hundred if there were no cargo flights before hand the risk of the first flight after the two test flights would be approximately one in forty or approximately two and a half times the shuttle adding cargo flights to ensure safety would only seem to increase the gap  s human spaceflight capability so the question i wanted to ask was beginning with mr hanley i understand that the current plans proposed putting astronauts aboard aries one in iraq after only a single unmanned flight of the final rocket can you discuss this decision in light of the original recommendation and what steps are you taking to address this concern certainly as part of the program's preparation for its program informed by that plan and it requires an understanding of the test program and joe joe talked about this earlier the test program that goes into verifying that these systems will in fact perform the way that the designers believe they will there is a lot of variability in the methods one might apply to try to use a crystal ball to predict how reliable a particular system will be coming up with an absolute number is very sensitive to the method or the approach thought process that you use and that's what we see so so predominantly we use these risk numbers to compare alternatives not necessarily to inform some absolute i wrote that section that's a great confusion if they would had only gone to the page before they would have seen that that statement referred to an advanced engine on the iranian spacecraft blacksmith what we were trying to do was to enhance the reliability emission reliability of the lunar missions with a given performance we were looking at lots methane because lots of methane was able to be carried through as a as a launch propellant for mars but we what we system the immaturity of the system drops to almost zero and now the maturity of the system is based upon primarily the second stage of the aries system and if you look at what it takes for that to get to the equivalent of the shuttle it's  today so the statement in the sentinel is correct but it applied to an option in the study not the one that we're flying today thank you unfortunately i'm afraid that ended up using all my time but thank you for the answer and i'll see to it that that so i need to get caught up on some of the conversations have been having for the last half hour saw pass on asking questions thank you if you have a glad you're here we're going to get a second round we have not had votes yet so it's our good fortune today and while we have all of you here we're going to take advantage of it so i'd like to begin i'm going to ask everyone on the panel starting with general stafford if you could answer two questions taking everything that we've learned today about safety and the complexities of what it what it takes to build these these vehicles is the timetable for availability of commercial crew transport truly realistic that's my first question and the second is given the required steps of everything that that factors into building the vehicles do our witnesses believe that would be commercial crew transport service providers be able to garner sufficient revenues from non nasa passenger transport services to remain viable over this time period as well so those are the two questions that i have i know that you gentlemen come from different aspects in different angles of this industry you know the backdrop of course is in light of the fact that we have a diminished budget i mean if we had sufficient budget to do everything i'm sure that all of us on this on this committee would agree that this is where we want to invest our money i mean because the benefits that come from both the private and public sees space sector is outstanding and much underappreciated but given the fact that we have finite resources i think these are two important report two thousand and sixteen if they would have if they would go to the requirements starting with safety and mission insurance i think that would be a very tough go to make it they could possibly make it but on the other hand when he said two thousand and seventeen for the area ryan i do not understand that it should be far sooner than that on the as far as other customers that the commercial cr certainly the challenge is a potential challenge that could be met by the commercial crew it's a question of what the uncertainty of all this and and from my perspective based upon history it would be very uncertain that we could meet that kind of a date accident the payload that's not true doesn't care a whit about what happened but the payload cares a lot so what we have to do is to design the abort system integral to the failure mechanisms that are parent on that system and that requires a is realistic that's seven years from now it certainly i don't believe that the human rating of the launch vehicle is the long pole in the tent i believe it's the development of a capsule to take people to the station and back there are companies that say they can do it in significantly faster time than that and there are others that say it will take at least that long and i wouldn't pretend to be the expert that is going to predict exactly what it will take however i do know that it  will take longer if we do not start now as i said before i don't believe that that you know aries or i and commercial crew are competitive i think that you need to do both so it's not about which one gets there first necessarily would do believe that because the servicing the station is a simpler mission less complex and you can use demonstrated reliable launch vehicles that will need modifications but not extensive modifications because they have a track record of say nineteen successful launches or heritage of ninety launches that that that is a realistic timetable second as to whether there are viable revenues from  noncommercial or non government sources there is already a market for private space flight participants that have been paying between twenty and thirty five million dollars to fly in the soyuz those people spend six months of their lives learning russian training on russian systems separated from their revenue generating or you know jobs that they have i believe that if the united states industry were able to offer that capability you would have a far greater number of people willing to take that that  n and pay that kind of money also you know with the hope that with commercial the price comes down that market becomes bigger but there's also a market for for other u s industries and other activities microgravity research et space that is not sufficiently served by nasa in the nasa process and i think the commercial will be able to find additional revenues there they certainly will not be the bulk of revenues in the beginning but there is a place for or there is a in two thousand and eight annual report we made a statement that there is no evidence to suggest that the use of a commercial space industry vehicle can significantly close the gap we stand by that statement we have no survivability i mentioned to you in my opening statement that we have gone to space x and orbital science we are at orbital sciences weeks and during the presentation we asked senior management if they had done a market analysis to find other revenue sources that would address this specific issue the answer was no we have not done the market analysis because we see no viable commercial requirement at this time and i'm not trying to put words in their mouse that's just the way i interpreted that i would think that that's a fairly accurate statement handley with respect to time table i can really only speak to what what i would see as the challenges and joe joe was touched on the the i think it is and i would agree with mr alexander i think it is about space craft it's about the launch abort system as well as the rocket joe i think spoke quite eloquently about about how how it is an integrated system that needs to be designed all together as an integrated system to be able to maximize crew safety and i think that's where the real challenges lie for for other developers is certainly where our focus has been for these four years and so what kind of what that does to the timetable or not i really couldn't comment not having detailed knowledge of the plans of the schedules but i can just tell you as a safety guy watching program and project managers and contractors predict schedules for years as i watch that happen i've seen that sometimes they miss and some of the things that cause them to miss schedules is the downtime after failure another thing is the lack of integration up front you don't do good integration up front and you pay for it later and it takes time i remember after challenger we tried to retrofit an escape system on the challenger and we flat couldn't do it so it wasn't even a matter of schedule it was just too hard so getting early getting things done quickly in the front part of the program that you are going to need later  on can help with schedule because it takes much longer to fix things than to do it right the first place so that's that's all i can add to that and i really haven't looked at commercial revenue at all so i wouldn't comment on that does that level of technology that we have now how does that increase our ability to develop a vehicle safely and in some not have necessarily the flight test that we had to have in the past and one sort of side to side a question to that is how does development there is one help speed up the development there is five you know basically the same system in many many ways does that allow us to celebrate the bellman of the areas five mr  first the way i think of it is that by developing aries one we are in fact developing parts of aries five today so we aligned our strategy purposefully back four years ago if you're if you recall coming out of the exploration systems architecture study the crew launch vehicle as it was called that time aries one was called it was a four segment solid plus a upper stage that had utilized the space shuttle engines and we purposefully at the agency level made it made a decision to change to the five segment and j two based upper stage because we wanted to leverage the early investment of dollars we were making toward building the heavy lift launch vehicle so that's the synergy between areas we want to aries find that that a lot of folks miss so we're building part of the aries five rocket today with the with the five segment booster with the j two extension we even purposefully will be looking to play forward to the investment we're making in the avionics guide the rocket as well the the the hurdles that  nasa have suggested that by taking on the risk of procuring maybe a commercial service to deliver astronauts to the space station that will lower our costs and provide greater launch capability yet cots program was to be a proving ground for a commercial sector to deliver cargo to the station but to my knowledge that has yet to happen i don't know that  any of the commercial orbital transportation services providers or the funding of that has has been able to deliver what we had hoped that it would it seems that we should require our commercial providers to prove their ability to deliver on these contracts or on these on these ventures that taxpayer funds have funded and so  deliver manned spaceflight in a more timely way than we have with our aries wellner constellation project is there any evidence mr griffin that make a point as i said i did extensive examination of the and his assumed cost on those commercial government through delivery vehicles and then i checked with mr handley here and so there's a wide variance between their assumptions and what we you the question of whether to to prove cargo first if you will before putting people on top i certainly agree with that in terms of demonstrated reliability those cargo systems that are being developed are being developed right now  and those will fly many times before people are put on those rockets or any new system goes on an atlas five that will of you know which already has a demonstrated reliable  launch record the question of whether cargo has delivered you know the programs have not been completed yet to first flight they have not had their demonstration flights yet as mr o'connor said every space program seems to have cost growth and schedule risk schedule drift if you will i would put the record of those cargo demonstration programs up against the record of government space program developments in terms of cost growth and schedule risk and i think they would compare very favorably so whether they've met all of their milestones exactly as they were originally planned four years ago i'm not the expert to speak to that but they are certainly progressing well as evidenced by the fact that nasa is paying on those milestones and is in agreement that things are progressing well so i do believe that that those programs are functioning well i believe that that you know launch vehicles and cargo missions will happen before crew missions happen and again as i said before the longer we wait to start the process of crew activities or commercial correctness the longer it will take us in terms of shortening or shortening any gap or  when we actually would be able to deliver that service thank you most alexander missed the dr for all are you involved in the risk assessment whether it be the risk assessment of a commercial vehicle for the livery of cargo or the vellum of our commercial vehicle for the delivery of our astronauts at this moment i have no involvement in that however as part of the review of the independent review i did look at the alternative launch vehicles particularly delta four heavy as part of the study we did look at the atlas five single core by the way it's important to point out as mr alexander's as mentioned the atlas with the  is is a single core vehicle with a rather limited payload capability to orbit as compared to the payloads that we're talking about on the on the aries one the there is no doubt that the single safe than the aries one of the things i wanted to point out as they mentioned immaturity is very important one of the arguments against the aries is well the first stage of the aries is not equivalent to the s r b on the shuttle's it's a five segment booster i would point out that we are to thank you very much let's just want to get into this thing about the making some comparisons in terms of the alternatives that we have and dr prologue i appreciate your comments i think we might disagree but i'm i'm really interested in learning from you on that because you know much of that i do i understand that but when you are suggesting to us that we have to look at the many  can't be certified as being reliable and tell the second stage which is never going been built yet is put into the system isn't that right so with that type of analysis there's not even a comparison between the system that you're talking again the equivalent payload even on the delta four heavy we would have to we would have to modify the second stage of the delta four heavy there's no way we get the payload that we get so we have to have a lot of you want to payload but if you're having medium sized payloads it's already been proven if you were to decrease the requirement significantly down to the payload that mr alexander is spoken to then you would have to admit you would be able to use the stand you might want it we might want to have a few more launches rather than having to launch everything on one rocket that doesn't maybe doesn't make sense to me that you just have to have everything in a big payload carrier let me get to decide t rocket and i only have a couple minutes left here i'd like to look at the the actual spacecraft the arayans spacecraft as compared to the alternatives there as well and again i am not opposed to the aries ryan system because i do believe in the moon project i just think that if we are trying to do everything the moon project has to be the same thing that we rely on for low earth orbit that may not be the best deal for the taxpayers or may not be as reliable and may not be as fast as we can get we can bring into play but i understand the bourne mornings in my district and i seem to remember that they are developing this other spacecraft and why is it that spacecraft is hit in terms of safety is it more is the orion we're safer than what boeing is presenting to us i guess i'm not familiar with the particular boeing spacecraft i know i know one of the the finalists for the arayan correct information vehicle lockheed martin ended up winning that program i'm sure that they have their current design has a lot of heritage to what they were proposing for ryan but they were not going to by the way we saw and they bigelow is willing to accept that because he was a commercial enterprise but to do that on the station i don't know that that's something that's prudent and if he could does that limits the payload limits the design he also doesn't have to carry the  have a question and it goes to the testimony that you presented general stafford with regard to training and your indication of how involved and important it is for the crew to really be involved in  in training that simulates off nominal conditions and and also you know the numbers of hours that are spent with regard to safety and in every every detail and so i wonder if you could actually speak to what you might identify as some of the challenges presented for training with a commercial crew commercial space operations integrated simulations with the mission control center that would you know has control of the international space station so you would have to go through that contingencies and so it would be a whole series of issues and that would start talking i think approximates edwards two and a half flights per year if i'm correct that the the crew would would probably be there at the factory when they are when the spacecraft is being built to understand it but also in the simulations would be just to repeat simulations and there's a a profile for this and it requires really hundreds of hours and do you think that that that profile changes in any respect with what are essential essential a sort of office you know outside of nasa operations and i also wonder if mr alexander does could speak to this question well as outside of colliding with the mir there on the shuttle mir program and the so i think nasa would be involved there and and then you have the you know particular the commander in the pilot would have to be deeply involved and go through this and maybe people just along for the payload specialist or mission specialist for the ride would not have to undergo near that many but the one that is the commander and the pilot would definitely have to undergo hundreds of hours on mr alexander certainly a rigorous testing program and training program would be instituted for any commercial crew mission whether it's a commercial mission to just a low earth orbit or whether it's carrying nasa astronauts to the space station so obviously everybody onboard the vehicle is going to have to go through a rigorous training program and certainly the pilot and commander would would be much more rigorously trains than anybody that is just simply a participant on the flight i think in a broader context you know right now for any u s human spaceflight mission and for out throughout our history it's been a mix of  government through nasa and industry us industry building things and the relationship has been one of of a seamless integrated relationship between nasa and industry a you know a certain contractual environment what we're talking about for a commercial crew program that would fly nasa astronauts it was still going to involve an intimate relationship between nasa and industry some of that relationship will change based on historical patterns but but it's certainly not one without the other and i think that it would be a mistake to assume that from a commercial perspective we expect to develop something throw it over the transom and have nasa just accept it nasa is going to be there every step of the way they're going to be intimately involved that certainly will be true for for training of nasa astronauts but will also be true in the design testing and production processes so you don't envision any significant change to training protocols and requirements with a venture toward commercial operations i'm not an expert on what those are today but there would certainly be rigorous training and there would certainly be agreement between nasa and the private sector about how that's going to happen and what what is expected such that by the time a nasa astronaut is on board that vehicle they are not only capable of flying it and capable of  it in off nominal conditions and abort scenarios but that nasa at the highest levels all the way up to the administrator and through brian o'conner have the confidence in that system and the overall system capability including the people involved thank you m about the history and the fact that not that much combined testing was early on in that we made a decision as a nation to send an astronaut anyway but i think we are a little more enlightened now  perhaps as you know following the retirement of the shuttle the nasa is planning to rely solely on the soyuz for astronaut transportation to and from the international space station and this will probably be from what discussions we're having right now for at least five years so i'd like to ask general stafford you can answer mr mr o'connor last year the soyuz experienced a few rough landings due to  malfunctions and can you discuss nasa as assessments following these incidents whether they were involved in the assessments following the incidents and the decision to continue to use the so of the other question which i'll go ahead and ask now is are we now now required to meet our u s standards for quality safety environment wages of workers financial accountability and engineering practices so are they accountable to us in the same way that we would expect our commercial operations to be or that we would expect nasa itself to meet  success they did not meet all of our criteria in fact i was the only one of the committee here in this business i use and i did the first one on apollo so i use and we had them change a couple of their systems before we would fly with them and there's been follow up since then and i think mr o'connor has outlined the fact of what they do with the with their safety and they're very of tune to it and we were completely informed about that  be a situation that is solvable again i would rather have a slot you know our spacecraft as soon as possible and we had the budget we could do that  and so we offered to help the russians in their investigation they put together a commission to take a look at it general stafford and his counterpart in russia have a committee that oversees the safety of the s flights and they were interested they were all asking questions we did our own independent assessment of what we thought might happen based on what we know about so he's designed and we compared notes with the russians in the end they didn't get to root cause the way they wanted to but they fixed all the possible things that could be the real root cause of this thing and they didn't they fix those things to our satisfaction they shared a lot of information with us way more than they used to in the old days there are some times when w the russians do not agree on something like for example or relative risk of some issue that's come up but by and large they're very open and when we don't agree with one another we lean back on their demonstrated reliability the quality of their workforce and the relationship our engineers have with theirs over a period of about fifteen years now as for how we're planning to work with them in the future we don't retroactively assign our astronauts and those other astronauts from japan canada and europe who depend upon us for transportation it's the russian transportation that we will be providing for them as well so we quick as i can but let me want to get some fundamental issues here the basic challenge that we're facing is to close the gap that will be created when the shuttle is grounded as soon as possible and with this less risk is possible and that's the challenge that we have a challenge isn't going to the moon right now the challenge we face is closing that gap in terms of as they are now configured will they be able to lift the payload necessary to deliver their payload or our crew to the space station will we have to reconfigure those rockets anybody absolutely those vehicles as they are designed now have the performance capability to take a capsule  for people or cargo to the space station ok when it comes to aries orion they need to have something else that's developed and and which is actually invented or so to speak a second stage for that system cannot deliver that capsule to the space station is that correct solid rocket boosters wrapped around the central core and i doubt that that would be able to pass not find safety because in the old days when bowman did his report company answer report of a turn is a show that wrapping solids around a exist you would need a second stage for the delta four heavy as well to carry the payload if you if you change the payload or there's a delta four you're saying that the delta four cannot carry paylo rely on a rocket that has a heavier left but you have to build a whole new second stage which may or may not be able to be built until the thing flies we don't even know if it's going to function i respectfully suggest that history shows us that the first stage problem is the serious problem and on the delta four three one which is the one that the only single core that can carry the payload that mr alexander is talking about you'd have not only a single core but you have three solid rocket i got a couple more seconds but the delta from a lot more i understand the delta and atlas and have a very good track record and what we're saying is we have a track record of actually get things to the station close that gap as compared to aries strategies depend on that it's to depend on a second stage has been built and i love to hear from my experience anytime you don't have a piece of technology that's built in function and it's going to have the schedule go way back and the girl in the costs go way up we wouldn't be able to close that gap and that is that is exactly why you mentioned boeing earlier that is exactly why we have boeing on on contract to be producing the upper stage fo first time that we address safety we will come back to this because it is so critically important you know i'm sorry mr hall can't be here for the end because i really believe what he said initially was so compelling and we're really flex the sentiment of the congress we are strongly committed to provide a safe way for our astronauts to go to space and to travel back and i have to say that i find the level of safety that has been planned for aries and for ryan and the steps being taken to build safety into this constellation program from the p believes that if constellation is not the optimal answer then any new other designed system has to be substantially superior to justify starting over based on what we've heard today and more in your written testimony i see no justification for a change in the direction on safety related grounds instead i am and in fact impressed with the steps have been taken to infuse safety into constellation it is something that of course we are we're very proud of the country that we've been able to achieve this that being said i i don't intend and i hope that people don't think that this is a competition of of commercial versus nasa it is simply not that we are all really excited and welcome the growth of new commercial space capabilities in american like those are hamley i too want to go to space and  to do that someday not for thirty million dollars and there but maybe what if a couple process costs comes down but currently i do not see those capabilities as competition with as mr alexander talked about but rather complimentary to our government systems that are currently under development whatever the congress may decide to do with the question of additional incentives to the commercial space industry of course in this time of constrained budget to something that really concerns all of us and this is why this discussion today has been so important is a question that needs to be decided on its merits again not on on passion not on what ifs but the actual reality of what is achievable and what can be documented this is not a substitute for a continued commission a commitment to the constellation system that offers incredibly the safety benefits that we've heard in the testimony today so thank you gentlemen for being here and to the members of congress of course for being here with that i'll bring this clearing to a close by stating that the record will win open for two for additional statements from the members and for answers to any follow up questions a subcommittee may ask of the witnesses the witnesses are excused and the hearing is now