The same believe it when you see it is likely to happen with manned space flight.

I have personally spoken with the vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures and he tells me that they are ready and willing to buy seats from SpaceX or any other company. They don’t even need to fly to the ISS, there are customers who would happily stay in the capsule for the duration of the flight.

Both Jeff Foust and Brett Alexander were at the table when we had this discussion. Someone needs to call these NASA representatives on their bullshit, in public and on the record, before their version of reality becomes accepted fact.

Something like an AtlasV 401/402 adaptation could be very close to being a perfect launcher for a spacecraft similar, in overall assumptions, to something like the Russian Soyuz or the Chinese Chenzhou. By this (the similarity comment) I’m not necessarily making reference to the three-module design approach of those spacecraft but, instead, making a generic reference to main spacecraft diameters (vs main launch vehicle diameters), total spacecraft mass (~8t) vs spacecraft dV budget (~300 m/s should be more than enough for LEO… beyond LEO capabilities could be achieved with proper space stages/tugs interactions) and other capabilities, abort options, launch vehicle integration, etc.

As a side note, just for fun, ‘played’ a few months ago with the concept on my 3D / simulation archives (one example: integrating something similar to Soyuz on top of the simplest Atlas V configuration… nice performance and also, why not say it too, a very good looking launcher-spacecraft configuration!; think that might still have some images / simulation files about that somewhere).

Please note that I’m not defending the idea of placing a Soyuz or Shenzhou on top of an AtlasV, only trying to write that something like an AtlasV 401 / 402 could then be a good match for a new conceptual crewed spacecraft where such spacecraft could have a maximum diameter smaller than ~3m (or else, not much beyond the ~4m) and a command module capsule capable of carrying at least 3 astronauts (or more, depending of specific spacecraft design assumptions), all this while having a ’standard’ abort system (by this I mean something very similar to the current Soyuz / Shenzhou abort systems) and also while presenting a +/- clean and smooth overall outer mold line for a +/- standard AtlasV 401/402.

Part Two:

Having written the above, another different approach would be to go for a larger diameter capsule (larger than Centaur upper stage and/or even than the first stage diameter) and also for a heavier (~7t or more) capsule, with a minimal service module… Something like what seems to be the idea behind the ~5m diameter Orion-based outer mold line capsule of ‘Orion-Lite’ spacecraft concept.

However, on such case, I was not able to fully research and/or understand yet some of the integration, performance, abort constraints and mission design impacts that such kind of crewed spacecraft vehicle vs AtlasV integration could mean…

… A few examples of open questions (not much public info available) for such kind of larger capsule / spacecraft AtlasV integration: abort system design parameters (and capabilities, eventual hybrid abort/insertion role?), would an AtlasV 402 actually become an AtlasV 502 (with Centaur fully enclosed) for such kind of spacecraft type integration (due to structural loads and other integration aspects), etc, etc. Related with this, please note some of the questions that tried to ask at:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=6479.270

Summary / Conclusion and Extra Food for Thought:

In any of the above cases the assumptions for the crewed spacecraft and for the launch vehicle integration (in this case, the simplest possible AtlasV) are just some of the things that would need to be better studied (together with proper trajectory tweaking, ascent simulation and overall mission design) in order to actually put some numbers into the talk, at least to have a better (or more specific) starting point for the discussion and a better idea of what the simpler no-solids EELV variants (in this case, AtlasV) can actually provide in terms of safety, performance, mission design and mission capabilities for crewed roles (vs specific spacecraft and mission design assumptions). The other side of the coin is that doing these kind of more elaborated ’studies’ takes a bit of time (and, as noted above, there is a little of public information missing for some specific brainstorms, related with more specific spacecraft possibilities).

António

PS1: Jon, as you might remember, wrote some musings about these kind of AtlasV 401/402/502 vs commercial crewed spacecraft brainstorms over at NSF forums, also produced a couple of images about that on my flickr site (by the way, if wanting, feel free to use / link any of the images in your articles or ask for specific imagery: if having time or if having something ready I will gladly try to provide stuff from the archives here )

PS2: Only for completeness, will take the liberty of linking to the thread on NSF where made a number of conceptual brainstorms about Orion-Lite (maybe one day will return to those brainstorms, if meanwhile find some LV/spacecraft missing info that would need for better simulation work) :
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=18323.0

~Jon

~Jon