Atlas V for Commercial Passenger Transportation

The Atlas and Centaur Programs have enjoyed a rich history as a trusted vehicle for a large number of critical space exploration missions as well as the Mercury manned spaceflight program. The Atlas expendable launch vehicle has matured well beyond the early days of manned spaceflight and is uniquely poised to provide a near-term transportation solution for the emerging space tourism market. This paper addresses the attributes of the Atlas expendable launch vehicle that make it distinctively qualified to be a highly reliable, robust earth-to-orbit transportation solution for commercial passengers. The paper will detail the Atlas expendable launch vehicle system compliance to Human Rating requirements defined by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NASA Standard 8705.2A “Human-Rating Requirements for Space Systems” as well as the anticipated safety expectations of passengers and insurers. In addition, the paper will compare and contrast various approaches to achieving safety, some of which may drive highly complex, unreliable, and costly design solutions. Atlas has the unique capability to demonstrate the implementation of Human Rating requirements by validating designs on numerous unmanned launches. The Atlas high flight rate of unmanned missions quickly builds sufficient history to rely on flight demonstrated reliability, rather than analytically predicted reliability. Demonstrating these systems has the benefit of increasing reliability through commonality with commercial and government launches, in addition to continuing vehicle characterization due to the experience gained from higher flight and production rates. The Atlas expendable launch vehicle family is a mature system with demonstrated design robustness and processes discipline that provides a highly reliable, robust solution for commercial passenger transportation needs.