Difficulties with Replacing Crew Launch Abort Systems with Designed Reliability

Abstract

As the space industry continues to innovate and new paradigms arise to challenge the status quo, human spaceflight is now perceived as safer and more accessible than ever before. This has led to a new line of thinking in which crewed launch vehicles should be reusable and reliable like commercial airplanes, forgoing the need for an abort system. This paper will counter that line of thought with an analysis of the spectrum of coverage historical crew abort systems provided during launch and use historical data from launch rate successes and failures to glean insight into what reliability in the human spaceflight industry can expect when designing the vehicles of the future. This historical launch vehicle reliability will then be compared to system safety standards used in the commercial aviation industry to understand if future designs truly need a crew abort system. Through this analysis, the rationale for why these crew abort systems have historically been used can be better understood.