One entity that applies human rating is the
US government civilian space agency,
NASA. NASA's human-rating requires not just that a system be designed to be tolerant of failure and to protect the crew even if an unrecoverable failure occurs, but also that astronauts aboard a human-rated spacecraft have some control over it. This set of technical requirements and the associated certification process for crewed space systems are in addition to the standards and requirements for all of NASA's space flight programs. Maximum sustained
acceleration is limited to 3
g. ULA has since been awarded $6.7 million under NASA's
Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program for development of an
Emergency Detection System, one of the final pieces that would be needed to make these launchers suitable for human spaceflight.
SpaceX is using
Dragon 2, launched on a
Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, to deliver crew to the ISS. Dragon 2 made its
first uncrewed test flight in March 2019 and has been conducting crewed flights since
Demo-2 in May 2020. Boeing's
Starliner spacecraft is also a part of the Commercial Crew Program since
Boeing CFT in June 2024. ==CMSA==