Human-rating certification

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Human-rated or man-rated are terms used to describe the certification of a spacecraft, launch vehicle or airplane as worthy of transporting humans. NASA and the U.S. GAO now uses "Human-rating" when describing requirements for these systems. The terms "man-rated" and "human-rated" are mostly used interchangeably.

In spaceflight, a human-rating certification is an assurance that the engineering, health and safety features of a spacecraft will prevent fatal or permanently disabling injuries to passengers and crewmembers. In the United States, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has published NASA Procedural Requirement 8705.2 - Human Rating Requirements for Space Systems, describing a certification process to "protect the health and safety of humans involved in or exposed to space activities."^[1]

There is a widespread belief that designing and operating a human-rated rocket is substantially more difficult than doing so for a rocket which carries only cargo.^[who?] It is noteworthy that the space shuttle pre-dates the existing NASA criteria (NPR 8705.28, dated Feb. 2005) for human-rating. After the Challenger and Columbia accidents, the criteria used by NASA for human-rating spacecraft have been made more stringent.

An airplane or rocket is considered as a man-rated vehicle if it satisfies a certain threshold of safety for its human occupants. This may include redundancy of certain components and certification by regulatory agencies.