Scope
Human-Rated Vehicles Only
Crew transport covers vehicles built to carry people, in space and on the surface: launch escape, life support, a way home and a loss-of-crew target. Cargo, construction and industrial vehicles carry none of that and sit on Heavy Lift and Starship; routes and Δv are on Corridors.
| Requirement | What it means | Rated |
|---|---|---|
| Launch escape | Pulls the crew clear of a failing rocket; Dragon and Mengzhou use pusher engines, Soyuz and Shenzhou a tower | Observed |
| Life support | Air, water, temperature and pressure for every hour aboard | Observed |
| Return capability | A way home from every point; in deep space, the vehicle carries it | Observed |
| Loss-of-crew target | NASA's Commercial Crew requirement was no worse than 1 in 270 per mission | Observed |
The vehicles
Four Crew Vehicles Flying, Seven in Development
Orbital crew vehicles and lunar landers, US, Russian, Chinese and Indian.
| Vehicle | Reach | Status | Rated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soyuz · Roscosmos | LEO | Flying since 1967 | Observed |
| Shenzhou · CMSA | LEO | Flying since 2003; crews to Tiangong | Observed |
| Crew Dragon · SpaceX | LEO | Flying since 2020; NASA, private and Axiom crews | Observed |
| Starliner · Boeing | LEO | Crewed test in 2024; crew returned on Dragon | Building |
| Orion · NASA and ESA | Lunar orbit | Artemis I flew it uncrewed in 2022; Artemis II is its first crewed flight | Observed |
| Mengzhou · CMSA | LEO and lunar orbit | Pad abort test 2025; flies on Long March 10 | Building |
| Gaganyaan · ISRO | LEO | India's crew vehicle; uncrewed tests first | Building |
| Starship HLS · SpaceX | Lunar orbit to surface | Crew lander for Artemis III | Building |
| Blue Moon MK2 · Blue Origin | Lunar orbit to surface | Crew lander for Artemis V | Building |
| Lanyue · CMSA | Lunar orbit to surface | Chinese crew lander, landing before 2030 | Building |
| Apollo lunar module · NASA | Lunar orbit to surface | Six crewed landings, 1969-1972 | Observed |
Beyond the Moon
Past the Moon There Is No Abort
A crew bound for Mars is committed for the whole transfer.
A lunar crew can turn around and be home in three days. A Mars crew leaves on a 26-month window and spends 6-9 months in transit with no way back until the next window, so the vehicle carries every spare, all the food and a radiation storm shelter.
| Architecture | Return propellant made on Mars | If the plant fails | Rated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full vehicle lands, refuels and leaves | About 683 t over a 780-day surface stay | The crew is stranded | Modeled |
| Transport waits in Mars orbit, at Phobos for example; a small ferry works the surface | About 107 t | A schedule problem; the return vehicle is already fueled | Modeled |
The direct architecture needs a propellant plant of several hundred kilowatts, several times a minimum outpost's power. The staged one limits which failures can reach the crew, which makes the transport architecture a safety architecture.
Mars architectures are sized under no rescue: a rescue capability is priced as an addition, never as a reduction in what the crew carries. Before a crew rides on propellant made on site, that propellant has to be accepted; the landed vehicle's own hot-gas thrusters can screen it before a full static fire. See LEO → Mars Surface.
On the surface
A Crewed Rover Is Built Around Its Pressure Boundary
Surface vehicles split on one question: does a person ever ride in it?
Surface vehicles that never carry a person - excavators, haulers, drones, humanoids - are machines, run autonomously or by local teleoperation, and are not human-rated; they are on Autonomy. Any vehicle a person rides in carries life support, a way back and a rescue plan, and that changes its design from the wheels up.
| Class | Pressure boundary | Crossing to work outside | Range limit | Rated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suited crew on an unpressurized rover | The suit | None; the crew is already outside | Walking distance back, or a second rover | Observed |
| Pressurized rover, crew stays inside | The cabin | None; work is done through arms and robots | Life-support duration and return to shelter | Modeled |
| Pressurized rover with suitports | The cabin, with suits docked on the hull | Suitport: minutes, little gas, little dust | Consumables, and a second rover for rescue | Building |
| Pressurized rover with an airlock | The cabin | Full airlock cycle: gas lost, dust brought inside | Same as suitports, at higher overhead | Modeled |
A pressurized rover is a shared spacesuit. If nobody leaves it, the crew does the work through manipulator arms and robots and pays no crossing at all. If they do leave, the rover needs suitports on its hull, so the crossing happens at the work site and not at the habitat, and an excursion of days from the rover spreads each crossing over many hours outside.
A rover can also dock to the habitat or garage through a hatch or suitport, so the crew moves between them without walking the raw surface. Suits and suitports are on Space Suits.
| Rule | What it requires | Rated |
|---|---|---|
| Suits travel with the crew | Every occupant has a suit aboard, docked or stowed | Modeled |
| Walk back or be fetched | Unpressurized rovers stay within walking distance of shelter; pressurized rovers travel in pairs | Modeled |
| Reach shelter before a storm | A solar particle event can arrive within tens of minutes of the flare; range is set by time to shelter | Modeled |
| Maintain in place | A crewed rover is a single asset; replace-not-repair does not apply | Modeled |
| Vehicle | Data point | Rated |
|---|---|---|
| Lunar Roving Vehicle · NASA | Unpressurized; Apollo 15, 16 and 17, 1971-1972; kept within walking distance of the lander | Observed |
| Lunar Terrain Vehicle · NASA | Unpressurized, for suited Artemis crews; Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab studied designs | Building |
| Tansuo · CMSA | Unpressurized crewed rover for the Chinese landing; two astronauts | Building |
| Lunar Cruiser · JAXA and Toyota | Pressurized rover; crew live aboard for days | Building |
| Space Exploration Vehicle · NASA | Pressurized prototype with rear suitports; desert field tests 2008-2011 | Observed |
China
China Flies One Crew Vehicle and Builds Two
Shenzhou now; Mengzhou and Lanyue for the Moon.
| Vehicle | Data point | Rated |
|---|---|---|
| Shenzhou · CMSA | Yang Liwei on Shenzhou-5, 2003; six-month crews to Tiangong | Observed |
| Mengzhou · CMSA | Reusable capsule for LEO and lunar orbit; pad abort test 2025 | Building |
| Lanyue · CMSA | Crew lander; launches separately from Mengzhou on Long March 10 and docks in lunar orbit | Building |
| Tansuo · CMSA | Unpressurized crewed lunar rover for two astronauts | Building |
Contested
Deliberately Not Claimed
The load-bearing uncertainties, tagged with the confidence they actually earn.
Starship's crew rating is unproven. It has no launch escape system; its safety case rests on reliability from flight count, a basis no human-rating standard has yet accepted for crew.
Loss-of-crew targets are design goals. The 1 in 270 figure is a requirement, not a measured rate; no crew vehicle has flown enough to measure one.
Record
Provenance and Data Sources
- Confidence
- Observed for flown, fielded or measured - Building for hardware and programs in development - Projected for announced plans - Modeled for original analysis
- Status date
- Q4 2026
- Data
- NASA Commercial Crew and Artemis; Roscosmos Soyuz; ISRO Gaganyaan; JAXA and Toyota Lunar Cruiser
- China
- CMSA Shenzhou, Mengzhou, Lanyue and Long March 10
- Weakest link
- Crewed Starship