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Risk Aversion At Odds With Manned Space Exploration
Several readers including tyghe!! sent in a Popular Mechanics piece analyzing the Augustine Commission's recommendations and NASA itself in terms of a persistent bias towards risk aversion, and arguing that such a bias is fundamentally incompatible with the mission of opening a new frontier. "Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer finds the report a little too innocuous. In this analysis, Simberg asks, what happens when we take the risk out of space travel? ... Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if we're not killing people, we're not pushing hard enough. That might sound harsh to people outside the aerospace community but, as Rutan knows, test pilots and astronauts are a breed of people that willingly accepts certain risk in order to be part of great endeavors. They're volunteers and they know what they're getting into."
Missing the point.
NASA execs used to claim the chances of a bad Shuttle accident were 1 in 10,000.
That's obviously crazy-- you'd have to shoot one up every day for 30 years to get even an unreliable estimate of that level of risk.
Feynman asked around, and the actual engineers estimated 1 in 100 to 1 in 200.
So a better question is, do the astronauts have a right to hear the CORRECT figures, not the wild wishful-thinking executive estimates?
So, let's kill em all? But it is true, if we never fail in doing anything, it must be because we are not doing it!
this must mean that Microsoft is doing a lot, because they fail allot...
IMHO, a big reason why NASA spends so much time on risk aversion is the fickle, uneducated, uninformed and misinformed nature of who they get their funding from aka Congress. I offer into evidence the fact that McGovern wanted desperately to kill off Apollo after the Apollo 1 fire. Traditional market-based sources of funding can evaporate after a major disaster but there will always be people who believe in the mission statement and they don't change with the political winds.
I recommend Kahneman and Tversky.
I hope this helps the discussion.
Yours In Akademgorodok,
Kilgore Trout
We put a huge amount of effort to reach insane levels of safety.
The time and cost of a project goes up geometrically with the "percentage" safety margin required.
Ultimately this causes projects to get extremely expensive and complicated. Complicated enough that it is often unsafe again.
Working in the space industry, I know they allowed things to happen in the apollo program that would never be considered acceptable today. I think this is *somehow* associated with a growing feeling that we cannot accomplish the same goals we could in the past.
Western society in general has become risk averse. Indeed, it is somewhat apparent even here on /. I suspect it is because we have become so sedentary - our jobs involve sitting in chairs all day.
When compounding the risk-aversion with overall government indecisiveness/inefficiency, I believe there won't be much significant progress in Western manned space exploration for the foreseeable future.
I hope I'm wrong.
American society is risk averse to pathological levels in general.
After reading about some of those guys, if you made the program too safe, they'd take up free climbing or something else to get the rush. The possibility of dying early gives it that rush.
We're such a death phobic society - no wonder terrorists can just flinch and send us into girly girl panics.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
The only way to be sure to "kill em all" is to nuke them from orbit, but that requires a Space Program.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if we're not killing people, we're not pushing hard enough.
Would that we could apply this to Democrats and Republicans.
Space flight is risky
Film at 11 (10 central) of challenger and Coumbia
This darn stupid dumb assed risk aversion is an infuriatingly American infection that is being spread world wide by thieving scumbag money grabbing lawyers and the sooner there are legal moves to BAN thme all then the sooner we can back to some proper exploration of space , People we need VERY VERY BADLY to get our sorry arses of this lump of space junk we call home and before any of you wets fire up yes i would volenteer if the chance came along of that you can be absolutley certain you see i aint a WHIMP.
PeteN
... China and India will do some pretty awesome things in the next couple of decades, by using the go go go mentality we had in the 60s.
Hopefully, getting passed in current race will take us back to that attitude.
We are killing people, and we aren't trying hard enough.
Attributed to an old test pilot: "Come on. My job is to get in an airplane that's never flown before, of a design that's never flown before, usually with lots of parts that've never been used in an airplane before, and go up and find out what it's performance limits are, usually by going past them. This is not an inherently safe activity.". I think most astronauts would agree with that sentiment. They know it's a risky activity, and they're there because they want to be there doing this strongly enough to outweigh the inherent risks. They'd probably rather not take stupid and unnecessary risks, but if it's a choice between taking the risks and never seeing space, well, to quote from Leslie Fish, "And before you take my dream / I will see you in Hell.".
The astronauts actually are risking their lives, just doing rather mundane work. pick your epitath xxx xxx died during sts-xxx as a payload specialist. or xxxx xxx died on the surface of mars Heroically expanding Mankinds reach to other worlds.
While dying sucks either way I'd much rather choose the latter for all of us.
What NASA trying to reduce the amount of life-risk tells us, is that they don't consider their missions to be particularly important. Let's face it: they're right. Nothing they've done has saved the world. Nothing they plan to do will really have much effect on humanity - apart from some temporary fame-by-association for some transient politicians. Most of the things we are made aware of come from unmanned missions and satellite data - not from having people floating around, building a space-station for 20 years.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I wonder if that's because it's run by lawyers, bankers, and insurance companies?
On an even deeper philosophical level, when you are only encouraged to measure success by wealth, I don't think anyone should be surprised at the shortsighted nature of American innovation at the moment. Many hard problems are not profitable to solve, so all of our capital is flooding into financial services and marketing. I don't imagine we can make a space program out of that.
Even if they made (eg.) a "one way" trip to Mars you'd have people queuing around the block to sign up.
I'd go.
No sig today...
Those NASA executives have forgotten how they got on this continent. Their ancestors walked around glaciers or risked their lives on ships to get here. Then they had to find ways to stay alive long enough to have children. Then their children went to the Wal-Mart and stocked up on microwave popcorn.
If manned space exploration is too dangerous...What about all the spectator sports and events that risk human life for no reward other than the thrill?...and maybe a lot of money. NASCAR racing is incredibly dangerous...Skydiving is dangerous...What about "the running of the bulls?"...People get killed playing baseball!...And none of the people taking these risks is getting us any closer to the moon or any other celestial destination... Men and women climb mountains and dive deep into the seas looking for adventure...Why then is manned space exploration too dangerous? It is expensive and dangerous going somewhere faraway in a new way first...No matter whether it's on the Earth or in the sky...The explorers who "found" the new world knew this...How now can it be so hard for us to accept?
The natural progression for health & safety officers after stopping kids playing in the playground is to stop astronauts going into space...
They were going to run out of fun things to stop eventually!
Putting astronauts in danger is not the only risk which we fearfully avoid. There is very little willingness to pour resources into cutting edge technologies. New technologies could fail, or they could revolutionize space travel, but we won't know if we're not willing to explore the possibilities. Rather than exploring something like nuclear propulsion or a launch loop, we spend billions developing another chemical rocket platform, and in some respects taking a step back from the abilities of the Space Shuttle.
It's not really NASA's fault so much as it is a lack of national will. NASA has to act as a slave to public opinion, because their funding is continually at risk of drying up. To keep the public happy, don't kill any astronauts, don't try any project without a predictable payoff, and never mention the word nuclear.
I've never understood NASA's fear of danger in space flight. I mean, when you get right down to it, as an astronaut you're strapping yourself to the top of a giant tube full of explosives that's burning at one end while it flies to a place where there's nothing to breathe and more radiation than you'll find just about anywhere outside of a particle accelerator. Shit happens, and if the people who are taking those risks are okay with them, than to hell with the rest of it.
I have the feeling that space is going to be colonized by other governments (i.e. China) or private enterprises, because our own government is so frightened of everything that could possibly go wrong, ever, that it doesn't have the wherewithal for serious manned missions anymore.
I find it most astounding that once it comes to manned space missions governments start whining about the risk for life and limb of the volunteers and the enormous costs involved. Whereas the same governments have no problems whatsoever to put close to half a million citizens at risk in various wars around the globe (remind me please, what is the purpose of the Iraq War again?) The campaign in Iraq alone would have paid for missions to moon and mars and back again including a hot spa and an acre of green grass for the various habitats. Add to that all the money that is poured in smart weaponry and the next best way to blast a target from (or in) orbit and a sizable population could live on Mars before the century is over. Somehow the world is upside down and we have totally lost our bearings. Let the terrorists rot in the holes they dug for themselves and lets do something useful for a change. Heal the planet, feed the people, solve the energy problem and lets colonize our own back yard. That should keep us happily occupied for the next 200 years. OUR future is out there not that of bunch of tin cans with shiny wheels and solar panels.
So is staying on this planet...
Film of recreation of the Chicxulub impact on the NatGeo, Science and History channels...
The only way to be sure of the long term survival of the human race is to get off this rock.
There have been a few articles on manned space exploration recently, and it seems that the main issue never seems to be addressed: what's the point of sending humans to space? Can someone explain to me why, at this point in history, we need to send humans out into space - along with the food and water and oxygen and extra safety measures they need to survive? The data collection, analysis, and transmission will be conducted by robots whether the mission involves humans or not. What sorts of decisions can they make on-site that won't be made from the control center, and what skills can they contribute that a robot can't match?
My half elven paladin has exactly the same thinking as an astronaut. He knows the risks. He knows that no matter how many elixirs of healing he brings, no matter whether his friend Drugar the Troll Barbarian is sober or not, things might go south. You think you're raiding an underground goblin camp, you open that door and BAM! Red frickin' dragon. Not much you can do about a red dragon at close range except poor some good ol' A1 steak sauce on yourself to make a worthwhile meal.
Sometimes you rummage around in your sack for treasure and it turns out to be a bag of devouring. That's all I'm sayin'.
Maybe the Risk Aversion is to spare dollars not people. Just imagine if 5 out of 7 launches failed to complete its mission.
The Ares I is being designed to kill the astronauts, even if they use the escape mechanism! All this just to keep a few people in Idaho employed.
That's not the sign of a risk adverse organization.
Speaking as a member of the Cold Y generation, I believe a lot of the decline of the space program has to do with the attitude of the American public in general. I think our government, our military, and NASA would cheerfully push the envelope if they could, but as a number of different posters have pointed out previously in this thread, the biggest obstacle is us as a people. Even though we all benefit now from technologies developed then, space travel still means completely nothing to the average American citizen. They take microwave ovens for granted, for instance. Most people (excluding most everyone on /.) aren't aware (or particularly care) that a lot of our world dominance came from the technologies developed in the space race. To them, the Moon is just the moon, unreachable and nothing comes from it except reflected sunlight. No one they know goes to space, no one they know works in the space industry. But they ARE affected by climate change, and by social problems like crime, homelessness, poverty, etc. I feel that's why we hear so many calls for abolishing the space program or reducing its funding: because our politicians are being told by the American people that they consider climate change et al more important than a space program. They see more tangible results from funding going towards social concerns than putting a base on Mars. If we ever really want to get the space program going again, we have to present the American public with either a threat (Soviet dominance of space in the 50's and 60's), or one hell of an opportunity that they can understand. My personal favorite option is the sudden appearance of a star-faring alien race... but fat chance of that happening :O(
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
The thing about taking funding from the people who build smart bombs, tanks, and ballistic missiles, is they have all the bombs, tanks, and missiles.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The original estimate was 1 in 80. Seems to me like they hit it on the nose.
There are a few assumptions that I think were missed.
1. Test pilots and astronauts are risk taking.
They're not.
Sure they do a dangerous job, but they're not taking crazy risks. The first flight of a new aircraft isn't a full battery of aerobatics for a reason.
Like professional stuntmen, they do something that seems risky, but the situation is carefully monitored and controlled to limit these risks to an acceptable level.
"There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."
2. That safety results in a net increase in cost, or that a lower level of safety will save money.
Safety in aerospace is to a large extent simply reliable systems.
A properly designed reliable system may cost more in design, somewhat more in implementation, but the difference is often not that large, and the benefits come out during use and subsequent upgrades.
Look at the typical software application, the properly designed system takes more time in design, and might be more work in the actual "construction". However at the end you often end up with a more stable, higher performing application that is easier to maintain and upgrade. Physical systems are the same.
3. The goal of the space program is to get to the finish line.
The other goals is to develop technical knowledge, the triumph of landing a man on the moon is nice, the real value however was in all the technology and other things that were learned trying to get there.
I'd ride a spacecraft with a 20% chance of catastrophic failure if I could get an in-person view of Valles Marineris. No doubt about it. But to fly into low earth orbit so that I can press a button which starts an automated experiment....it better be close to 747-level reliability.
I watched an Elon Musk (SpaceX) interview (I think on WIRED) where they talked about the dangers of space flight and how having it in the commercial sector, where profit is a main concern, could conflict with safety.
His answer was interesting in that he pointed out that cost and safety are not directly related, which seems counter intuitive at first. The Space Shuttle had wings, very expensive, complicated, and made safety more difficult. The standard 'capsule' design is instead very simple, cheap, and has plenty of safety advantages. This was just one anecdote, but it makes sense that a simple design, which can cost less, can be safer than a more complicated, expensive one.
It's most of society now. People are so wrapped up in a single death that they make things worse for everyone. Death happens, you cant stop it forever.
A few years ago in WWI&II casualties were in the thousands and hundreds of thousands. Now they are in the dozens yet there is more protest over them than before. Life-support for people who are already dead costs millions and consumes resources otherwise usable for those that still have a chance. Prisons are full of career criminals who are little more than animals, but we have to be nice to them so that when we let them out again they can continue their life of crime. Homeowners are prosecuted for murder after killing a violent intruder in their homes or on the street (google harold fish). Gun control advocates cry about how dangerous guns are, ignoring the mountains of evidence showing they reduce violent crime and are more likely to be used in legal self-defense than in a crime.
because, if it saves even one life, isn't it worth anything in the world? Including the life of another?
because we certainly don't fight to win. We take incredible precaution to not harm the "civilians" and wonder why there never seems to and end to the war or an end to the other sides ability to recruit.
We have become such a risk averse culture in the West that we could not fight World War ][ all over again because too many would be screaming about killing non-direct combatants. You don't win a war by being nice. You win in by breaking the spirit of the opponent and their support mechanism. Its mean, its cruel, but its true.
Again, Iraq has nothing to do with NASA's budgetary woes. Granted the money used there "COULD HAVE BEEN" used for NASA but we all know that is not true. NASA's budget has been remarkably well insulated from the costs of our little wars throughout the years. The problem faces is to do big things requires a big budget but rocket science is not open to the general public (blame culture and government schools) so such large funding does not generate the requisite number of votes that new roads, pools, and libraries do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
it's the economy, stupid. There are no shortage of brave men and women who would be willing to go into space and there is certainly a willing enough audience to watch them take their chances (i.e. the American public). But there is the little problem of money. Given that it's in short supply these days NASA has to prioritize and given that space exploration is only one part of NASA's mission it seems reasonable that they would prioritize other projects above space exploration.
But this gets back to the "purpose" of manned missions. If manned missions are merely a PR stunt or a prestige tool, then dead astronauts are not going to help that cause. Remote robots are a safer and cheaper way to do science. I don't accept the argument that you need an on-site human to spot rocks. Until the rocks are examined by lab equipment, nobody knows whats really in them anyhow.
I propose that the primary goal be to learn[1] about space colonization, and a perm moon-base is a good place to start. They would be space pioneers, and everyone knows pioneers risk arrows in their backs. This is a role Americans can relate to and would accept risk for because our ancestors faced the same situation. (Even "Native Americans" made a risky migration out of Asia. There are no true "Native Americans".)
[1] We are a long way off from self-sufficient colonies, but you have to start somewhere.
Table-ized A.I.
Since this subject is coming up just as a push is on to privatize space travel - that is, to make space travel somebody's profit center - this sudden antipathy towards risk aversion is far more likely to be cost aversion in reality.
If you eliminate the redundant systems that help protect human life, then you eliminate a whole lot of costs - and your break even point comes much sooner, even if you break a lot of humans along the way.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
"Risk Aversion" is meaningless, we all want to minimize risk.
What you really want is accurate "Risk Assessment" so that a "good" astronaut can say
"sorry, that's too risky for me"
And........ Only report the successful missions, since the American public, in general,
is incapable of wrapping their collective heads around the concept of "Risk Assessment".
If you look at astronaut deaths over the course of the manned space programs in Russia and the US, the things that killed people seem pretty stupid and have little to do with pushing frontiers and more to do with failures in basic quality control and bureaucratic processes. Russian astronauts were killed by faulty valves that decompressed their return vehicle on the way down or parachutes that failed to deploy, and Americans by having their launch vehicle full of pure oxygen when the practice was already known to be hazardous (Apollo 1), by a faulty gasket which was suspected to be problematic (Challenger) and by a hunk of foam that fell off the fuel tank during launch because they stopped painting the fuel tank to save weight (Columbia). Meanwhile, even though it seems like there should've been deaths there, no one died on Mir despite a fire, a collision causing partial decompression, frequent loss of attitude control causing power outages, systemic underlying problems stemming from general underfunding of the Russian space program and general shadiness.
There aren't dead bodies floating listlessly through the vacuum of space because the goals were too ambitious, although Apollo 13 came close - it's all just crap that goes wrong with complicated machines all the time everywhere, including commercial aircraft. Remember when DC-10s were new and poor cargo door design damaged one aircraft and downed another? The problem was well known before people died but bureaucratic failures and general cheapness by the manufacturer allowed it to persist and costs hundreds their existence. The only difference is that the volume of space flight is so low compared to all other human endeavours that all accidents are highly visible and embarrassing, and a public institution spending taxpayer money desperately needs to avoid embarrassments.
The US Constitution lays out what the US GOVERNMENT's "PRIVILEGES" are, not our RIGHTS as citizens. Anything not laid out in the Constitution (in theory) is something that the government CAN'T do. Sadly too many people have it backwards.
It was very hard to get a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission once it was decided to end the shuttle program. NASA did not want to put a shuttle at risk away from the space station orbit or have a backup shuttle ready to deal with a problem on the launch pad. Why was this the case? One was risking the program for ending the life of the shuttle which had to complete the space station. It was the risk to the schedule that was the problem. NASA was committed to flying an aging fleet a certain number of times which involves risk, but it did not want to risk the budget of money and flights and transition of suppliers and a whole set of bureaucratic concerns once a scope was set to the shuttle lifetime. NASA does not want to risk its existence. It is OK with risking components if its existence is assured. Losing the Hubble would have been fine.
Part of me REALLY wants to agree with this article. Going out and exploring new frontiers is the American way and I'm about as patriotic as a girl can get. I've also always been fascinated by the idea of space and hope that I can go into space sometime before I die. But the bigger part of me is the computer scientist who knows how easy it is for bugs to show up and knows how guilty I would feel if a bug introduced by me or my team were to cause a fatal accident. Someone at work the day mentioned how he can't even comprehend what it must feel like to be one of the analysts who had to say "I didn't see it coming" after 9-11-01. I feel the same way about Therac-25. Astronauts and Pilots may know that they're risking their lives, but living with the death of another person on your hands would be difficult. NASA's had it's fair share of errors (missing hyphens, unhandled exceptions, rounding errors, metric conversions). It's a very visible organization. Fatal errors in the DoD will fly under the radar unless a reporter gets his hands on the story, but even small bugs NASA runs into are immediately visible. And if NASA runs a mission and there's a mission-critical error (camera won't operate, safety issue, etc) it would be far more expensive to waste a mission than to spend extra money getting it right the first time. Another problem NASA has is testing. There is no test system and production system. They have to deal with mockups and pray that they got it right before something launches. NASA's development model is so vastly different from the real world because they're not working with the same types of systems found elsewhere. All in all, I feel like my opinion is "yes, they are over-averse to risk, but I can understand why and I won't balk much"
About 10-15 years ago, there was talk in the space community of a "big dumb booster", with costs reduced and a lower level of reliability. The problem is that, after half a century, rockets still aren't very reliable. Launch success rates for satellites are still in the 80% - 90% range. The Shuttles have had 114 flights and two crashes.
The killer on costs is weight reduction. If boosters could be built with the weight budget of an airliner, space travel could work as well as air travel does. Weight reduction pushes the use of exotic but fragile materials; nobody would put foam insulation on the outside of an airliner. This is why space travel just barely works.
Is that a price worth paying?
If we had big nuclear rockets (which were built and tested in the 1950s), we'd have enough power to build spacecraft with reasonable weight budgets. No more exposed insulating foam, as with the shuttle; the outer skin would be titanium or stainless steel, and thick enough to handle ice and rain impacts.
When Orion, the nuclear-bomb powered launcher, was being designed, someone calculated that for each launch, statistically 0.5 people would die from cancer, in terms of shortened life from fallout. There are countries that would consider that a good trade.
The US once did. The estimated casualties for the invasion of Japan in WWII were a million Allied soldiers. (The necessary number of Purple Heart medals was manufactured, and the military is still using up that supply.) In the 1950s and 1960s, US military fighter pilots had a 20% casualty rate, without any help from an enemy.
Is fixing the Hubble "space exploration"? It doesn't strike me as exploration, any more than changing the fanbelt in a car is exploration of my garage.
While it's certainly reasonable to suggest we consider high risks in exploration mode, like going to the Moon, it's another thing entirely to suggest we're being too risk adverse doing what was supposed to be routine maintenance. I'd wager a lot of money, and a donut, that if they put the risks at 100-to-1 they would have never proposed using manned missions for any of the stuff they do now.
BTW, there's a 1-in-185 chance that the Shuttle will be destroyed on any given mission by space debris. That was *definitely* not in the original calculations.
Maury
Sure, if this trend continues they might do something really insane like putting the astronauts' compartment above the propulsion system just because falling debris might create a few holes that might cause a burn-up on reentry. Those crazy wimps!
IAASE (I am a safety engineer). This is a silly question to even ask. It's not possible to "take the risk out of space travel". It's not possible to take the risk out of anything - getting out of bed is risky (you might slip and fall) but so is staying in bed (you might get bedsores). The best we can hope for is to 1) identify the risks involved in space travel, 2) mitigate the ones we can, and then 3) decide whether the remaining risk is worth taking. And there are a whole lot of people in this thread advocating for taking these risks with other people's lives, or volunteering to take these risks themselves in spite of the fact that they don't really understand their severity or probability.
People on slashdot need to get a realistic understanding of what we get out of space travel. The benefits consist of 1) scientific progress - which for the most part can be obtained just as successfully and more cheaply with automated systems, and 2) glory and adventure. I submit that glory and adventure in themselves are not a very good reason to get people killed, especially people who haven't been able to provide actual informed consent to the risks.
The astronauts are experts in 1) piloting the spacecraft, or 2) tending to the payload ("mission specialists"). I guarantee that (probably with rare exceptions) they do not have the skills to do the kind of failure analysis that would be required to really understand the risks involved. You would need significant background in aerospace and safety engineering to be able to conduct such a thing, and most of these folks are not. And my impression is that NASA has not done such a great job of doing this analysis even with people who should be qualified to do it.
What I have been surprised at, in this discussion and when the subject was originally posted, was that for the chance to be the first to explore Mars, even if its a one way trip and the individual will spend the rest of their life as a first "Martian" the chance to explore and experiences in transit, exploration and survival on Mars would be "Worth-It" to a lot of people.
The comments have been largely takig the perspective of a suicide voyage, but that is only a very narrow perspective. There is a difference between "Being Alive" and "Living" and for some, "Living" with the experiences of attempting to survive on a different planet would be a very easy decision.
The experienced failure rate for the shuttle is 1%.
But both cases resulted no from "reasonable risk" but sheer negligence.
In the case of the Challenger, the shuttle had established lower limits of temperature-at-pad in which the designers considered a launch "safe". These limits were ignored and the shuttle was lauched despite freezing temperatures on the pad. This directly caused the loss of the vehicle.
In the case of the Columbia: the actual event (the loss of foam) doesn't appear to be negligence (as opposed to a discovered risk), but the fall was identified as a potential problem. At that point, no steps were performed to assess the damage and come up with a contingency (there was, for example, a fueld Soyuez in orbit (at the ISS) that might have been a viable escape vehicle).
If NASA had simply followed their own specs on the shuttle, and if they had performed a space-walk to assess damage *when a strike had already been identified*, we would have lost at most one shuttle and likely zero astronouts.
The question of "what to do about sending people into space?" is pretty straightforward. There are costs and risks: how much does it cost to build the rocket? What are the potential mishaps, and how severe and how likely are they? And there are benefits: what are we going to get out of the proposed mission? The world has (correctly, in my view) done the math here: most stuff in space can be done just as well by robots, and blasting humans into space is 1) very risky, and 2) a lot more expensive then blasting robots into space. The glory and adventure factor alone has been judged as not worth getting very many people killed over.
Mod up accordingly.
Maybe someone said this already but serious manned exploration will not be done by NASA a government run organization! Its going to take entrepreneurs and other crazy risk takers to get a man going anywhere beyond the moon in a spaceship. That will not happen until there is a discovery that will make someone on earth some money. If the business community thought for one second that there was oil, gold, silver, trees that produce money etc. was on MARS. People would be there already and I doubt the fact that it would take years to get there and back would stop people from trying. So the only thing that NASA can really do is tell us with some certainty that there is something that can make people money on another planet. If they want space exploration then tell us if there is gold on mars ...we don't care about water we have water here. Tell us if there is a new source of energy, or oil on mars. The moment there is proof of that there will be 50 manned missions to MARS and NASA won't even have to pay for them. It sounds simple to say but its the truth. NASA can't take risks with peoples lives because we don't get anything back when they do. We don't make money when NASA sends a person into space, and they don't bring back anything that can make people money.
Really? Since 1980, there have been a hell of a lot of people killed in space shuttle accidents (between Challenger and Columbia, what, about 15?). I went to the Wikipedia page on NASCAR fatalities and counted about the same number of fatalities in NASCAR races and practices (excluding other sorts of races such as Indy car, etc) over the same time period. And there were a hell of a lot more NASCAR races (each with a hell of a lot more drivers) than there were space shuttle launches.
I'd say riding the space shuttle is WAY more dangerous than NASCAR.
I put my faith in SpaceX and places like China to put man into space. The US government has to many bean counters who won't risk losing a few beans.
interestingly enough, wasn't a lot of ship exploration of the new world done by private companies?
I suspect that once someone figures out how to make a quick buck with off world colonies, there will be off world colonies. Or, some religious nuts will decide that they have been persecuted enough, and become 'space pilgrims'.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I bet OH&S has a field day at NASA, WARNING hot exhaust point away from persons.
In Google we trust.
It's a problem with objective reality. There really IS a much bigger payoff to solving our earthly problems than there is to colonize space. We've already gotten most of the payoff we're likely to get from investment in space travel. Your conclusion is correct: there needs to be a reason to do space travel such that people will understand the payoff. And I'm not seeing what it could possibly be - handwavy "glory and adventure" stuff ain't cutting it.
The fruit cakes who dressed up as dandies to hang around a court yard in some dank castle? Of course not
It was the disinherited - the landless - the second and third sons of the nobility - who ventured out.
The eldest son would have been nailed to the floor if he tried.
The Admiral of the Ocean Sea intended to set up shop somewhere off the Chinese coast and become the funnel for all trade with the West.
The conquisitor was going for the gold.
In 1624 Captain John Smith published a bill of particulars - a shopping list for the prospective colonist. It makes interesting reading:
John Smith's Bill: Then & Now
Capt. Smith was at heart a bean counter and his profession, survival:
At one point, when Newport returned a second time with seventy settlers, among them a perfumer and six tailors, Smith, never one to keep his opinions to himself, penned a Rude Reply to his London superiors:
"When you send againe I entreat you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees, roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as we have. For except we be able to lodge and feed them, the most will [be lost therough] want of necessaries before they can be made good for anything."
Was John Smith a Liar?
Yes, but this is purely rational on the part of the public. In WWII, it was pretty clear that we were faced with an existential threat - it was defeat fascism or die. It can hardly be argued that the same urgency applied to conflicts like Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. People object to casualties accordingly.
Can you explain what you mean by, "Mass transit isn't profitable because it's efficient" ..?
(Sincere question; Not intended as a rebuttal.)
Risk is our Business.
I can't believe no one has referenced this line yet! And you call yourselves nerds!
Liberals *know* what's best for everyone, and they *know* that risking lives is not worth it for space flight, and so will fight manned space flight.
Dave
"Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if we're not killing people, we're not pushing hard enough."
I think Pol Pot said the same thing once. Different context, but pretty much the same idea.
Imagine what the failure rate of the shuttle would be without risk aversion.
1 in 65 is bad enough.
A 1 in 50 risk of a fatal accident is only about twice the lifetime risk dying in a car accident. It's significantly higher than the lifetime risk of dying in some 'extreme sports'.
Pre-challenger the astronauts might not have known but it would be hard not to afterwards, but I can't see it making a difference. The risks are simply *not* that high, considering.
Once a problem has occurred once, it is much less likely to occur a second time. The problem that brought down the Challanger was fixed, so of course the odds of that kind of catastrophic failure are now much lower. Likewise, the engineers are now aware of the falling-foam problem so again the problem is somewhat mitigated. Other factors that may lead to catastrophic failure are likely still an issue, but their odds of occurring are completely unknown.
The odds of catostraphic failure may now be 1/10,000 missions, they may be 1/1,000,000 missions or they could be, like you say 1 in 210 days. It all depends on how prevalent these kinds of engineering oversight are.
People get killed playing baseball!
But baseball is a sport. Sport is popular. Science is not popular. Science is nerdy. Thus, you will have popular support for people dying playing baseball, but not doing space exploration.
What the world needs is another cold war ;-)
[insert an "oh wait..." if you want to]
Alas for moderation. This post, in context with its parent, is both very insightful and very off-topic.
Even if they made a "one way" trip to Mars you'd have people queuing around the block to sign up.
I'd go.
The guy who volunteers for the one-way ride is almost never the one you want to make the trip.
It's interesting that pursuing new frontiers has not been the riskiest behavior after all. Rather, the greatest risk has been riding the 30-year-old shuttles run by a management team that seemed to have other priorities than flight crew safety.
I think a case could be made that had NASA been moving towards new technologies and new manned-space-flight programs there might actually have been fewer people killed as a result. Instead of becoming the hide-bound, more bureaucratic, risk-averse agency we see today NASA might well have blossomed into a competence-driven, vibrant agency in pursuit of new frontiers. One in which managers could have well imagined problems with frozen O-rngs, for instance. Or listened more closely to arguments in favor of simple flight maneuvers to inspect the shuttle after seeing evidence of impacts from debris blown off the booster rockets.
Perhaps risk-averse behavior might be the highest risk after all.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Also, a truly risk-averse NASA would be using liquid-fuelled rockets with one-engine-out capability -- not giant solid-fuelled rockets that can't be throttled or shut off if something goes wrong.
Ares I should be scrapped and replaced by something safer. Yes, manned spaceflight is inherently dangerous, blah, blah, blah. The problem is that the US manned spaceflight program grinds to a halt for two years every time something blows up. The other problem is that, if this happens enough, public support for a manned spaceflight program will erode.
It's been 40 years -- safe manned access to LEO should be a solved problem. Get the astronauts safely into orbit, then let them risk their lives doing something new and worthwhile, like constructing a manned lunar outpost, mining an asteroid, or going to Mars.
It's not about the science or any interpretation of statistics. It's about the money.
It's that:
disaster=bad_publicity=no_political_support=no_money
Nothing difficult to understand there.
We only lionize the few people who took great risks and succeeded soley because they succeeded; we never laud the legions that took comparable risks and failed.
And we never seem to learn the appropriate lesson from that.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Life has proven to be 100% fatal. Not one documented survivor has gotten out of life alive. (The couple of stories in the Bible don't have a meaningful affect on the statistics.)
I will petition congress immediately to ban life.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
...and we have totally lost our bearings.?
Are you kidding me? What were you doing in history class?
I'm a scientist and would love to stop paying for war, weapons, etc in the pursuit of "healing the planet, feed people, solve energy problems".
Unfortunately, reality is much different. There has never been a time in history without war, suffering, and starvation. We will always need a military. These are facts of life...
The nice thing is occasionally advancements in weapons technology will have beneficial uses for society in general. DARPAnet comes to mind. Recall that the US and Russian advances in spacecraft/launchers/etc are largely built off advances in missile and spy satellite tech...
... but not sufficient to understand the risks. You also need to know about how to do failure analysis. Also, just having a degree in Aero Eng does not mean you're an expert in the field. I have a BS in physics and an MS in applied physics, but that doesn't mean I'm a qualified cosmologist. I guarantee you that most of these guys got their BS in Aero, then went on to military or civilian test pilot roles, and never actually did work in the field. And I'd bet the mortgage payment that none did any safety engineering.
Geez, no kidding. There needs to be an actual economic reason to go into space (with a payoff now or soon), or it's not going to happen.
In both catastrophic shuttle failures, the human failure was paramount. Challenger: The Morton Thiokol folks knew the solid rocket boosters were not designed to operate in weather that cold; nobody in the penthouse listened. Columbia: Ice fell off the tank every mission and never caused a problem. So it's okay. Right? Of course there was no way to determine the scope of the damage or to fix it if they knew. Human failure.