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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."
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
"According to this article [reason.com] your lifetime chance of dying in a car crash is 1 in 83."
I am pretty sure my lifetime chances of dying in a spacecraft accident are much slimmer
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
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'.
What if a spacecraft fails to launch properly and lands on your car while you're in it?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
And a Ford Pinto is 83 to 1, eh?
Table-ized A.I.
You'll be known as the "3rd Moon of Mars".
Table-ized A.I.
And I'd argue that not everyone has the same chance of dying in a car crash. For instance, this morning I had to go around someone that will almost certainly perish in the next week or so if he keeps driving in the fashion I witnessed (if not from a crash, because someone will just take him out...but probably because of a crash). I, on the other hand, am omniscient and omnipotent behind the wheel, invincible save for the malice of others.
Not like a space shuttle. They're all pretty much in the same boat, regardless of skill.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.