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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.".
I think that western society has correctly reassessed the value of life. When you consider that it costs roughly 200k to raise a child in the United States, trading that human's life for certain goals is not necessarily worthwhile now, while it would have been worthwhile 200 or even 100 years ago.
On the other hand, there can be too much of a thing. Exploration, be it arctic, submarine, or interplanetary, is inherently dangerous. Nevertheless, it needs to be done. We need to get off of this single basket and onto other planets or our species is done. That is not generally considered in the life value equation and it needs to be.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It's already happening, the same way it went with GM, Ford and Chrysler vs Honda, Toyota, Nissan.
You have to be pro-active with these things. If you're only reactive then it's already too late and the curve just to catch up to your competition is even harder, makes it look even more impossible, making you give up more easily.
So a better question is, do the astronauts have a right to hear the CORRECT figures, not the wild wishful-thinking executive estimates?
What makes you think they aren't aware of the true risks of what's involved? Who else would be in a better position to know them? I've always assumed the drivel that comes out of the NASA execs is intended for public consumption. The astronauts themselves are aware of what they are getting into.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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?
I think that western society has correctly reassessed the value of life
Life is valuable but our efforts to protect it have gone too far in the other direction. We spend inordinate amounts of money trying to build a risk free world rather than accepting the fact that some activities/professions are inherently dangerous. We've created a society of sheep that scare easily and run crying to the nearest lawyer and/or politician whenever some reminder that life can actually still be dangerous smacks them across the face. To borrow one of the best /. sig's I've ever seen: If you spend all your time childproofing the world you aren't going to have any time to worldproof your child.
Some things are worth risking your life over. Would you volunteer to go into space if the opportunity presented itself? Would you volunteer to test an experimental AIDS or cancer vaccine? Would you assist a fellow citizen who was being victimized by some thug? Would you jump into the ocean to save a drowning person? Would you intervene if you saw someone being attacked by an animal?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
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.
Actually, since space flight is essential for defence (spy satellites), general welfare (weather satellites) and interstate commerce (communication satellites), it is quite clearly within the power and duty of Federal government to spend money on.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
When you consider that it costs roughly 200k to raise a child in the United States, trading that human's life for certain goals...
That was the most appalling thing I've read all day. So what is YOUR life worth?
What are you, a hit man or something?
Wait, let me guess, you're the guy who was CEO of the company that chained the fire doors in the chicken plant shut so that the workers wouldn't steal chicken parts before it burned to the ground, right? I mean, they were poor people, not worth anything. Or the guy who who loved money so much he wouldn't spend the money to clean his filthy peanut processing factory that ultimately made thousands of people sick?
Whatever it is, you come across as a sociopath.
Free Martian Whores!
The fact that the shuttle has been up for 1300 days is kind of irrelevant, I'm sure it's not much of a consolation to the Columbia astronauts that there was no failure in the first 15 days of their mission! The relevant statistic is failures per mission, that sits at about 1 in 65 (131 flights, 2 failure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program).
>>>Feynman pointed out that that this was like flying the space shuttle every day for 300 years without an accident.
That's 1 out of 300*365 days. In reality NASA had 2 blowups in 1300 days of flight. So 1 in 650 odds of catastrophic failure.
Worse than that, I think -- doing the Chi-square test (single tail lower bound, time-terminated test) I make it about 1 in 420 days (60% confidence), 1 in 210 days (95% confidence). Dividing time by failures is significantly over-optimistic when the number of failures is low. The usual rule of thumb if you don't have a spreadsheet or Chi-square tables to hand is to divide by the number of failures plus 1, which in this case gives about 1 in 430, somewhere near the 60% confidence point. That avoids claiming infinite reliability if you have zero failures, when all it really means is that the test hasn't run for long enough to give useful results.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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.
"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".
It would be so cool if the above were true.
>>>since space flight is essential for defence (spy satellites) and interstate commerce (communication satellites)
Second point: Congress *regulates* interstate commerce; it does not participate. Else it would be able to kill-off Ford, Microsoft, and Panasonic, and build cars, computers, and TVs directly. The U.S. has not been granted that power to DO interstate commerce - only to regulate it. ----- First point on defense: Fair enough. But how does that justify sending shuttles up in space to study how plants grow? That is not constitutional. Instead of NASA's toys, we should simply have the Army launching non-manned rockets to position the satellites.
>>>general welfare
That's only the first half of the sentence. You need to read the WHOLE sentence. To quote the Author of the Constitution James Madison - "For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity." (Federalist 41)
He further clarifies: "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." (James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792)
And finally if you're still confused, just read the Supreme Law for yourself, which makes clear most powers belong to the State governments, not Congress: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Operationally the United States is like the European Union:
Most of the power is still held by individual state governments.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's not funny, it's ironic.
If your representatives don't understand what they're passing, they're no longer in control. Those two lawyers, and whoever pays them, are.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Whatever it is, you come across as a sociopath.
And you come across as an overly sheltered whiner who is afraid of the real world due to a complete lack of understanding.
Physics is an unforgiving BITCH to deal with. Bad things happen. Plans go astray. Sometimes there are things we don't know that we don't know.
We can explore these unknown areas in the minefield of life or we can stand, frozen in fear. Spending all our money, which is just another way of saying "expending resources", to ensure that there is absolutely no way possible that anything bad can ever happen to us is a recipe for ensuring that we never move. We lose any pretense of having a goal. Life becomes bland, and then the biggest controversy we can see is whether it is Kate or John's fault.
Your squeamishness about putting a monetary value to a life for the purpose of proceeding with the business of life does not make me a sociopath. It's called being a realist.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Actually, car trips should show a similar curve, since city driving has the highest risk of accidents. Once you get on the highway your accident risk goes down considerably. Of course, if you do get in an accident, the chance it'll be fatal for you goes up if it's on the highway -- the fact that car accidents are not usually fatal is an extra wrinkle in the whole thing...
It would be interesting to actually run the numbers.
That feeling of control over the odds is probably why we put up with relatively high possibility of injury or fatality with cars. Airline travel seems to bother people much more because they're not in control of the situation. If we had much longer lifespans we might think twice about cars killing off 1% of us every century.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that trained astronauts with advanced degrees in usually scientific fields are probably about as capable of figuring out the statistical chances of a fatal mission as people on slashdot are.
Call me crazy, but I'm assuming that NASA isn't lobotomizing their astronauts.
People take risks because to them, the payout for the risk is greater than the potential downside. For astronauts, obviously, the benefits of doing missions are greater than the pitfalls of dying on missions. You can doubt their wisdom in making those choices, but I think you're being a bit absurd if you think they aren't aware of or capable of figuring out the numbers.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
The odds come out to ~1 in 50 flights having a fatal accident. Now, even with columbia, that makes the Shuttle the safest spacecraft ever, but that's still pretty crappy.
Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 10 were fatal disasters (reentry and descent). All 92 manned Soyuz missions since 1971 have been free of fatalities. Soyuz T-10a exploded on the launch pad in 1983 due to a fuel spill, but its crew survived because they were able to use their capsule's emergency escape motor to get away. The overall odds on Soyuz and Shuttle are similar, but the Soyuz was significantly redesigned after the 1971 incident, so its pre-1971 fatality rate was 20%, and post-1971 it's zero (still). I'd rank the Soyuz as substantially safer than the Shuttle today, albeit less sexy.
THe realistic benefit of space travel is to get our asses of this rock and establish a secondary biosphere. Our survival absolutely 100% depends on it. ITs is not a question of IF, only when. One only has to look at the moon to see the evidence staring him in the face. Take a risk assesment of NOT establising a secondary biosphere and see what numbers you come up with given the history and timeline of the planet. THe earths biosphere is probably one of the most fragile things ever to exist. THis reminds me of most current Scfi universes like Star WArs/Trek etc, and the ludicrous idea of planetary defenses. When you have that much power at your disposal, chucking a very large rock at a planet is trivial.
Good-bye