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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?
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
>>"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. "
If what you write is true, then Western society will be (is?) in decline. Others who make a different valuation will take the risks. They will reap the rewards - as well they should. We'll be the poor spectators.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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!
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".
Airliners are probably about 10**8 times less likely to spontaneously explode in flight than rockets.
Maybe the Shuttle designers thought that they had somehow circumvented that fact, but events proved otherwise.
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.
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.
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?