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Proton-M Rocket Carrying Russia's Most Advanced Satellite Crashes
schwit1 (797399) writes "When it rains it pours: A Russian Proton rocket crashed Friday nine minutes after launch. Considering the tensions between the U.S. and Russia over space, combined with the increasing competition for the launch market created by SpaceX's lower prices, another Proton failure now is something the Russians could do without. Moreover, the Russians were planning a lot of Proton launches in the next few months to catch up from last year's launch failure. Many of these scheduled launches were commercial and were going to earn them hard cash. This failure definitely hurts, and will certainly be used as justification by their government in increase its control over that country's aging aerospace industry."
Um... you are forgetting that the reason that the airlines have such excellent safety records is due to the strict government oversight of just about every aspect of the industry. Pilot, Fight Attendants, Mechanics... heck, even the luggage handlers have to be certified to one level or another by the FAA. Every, even minor, mishap with a plane is documented in detail by the NTSB.
Yes, if the evil capitalistic profits were welcome to run amok there would be no seat belts, oxygen masks, life jackets, interiors would be of highly combustible materials, and the seats would rip from the floor/collapse in a crash - because all of those things add weight - and weight reduces profits. They are there to make the planes safe - not because the airlines want them there.
Challenger blew up due to political reasons (decision to not-launch (line engineers) was overridden by upper mgt. to make the president look good). Columbia was due to errant assumptions on the part of the engineers at both NASA as well as Lockheed Martin's. 'There is no way this chunk of lightweight foam could possibly cause any damage.' Ooops...