1. The "negative press" of the last two shuttle disasters has increased funding. Funding gets cut when things are "routine".
2. It costs millions of dollars a day to delay shuttle flights, which far outweighs training costs.
Most everything in the shuttle is triple redundant. I'd ride on a shuttle even if it lost all of its backup systems. Why? Because there are only two outcomes:
1. Everything works fine and it turns out to be a memorable trip.
2. I die in the most spectacular way possible, and my family receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from grieving citizens that would otherwise have not given a flip about me. And I get on TV for a few weeks, posthumously.
People do care about the crew, I care. However, they are not the MAIN reason why there is so much talk of safety. You can replace crew, you can't replace shuttles (as easily). It seems like a double standard that crew safety is always cited, no one seems to take notice, or send money to the families of pilots and crew that die in a helo accident in Afghanistan.
I wish the crew the best, but you don't get ahead by being as safe as possible.
Everyone is always trying to stress that we need to be careful not to put the lives of the shuttle crew at risk. I find that odd because the pilots and commanders probably dropped bombs over Baghdad in 1991. Where is the concern for human life there?
I like the crew, but the extra safety is really about the multimillion-dollar vehicle. If shuttles were as numerous as F-16s, Columbia would have been a page 3 story long forgotten by 2006.
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1. The "negative press" of the last two shuttle disasters has increased funding. Funding gets cut when things are "routine". 2. It costs millions of dollars a day to delay shuttle flights, which far outweighs training costs. Most everything in the shuttle is triple redundant. I'd ride on a shuttle even if it lost all of its backup systems. Why? Because there are only two outcomes: 1. Everything works fine and it turns out to be a memorable trip. 2. I die in the most spectacular way possible, and my family receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from grieving citizens that would otherwise have not given a flip about me. And I get on TV for a few weeks, posthumously. People do care about the crew, I care. However, they are not the MAIN reason why there is so much talk of safety. You can replace crew, you can't replace shuttles (as easily). It seems like a double standard that crew safety is always cited, no one seems to take notice, or send money to the families of pilots and crew that die in a helo accident in Afghanistan. I wish the crew the best, but you don't get ahead by being as safe as possible.
Everyone is always trying to stress that we need to be careful not to put the lives of the shuttle crew at risk. I find that odd because the pilots and commanders probably dropped bombs over Baghdad in 1991. Where is the concern for human life there? I like the crew, but the extra safety is really about the multimillion-dollar vehicle. If shuttles were as numerous as F-16s, Columbia would have been a page 3 story long forgotten by 2006.