
NASA advisers say SpaceX rocket technology could put lives at risk - jackfoxy
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-nasa-spacex-rocket-elon-musk-20180505-story.html
======
citilife
I think the last paragraph really says it all:

> Before the very first shuttle flight, NASA estimated that the chance of
> death was between 1 in 500 and 1 in 5,000. Later, after the agency had
> compiled data from shuttle flights, it went back and came up with a very
> different number. The chance of death was actually 1 in 12.

The fact is, these numbers are made up because the systems are too complicated
to calculate based on individual components. Until they have something like
50+ launches (after the kinks are worked out), we wont really know the actual
chances of blowing up a rocket are. Further, how well do the escape capsule(s)
work? If they work the majority of the time (saving astronauts from he
explosion), that'd also dramatically drive down the risk.

If say, there was a 1 in 30 chance of a rocket exploding using the method
described, but the escape capsule failed to save the astronauts 1 out of 10
times. Then the real risk of killing the astronauts is 1 in 300.
Unfortunately, we simply don't have either of those numbers, so the actual
"risk" level is essentially made up.

~~~
jessaustin
Since the actual disaster record for the shuttle was 2/135, they must have
done some other adjustments to come up with 1/12\. Still, at this point it
seems very likely that SpaceX will be safer than the shuttle.

~~~
craftyguy
2/135 is failed flights/total flights.

Over the life of the shuttle[0], there were 355 astronauts who flew, 14 died.
So for every ~25 astronauts who flew on the shuttle, 1 died..

0) [https://www.space.com/12376-nasa-space-shuttle-program-
facts...](https://www.space.com/12376-nasa-space-shuttle-program-facts-
statistics.html)

~~~
ebbv
Oh my lord you guys that is not how probabilities work. You can’t look at what
actually happened and then say “Well that was the chance.” If I flip a coin 20
times and happen to end up with a 15:5 split that doesn’t mean the chance of
heads is 3:1.

Also the context of that 1 in 12 in the quote is important. They’re saying
that was the chance on the first flight in retrospect. The shuttle and it’s
supporting facilities and processes didn’t stay static, they improved over
time.

~~~
joshuamorton
>Oh my lord you guys that is not how probabilities work. You can’t look at
what actually happened and then say “Well that was the chance.” If I flip a
coin 20 times and happen to end up with a 15:5 split that doesn’t mean the
chance of heads is 3:1.

Erm, over a large sample size, yes this is exactly how things work. Sure 15/5
may be too small, but 150/50 isn't. That's well after the point where its
reasonable to believe that your coin is rigged.

As the other user mentioned, if you don't have the prior that the coin is
fair, a 15/5 outcome may (and does) indeed imply that heads are more likely
than tails. In fact, 15/5 would imply a less than 1% chance of a fair coin,
given uniform priors. (Beta[15, 5] -> 1st percentile is 50.175)

~~~
pps43
But in this case the samples are small. If you flip a coin once and got tails,
what is the probability of heads?

~~~
joshuamorton
That's not quite the same question as what I'm answering. I'm saying "given
you flip a coin once and it comes up heads, what is the probability that its a
fair coin" (or previously, given you flipped a coin 20 times, and it came up
15/5, what is the likelyhood it is a fair coin). And with a single flip, you
can't actually answer that question (BetaDist[1, 0] is undefined).

Now, once you've answered that question, you can integrate to get a
probability that the next coin is heads, but with a single flip you can't even
answer the first question. You need to have gotten heads and tails each at
least once.

~~~
isostatic
Flip a coin 50 times and get 50 heads, it's almost impossible it's a fair
coin. Does your BetaDist function work in that case?

~~~
joshuamorton
No, the beta distribution BetaDist[a, b] is only defined for a, b strictly >
0.

When a or b is very large and the other is zero, you can treat it as 1 and get
a decent approximation, but it'll be a an estimate that biases towards the
center.

------
mikeash
I have a hard time understanding this reasoning.

There are two ways to do it. You can load the fuel first, then have the
astronauts board a rocket full of stuff ready to go boom. Or you can load the
astronauts first, and load the fuel once they’re strapped in and ready to go.

In the first scenario, there’s a large window where an exploding rocket
results in dead crew. The launch escape system doesn’t do them any good if
they’re still on the walkway or the elevator. In the second scenario, there is
no such window. At all times, either the rocket is unloaded or the launch
escape system can save the crew.

If I were flying on Dragon, I’d really want to be in the scenario where I can
always be saved.

~~~
ChuckMcM
There isn't anything wrong with your reasoning, it just isn't the reasoning
that NASA came up with.

NASA has the entire history of US Spaceflight in its collective memory. It has
many memories of accidents occurring during fueling that resulted in the loss
of the spacecraft. It has no memories of a crew being saved by the crew abort
systems because it has only happened once[1] and that was with a Russian
rocket.

Thus, going by what they "know", NASA knows that rockets can blow up when they
are being fueled and they know that SpaceX blew up one of their rockets while
fueling it, but they do not know if a launch escape system would save
astronauts in that situation. Therefore SpaceX's plan is "risky" because they
are exposing the crew to a "known" danger and relying on an "unknown" system
to protect them from that danger. It is this kind of thinking that keeps NASA
moving slowly and carefully.

SpaceX has essentially said, "Trust us, if anything went wrong the crew escape
system would save them." Unfortunately they don't have a launch pad they can
blow up on purpose to demonstrate that for NASA (it would help if they could).
The last time they blew up a rocket while fueling it, it took months to
recondition the pad for launches again.

[1] _In 1983, an escape rocket pulled the three cosmonauts of Soyuz T-10-1 to
safety when its booster exploded on the launch pad. As of 2015, this is the
only case where an abort system saved a crew from a launchpad accident._ \--
[https://www.space.com/29260-how-spacecraft-launch-aborts-
wor...](https://www.space.com/29260-how-spacecraft-launch-aborts-work-
infographic.html)

~~~
wolf550e
> they do not know if a launch escape system would save astronauts in that
> situation.

1\. In the video of the Amos 6 explosion[2], you see the payload fairing
falling to the ground, with the satellite inside. You see it happened slowly,
the payload did not explore, it burned down after falling. The abort system
would have saved the crew in that situation. We were also told[3] the Dragon 1
would have been just fine if it was programmed to open its chutes after the
second stage disintegrated under it during ascent on CRS-7. NASA participated
in analyzing both failures, they know this.

2\. SpaceX have done a pad abort test in 2015[1] that demonstrated the capsule
reacting to "something bad happened to the rocket" on the launch pad and
saving a test dummy's life.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_2#Pad_abort_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_2#Pad_abort_test)

2 - [https://youtu.be/_BgJEXQkjNQ?t=79](https://youtu.be/_BgJEXQkjNQ?t=79)

3 - [https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/07/saving-spaceship-
dra...](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/07/saving-spaceship-dragon-
contingency-chute/)

~~~
ChuckMcM
According to this page ([https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-commercial-crew-
program-mi...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-commercial-crew-program-
mission-in-sight-for-2018)) they will also do an in flight abort test. (should
be exciting).

~~~
wolf550e
Yeah, it's also mentioned in the wikipedia article linked.

------
pinewurst
I see this as SLS (Senate Launch System) backers feeling threatened by their
own bad economics and lack of ability to deliver. So it's time to deploy the
PR submarine fleet...

~~~
calcifer
> SLS (Senate Launch System)

You sound like the kind of person that unironically writes Micro$oft,
mistakenly believing it supports their view point. At _best_ , it makes you
look juvenile.

~~~
wolf550e
The SLS is exactly the rare case where he's right and you're wrong. It is a
project whose goal is blatantly to spend money, not to fly any payload on any
mission.

After spending tens of billions of dollars on development, you get a rocket
that will cost a billion to fly, will never achieve the flight numbers to be
able to honestly rely on it.

It will likely fly very few times before it is cancelled.

It will be uneconomical to use for any mission it flies, and any mission that
uses it will only do that if they are forced to (the mission requirements
changed such that only SLS allows the mission to be done, or the project is
cancelled) or if the SLS budget pays for the rocket rather than the mission's
budget.

~~~
vpribish
but name-calling makes you look bad regardless of the merits of your argument

~~~
phkahler
>but name-calling makes you look bad regardless of the merits of your argument

You're right. While it can be funny and it can make one feel good doing so, it
almost never helps your cause. The people who laugh along are those who
already agree with the point. The rest will be more likely to discount
anything of merit that is said because of the apparent bias.

------
eesmith
FWIW (and because I didn't know it),
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1#Fractions_and_formulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1#Fractions_and_formulation)
comments:

> For a short period, the Soviets achieved even higher densities by super-
> chilling the kerosene in a rocket’s fuel tanks, ... The latest version of
> Falcon 9, Falcon 9 Full Thrust, also has the capability of sub-cooling the
> RP-1 fuel to −7 °C, giving a 2.5–4% density increase.

~~~
vertexFarm
Man I really wish we would get nuclear propulsion going again one of these
days. Fine, fine, not as a launch system, just orbit to orbit... but we could
move much larger, more dependable payloads so much further and not have to
fiddle with little tweaks like these to surf the tiny margins of chemical
propulsion.

It could have been a very mature technology by now. I feel like we created all
the nightmares and quit the technology before we got to the actually good
uses.

~~~
Oren-T
Nuclear propulsion is more efficient but doesn’t produce enough thrust for
surface launch(\ _)

We are stuck with chemical rockets for that. Nuclear could help us get to Mars
faster or launch less mass from the surface. It may even be relevant for the
upper stage of a launcher. But not for getting off the ground.

(\_) with the notable exception of Orion

~~~
vertexFarm
That's why I specified orbit-to-orbit systems. The advantages there are
immense.

When we finally do it, that's probably how it'll happen.

------
njarboe
For some historical perspective: on the Ferdinand Magellan expedition about
230 men out of 270, including Magellan himself, died of violence and/or
disease (1 in 1.2 chance of death).

As Musk has said in the past, a safety first philosophy and space travel don't
mix. Safety third might work.

~~~
calcifer
Than it sounds like Musk is disagreeing with SpaceX. From the article:

> SpaceX says it is serious about flying people safely and is going to great
> lengths to study every aspect of the vehicle, down to individual valves, so
> that it will meet and surpass the 1-in-270 chance-of-death metric, said
> Benji Reed, the director of SpaceX's commercial crew program.

> When Reed was down at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a recent trip, he came
> across a room on a special tour where the astronauts' families from the
> shuttle program used to wait ahead of the rocket launch.

> They were stunned to see that a whiteboard with drawings made by the
> children of the crew lost in the 2003 Columbia disaster was still there,
> preserved.

> "That really drives it home," Reed said. "This isn't just the people that
> we're flying — these are all of their families. So we take this extremely
> seriously, and we understand that our job is to fly people safely and bring
> them back safely. To do that you have to humanize it. You have to see them
> as your friends and as your colleagues."

~~~
icc97
> SpaceX says it is serious about flying people safely

> So we take this extremely seriously

Musk didn't say they don't take it seriously, he said it's not the highest
priority.

But also there's a difference between what Space X says and what it does. I
don't think we'll fully know the extent of Space X's safety consideration
until some astronauts die in take off.

NASA are cautious because they've had people die and that lives long in the
memory. Space X engineers haven't had to go through the process of finding out
which one of them missed the bug that killed people.

~~~
Tepix
Quite a few SpaceX employees came from NASA.

------
caconym_
I have trouble seeing this as anything more than irrational territorialism
and/or a disingenuous defense of the pork barrel status quo.

If we are unwilling to try something new because we decided fifty _fucking_
years ago that it was a bad idea, we're done. Time for NASA to hang up its
space helmets and watch China (or possibly SpaceX, BO, etc. using private
funds) take the next steps.

------
tlb
I wonder how you get get a number like "1 in 270" for the acceptable chance of
death. It's not a number you'd choose as a starting point in a top-down
calculation. It must be a bottom-up calculation from a sum of existing risks.
I'd be curious if anyone knows more about it.

~~~
acover
Maybe:

"The thing that drives the 1 in 270 is really micrometeorites and orbital
debris … whatever things that are in space that you can collide with. So
that’s what drops that number down, because you’ve got to look at the 210
days, the fact that your heat shield or something might be exposed to whatever
that debris is for that period of time. NASA looks at Loss of Vehicle the same
as Loss of Crew. If the vehicle is damaged and it may not be detected prior to
de-orbit, then you have loss of crew.

[https://www.airspacemag.com/space/certified-
safe-281371/](https://www.airspacemag.com/space/certified-safe-281371/)

------
alexandercrohde
I don't get it. I imagine HN feels there's between 5% to 30% chance that
humanity kills itself in the next 300 years.

If we accept those odds, isn't there a point where space travel becomes the
best our best plan, regardless of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of
astronaut deaths?

~~~
vertexFarm
Once upon a time, thousands of people died fishing for ambergris. Whale anus
wax. People died all the time.

Do we really think people are going to die exploring space? Yeah, they very
fucking well are going to be deaths exploring space. We can take precautions
as much as practical, but this zero risk tolerance philosophy is not going to
work. We haven't done anything of note when it comes to manned space
exploration in half a century. Space is so dangerous that the only way to keep
risk to a minimum is to not go. And that's basically what we've done.

It's just that now these things are televised and PR is such a disaster when
you have somebody die on air. It's not like a plumber is going to be watched
by the entire world as he works in some kind of risky situation. People die
doing that, too. People die doing anything. But if it's in the limelight like
space exploration, it's absolutely unacceptable for anyone to risk death.
That's why. Because we're watching and we can bear it only if we don't have to
know about it or watch it happen.

We've got to start taking a hell of a lot more risk. We're taking enormous
risk by not furthering space exploration. But risk of inaction is a strange
thing, psychologically speaking. People don't fret about it, even though it's
a real killer. Our climate is about to be the biggest killer of all, and we
only feel vaguely uncomfortable about doing absolutely nothing.

And when I talk about taking risk, I'm not talking about go fever by the way--
dumb political risk that leads to ignoring engineers. I mean the kind of risk
that got us to the moon in the 60s. People died doing that. Mostly Soviet
people, but a few Americans, too. But it was important enough. And it got
done. We really shouldn't have stopped there.

It's not really NASA's fault, but they haven't gotten shit done with manned
spaceflight since then. Haven't done a damn thing. Yet people have still died
doing it. I hope private industry at least gets somebody above the Van Allen
belt in the coming years. We need to get back on the horse before we lose our
chance for good.

------
dzdt
It seems to me there is a reasonably low cost solution to demonstrate safety:
SpaceX should load and unload the fuel multiple times for its human-
qualification spaceflights. If SpaceX is correctly confident fuel loading is
safe, the extra handling won't result in incidents. This would be a fairly
minor expense given nothing is consumed or destroyed -- just handling costs
and incidental losses due to evaporation and so on.

~~~
phkahler
OMG what a fantastically obvious idea! Now that you've mentioned it of course
;-)

There may be reasons this isn't as simple as it sounds but it's worth
considering.

~~~
Maybestring
Not that it wouldn't increase confidence, but if you don't know what you
needed to be worried about, you can't be sure that you really tested it.

Loading and unloading fuel repeatedly doesn't validate that the ground crew
will be sober for a 5:00am launch on May 6th.

Validation testing is good for testing a known unknown. Whether it's good for
testing an unknown unknown, is unknown.

~~~
lucb1e
It's a good point that indeed there might be something different at actual-
launch-time versus testing time, but I'd imagine that doing the whole
procedure a few times (as complete as possible) would reveal any important
unknown unknowns if present. (Where I define important as 'reasonably likely
to occur': if they are indeed so likely, they'll probably occur with repeated
tests.)

------
soared
I'm no scientist, but I'd expect there is a long list of things SpaceX has
done that violate the "last 50 years of national and international safety
standards".

~~~
TAForObvReasons
"most fast and break things"

~~~
greglindahl
"launch frequently, and recover as much of the rocket as you can to inspect
the parts so they can be improved"

~~~
jacquesm
That's a good point. Closing the loop probably did more for the advancement of
space travel than anything else because it allows you to find out what
_almost_ failed.

------
lowbloodsugar
This is based on information from _2015_ , but May 2018 seems to be Take Down
Elon Musk month, so lets run a negative story.

------
bradknowles
So, what I don’t understand is why NASA doesn’t make this really simple —
allow SpaceX to use the “load-and-go” process on flights that don’t involve
putting living beings into space, and when they have repeatedly and
sufficiently proven how safe the system is, then start talking about whether
or not it could be used to launch humans.

Don’t even talk about using the potentially more dangerous system until it has
enough of a safety record.

~~~
rst
SpaceX has been using supercooled propellants (and "load-and-go") for every
launch since early 2016, including NASA cargo launches. It's been used over
thirty times by now. Whatever additional assurance that NASA's advisory board
wants, another few launches are unlikely to provide it.

------
jimnotgym
> the safety-obsessed space agency

That's not how I remember Feynmans report going

~~~
mephitix
That report came out 32 years ago. The article suggests that the space agency
has become more safety-obsessed over time.

~~~
ChickeNES
Given that the Columbia disaster occurred in the middle of those 32 years, I'm
not sure that follows....

~~~
ufmace
Somewhat true, I'd say that risk-averse is more appropriate than safety-
obsessed. For such organizations, being "safety-obsessed" usually means a
massive amount of bureaucracy around certain known risks, but such
organizations don't tend to be consistently good at finding and addressing
unknown risks.

------
_ph_
SpaceX has lost 2 F9 so far. The first exploded in flight, but the Dragon
capsule could have been retreived, if the parashutes had not been disbled in
the starting phase. The second fueling for the static fire test. In both
cases, no crew would have been in danger, and of course the causes of the
failures has been adressed.

But it will at least take another 12 months till the first planned crew
flight. If everything goes well, the Falcon 9 will have about 30 more flights
till then. A lot of opportunity to build a safety record.

~~~
greglindahl
Everyone expects the LAS (launch abort system) to not be very reliable. So
you're a bit optimistic about the outcome of the second failure: big danger
for the crew.

~~~
boardwaalk
Who is "everyone"? Because it certainly isn't actually everyone.

------
ILMostro7
NASA Challenger and others have proven record of putting lives at risk. It's a
dangerous job. As for hypothetical danger, that's more of a clickbait
"analysis", timely after recent lash-out by Musk on Tesla conference call,
IMHO.

------
spacenick88
I for one who would rather sit on top of a rocket being loaded but have a LAS
ready to go than going anywhere near a loaded one with no way to escape within
a few seconds.

------
tomohawk
Just goes to show that its way easier to change technology than culture. Even
Congresscritters are still thinking they're calling the shots. If NASA doesn't
want to use SpaceX, they're free to do so. They can go with Boeing (some of
the very people pointing fingers) or the Russians.

The "culture of safety" at NASA had more to do with a "culture of protecting
funding lines" by ensuring that parts of the shuttle were done in important
congressional districts.

------
mathinpens
I mean the only safe ship is a ship in a harbor and that's not what ships are
for....buttttt I am skeptical that a for-profit-company run by elon musk has
rigorous safety culture-particularly given he apparently has no concerns with
libeling people killed by his firm's autopilot software

------
aunty_helen
A few months ago I had a chat to one of the engineers working on the SLS
during a NASA outreach presentation. Super defensive about it and dismissive
of SpaceX and their accomplishments. The goals of the SLS mission before 2030,
build an orbiting moon space station, isn't even that ambitious or
scientifically valuable.

2 years ago, I was having a similar chat to someone who was a retired ULA ~30
launch veteran (I forget exactly their title). But they didn't want to
entertain the idea that SpaceX even had a business model. 'The market that
they're aiming for is only a few launches a year'

~~~
imron
> The market that they're aiming for is only a few launches a year'

In 1958, the chairman of IBM stated 'I think there is a world market for about
five computers'.

He wasn't wrong, because back then computers were extraordinarily expensive
and occupied entire buildings. There was maybe a worldwide market of about 5
of _those kinds_ of computers.

What happened though was that due to technological advances, computers became
cheaper, smaller, more efficient and more reliable and it drastically changed
the entire market, and now almost everyone has a computer in their pocket.

The market for rocket launches will also significantly take off if SpaceX can
bring the cost down and the reliability up.

------
markonen
But is the densified fuel actually needed to fly the Dragon 2 to a LEO
destination? Can SpaceX do their Falcon 9 HSF missions the old fashioned way,
making the safety of load-and-go a moot point?

~~~
PeterVermont
I had this same thought! Presumably, ISS missions do not need total fuel
capacity so boosters could be fueled only enough for mission plus landing plus
safety margin. Even if they did not wish to change loading procedures they
could load densified fuel and then load the astronauts. The delay to load crew
would allow the fuel to warm up and expand but so what?

------
chrisbennet
Sending men into space is a vanity mission, not a science mission.[1] Unmanned
mission solve the risk problem for SpaceX type progress and yield more answers
for a lot less money.

[1] With the exception of _politically_ valuable missions such as the
International space station which employed Russian scientist in a bid to keep
them from selling their skills to undesirable state actors.

~~~
vertexFarm
That's just oversimplified and not true. Sending men into space in the sixties
and seventies got so much more done than automated missions to the moon
because it forced us to work harder and solve more important problems. We're
still reaping the rewards gained from technology developed to solve those
problems.

Sending probes to learn trivia about the universe is not as important as
developing better ways to support and transport human life. At all.

------
c54
> including Blue Origin, which was founded by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos

Amazing that he's not "Amazon owner Jeff Bezos".

------
newnewpdro
Shouldn't this headline read "could put lives at _unnecessary_ risk" ?

All rocket launches are going to carry some amount of mortal risk. The
headline implies this isn't the case except for SpaceX's technology, which is
hogwash.

------
sheeshkebab
to be fair, folks that are knowingly getting into a tube with a bunch of
explosives strapped under them are not really thinking about dying that much.

Personally, I would gladly climb into one of these rockets if ever given a
chance, regardless of risks.

------
albertTJames
Who knew that space exploration was risky ?

------
Zarath
I'm alright with that.

------
loeg
Challenger, Columbia, and now NASA is concerned about astronaut safety? Hah.

There is always risk; simple rockets are (probably) less risky than the
shuttle program. More unmanned launches will help quantify that risk; NASA can
then determine whether the risk is acceptable, or not.

------
carapace
> Robert Lightfoot, the former acting NASA administrator, lamented in candid
> terms how the agency, with society as a whole, has become too risk-averse.
> He charged the agency with recapturing some of the youthful swagger that
> sent men to the moon during the Apollo era.

> "I worry, to be perfectly honest, if we would have ever launched Apollo in
> our environment here today," he said during a speech at the Space Symposium
> last month, "if Buzz [Aldrin] and Neil [Armstrong] would have ever been able
> to go to the moon in the risk environment we have today."

That is a really underhanded way to say, "Let's kill more astronauts so we can
get to space faster."

The folks who risked their lives and, in some cases, gave their lives to get
us to where we are today deserve better.

~~~
toasterlovin
Disagree. We make trade offs wrt safety all the time. Driving in a car is
pretty dangerous, yet many of us drive our cars every single day. Because the
payoff is worth the risk. Those quotes speak to this trade off. They are
advocating for a stance that is willing to take more risk, because they assume
that there are tremendous benefits to be had by doing so. They are not
advocating taking risks for the sake of killing astronauts.

~~~
carapace
I get what you're saying but in this case I have to ask, can we really not get
those benefits without risking lives? Would it become impossible? Or would it
just take longer?

Can robots do it?

I _hate_ arguing this position because _I want to go to space_ physically in
person in my lifetime. But it doesn't make sense to send humans if robots can
do the job because space is inimicable to life and life support is very hard
and expensive and heavy.

Risk lives to stave off an asteroid but not to mine it.

\- - - -

I don't want to get into a side-thing about driving, but I don't drive in part
because I see it as a Faustian bargain: we get transportation that's so
convenient at the cost of forcing people to participate in a death-and-mayhem
lottery. Traffic is a meat-grinder.

~~~
nkristoffersen
We’ve sent many robots to space and to mars. But they are very limited in
their scope and ability. Where a human can have near limitless scope and
ability.

Watch some of the mars rover videos and it becomes clear how frustrating it
must be for the scientists on earth to do research on mars remotely.

~~~
carapace
More frustrating than being blown up on the launch pad!?

Mark S. Miller had a site with a list of "adages", here's one I really liked:

"A Computer's Perspective on Moore's Law: Humans are getting more expensive at
an exponential rate."

This is true, although slower, for robots.

Look, if _you_ want to risk _your_ life to go to space, I'm fine with that. I
do too.

But if NASA or Musk or Bezos or whoever want to _unnecessarily_ risk _other
peoples '_ lives to make a buck _faster_ , or even just explore Mars, that's
irresponsible and kinda fucked up, is my opinion.

For example, I think Mars One is awesome! (Stupid and doomed, but still
awesome.) Colonizing Mars to have a "backup" Earth is important enough (in my
opinion) that it's noble to risk your life to achieve it ASAP.

Mining an asteroid, although I personally would love to try it, is not quite
so noble, eh?

The less "risk-averse" space program was happening in a very different
context: the "Space Race" [1] which was in many ways a continuation or
extension of the Cold War, which was in many ways a continuation or extension
of WWII.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race)

------
imh
Space science is cool and useful, but is it so crucial to humanity's progress
that we shouldn't be super extra careful with our astronaut's lives? Waiting
an extra year or two or ten to learn about how fruit fly DNA mutates in space
seems fine when the alternative is maybe killing astronauts with a decent
probability.

~~~
toasterlovin
What about letting the astronauts decide what level of risk they are
comfortable with?

~~~
imh
If that kind of thinking worked, we wouldn't need OSHA. This comes to mind:
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/government-paying-
billions...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/government-paying-billions-
shipbuilders-histories-safety-lapses)

~~~
Johnny555
That's not quite the same -- no one becomes an astronaut because it's the only
way they can support themselves, taking that job is very much a choice.

