The obscenely expensive obsession with safety in space flight has always seemed misguided to me. Plenty of people are willing to take the risk. Millions of people take bigger risks in their lines of work every day, with much less upside. The frontier of human capabilities seems like an odd place to renounce risk taking.
I agree with the first part, but I don't think it's the case that millions of people take astronaut-level risk in their work every day. 4% of everyone who has gone into orbit were killed in a mission or during training.
The reason it's bad to spend so much on astronaut safety is because the cost is so enormous and because the people at risk are very well-informed and participate voluntarily.
> The reason it's bad to spend so much on astronaut safety is because the cost is so enormous and because the people at risk are very well-informed and participate voluntarily.
That 4% fatality rate would likely be much higher if safety was lower priority.
Since astronauts don't oversee the entire build process, nor all of the maintenance, nor do the review all of the source code, etc etc etc, they aren't really well informed.
I believe you mean to say they are well informed of the risks, but the risk (4% fatality rate) is only that low due to astronaut safety being a high priority.
Also, as far as I understand, astronauts are usually paid[1], so they participate voluntarily only insofar as I participate voluntarily at my job: sure, I choose to go, but it's not volunteering for tax purposes.
I feel like a lot of it also has to do with the political origins of the space race. If we got to the moon but treated our astronauts as disposable, it wouldn't look as good.
