> (It will take rockets a long time to get to the volume of operations that enables them to match airplanes. But in the long run there is no reason that rockets can't become that good.)
You know, I've read about easy rocket transportation in science fiction for decades. I'm reading _The Man in the High Castle_ to my son now, and it's an example of this.
But I honestly have trouble buying it, and I'd love if you could tell me why you believe it.
For one thing, it will take ages. I'm having trouble finding good numbers, but I think a reasonable SWAG is that there have been on the order of 100 million airplane flights in human history. Rockets have decades of catchup.
And rockets have an inherently worse failure mode. Many airplanes that fail during flight can still land. I don't think this is true of rockets. Failures are vastly more likely to be catastrophic. Is it possible to ameliorate this at all?
We have had commercial flights for 80 years. We have had commercial rockets for 0 years.
The same arguments could've been made for train travel against planes at first. In my opinion, rockets are likely safer than planes in a non-fuel incident since they are built to have parachutes and other safety devices built in from the beginning beyond just gliding with the hopes rudders and flaps aren't affected.
Below a few thousand feet (if I recall), both rockets and planes have similar risks in my opinion. The most deadly planes crashes are in the first or last few minutes of the flight when they have the least altitude and speed to figure out a plan; similarly, if an incident occurs with a rocket in the first 90 seconds, there is a good chance of high fatalities.
Maybe I would argue that rockets _could_ be safer since they will spend less time in this dangerous altitude but I am neither an aerospace engineer nor a rocket scientist.
Fundamentally with a machine, if it goes right it works. It is just a question of making sure that it goes right often enough. Planes have the advantage that there are more ways for them to fix things that go wrong. Rockets have the advantage of being simpler so less can go wrong. If we had equal experience in both, it isn't obvious which would be safer.
And yes, it is possible to make rockets safer. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system for one of the ways. But there are limits. If you're next to something that decides to explode, that explosion is a problem.
You know, I've read about easy rocket transportation in science fiction for decades. I'm reading _The Man in the High Castle_ to my son now, and it's an example of this.
But I honestly have trouble buying it, and I'd love if you could tell me why you believe it.
For one thing, it will take ages. I'm having trouble finding good numbers, but I think a reasonable SWAG is that there have been on the order of 100 million airplane flights in human history. Rockets have decades of catchup.
And rockets have an inherently worse failure mode. Many airplanes that fail during flight can still land. I don't think this is true of rockets. Failures are vastly more likely to be catastrophic. Is it possible to ameliorate this at all?