When were we ever "the Wild West of space exploration"?
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Back when we launched rockets with humans on board and there was a high chance they wouldn’t return. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, early shuttle. At least that what I refer to it as. Probably not a wide used term.
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You mean back in the olden days, when it was important to get Americans into space?
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Imagine if we had the same safety standards that early air travel had today. Millions of people will die each year. I believe getting someone to LEO should be as close to risk free as possible.
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Replying to @SethKurk @SafeNotAnOption and
This assertion betrays a complete lack of economic common sense. Everything in life involves trade-offs. Cars could have lower risk if they cost $900,000 each and had a max speed of 20 mph. In no aspect of human life do we aim for absolute safety. LEO should be no different.
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Replying to @MorlockP @SafeNotAnOption and
I know that. By risk free I mean a similar amount of risk that take when getting on an airplane or getting in our cars.
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Replying to @SethKurk @SafeNotAnOption and
Why? If we can put a person into LEO for $10 million with a 0.1% risk rate, or into LEO for the entire GDP of the US with a risk of 0.001%, why is the latter preferable ?
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Replying to @MorlockP @SafeNotAnOption and
I think you believe I’m an for 0% risk rate which I’m not. That’s a stupidly impossible number to try to reach. I’m saying we shouldn’t lower our standards just because it might speeds things up. That’s how we loose astronauts. Examples are Apollo 1 and Challenger.
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An astronaut's life has finite value. If slowing things down to save a life costs more than that, it's a net loss to society. Putting it another way: if it's not worth risking lives to do something in space, it's (at today's still high costs) not worth doing at all.
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Replying to @PaulFDietz @MorlockP and
There is nothing more important than bringing an astronaut back home safely. We don’t send them in suicide missions but we understand the risk of things going wrong.
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nothing at all? so it's OK to raise tax rates in the US to 99% if we can spend that money to increase astronaut safety by 0.001% ? don't you see that tradeoffs exist in everything ?
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