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That's what I was thinking too. Looking back at Apollo, it seems like they were far more willing to tolerate a higher % risk. What changed? The lack of competit
by JamilD 10y ago
That's what I was thinking too. Looking back at Apollo, it seems like they were far more willing to tolerate a higher % risk. What changed? The lack of competition with the USSR? A general shift in our culture?
- dragonwriter 10y ago> What changed? The lack of competition with the USSR? That exactly.
- prodmerc 10y agoIt's not only the US, risk aversion has increased all over Europe, as well. Drink bottled water, travel to safe destinations, god forbid you find an insect or even hair in your food, don't let the kids outside by themselves, don't play with dangerous things like electrical equipment or chemicals, don't move unless you know someone in that new city, etc. I don't know why, maybe the media's constant reporting of the worst things has taken its toll, maybe it's the government micromanaging everything, but most people today are afraid of risks of any kind.
- VygmraMGVl 10y agoI imagine NASA became a lot more risk averse after actually losing astronauts in the Challenger and Columbia disasters.
- kchoudhu 10y agoIf I recall, quite a few astronauts were killed on the way to the moon.
- pilom 10y ago3 died on the ground during a test exercise. No American astronaut died _in space_ until the Challenger explosion.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> No American astronaut died _in space_ until the Challenger explosion. No American astronaut died in space then, either.
- kchoudhu 10y agoYou must be fun at parties.
- krallja 10y agoNo American astronaut has ever died in space. The astronauts of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia all died in the Earth's atmosphere.
- rlanday 10y agoI had the opportunity a few years ago to see Buzz Aldrin speak at Facebook for the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. Someone asked him about the speech that was prepared for President Nixon in the event that Neil and Buzz had been stranded on the Moon; Buzz's answer was basically that he wasn't worried since the engineers had told them they had a ~95% chance of making it back to Earth safely, which I thought was interesting, since I have no idea how idea how they could be that confident about doing something so risky for the first time (although I guess the different pieces of hardware involved had been tested on prior missions).