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Space Shuttle was not a major breakthrough -- we were in space and had orbital stations for a long time by then. It was supposed to be a cheaper, more convenien
by ptero 10y ago
Space Shuttle was not a major breakthrough -- we were in space and had orbital stations for a long time by then. It was supposed to be a cheaper, more convenient way to do things that we already did.
Soviet space program, Apollo program are better examples and both had ~10-20% fatality rates, at least during the initial phases (for example, Apollo 11 (successful moon landing) was 6th Apollo mission; one out of those 6 (Apollo 1) was fatal).
Ancient seafarers, voyagers, explorers faced more dangers and had higher fatalities than today's office clerks. If we are to keep making new voyages we should accept that there is danger involved. If we are spending $X and could make one step with success probability .9999 or 1000 steps with success probability .8 we should seriously consider both options, not let bureaucrats reject the riskier one out of hand. My 2c.
- mikeash 10y agoApollo 1 was a ground test that was retroactively given a mission name to honor the dead. If you want to count it toward the fatality rate then the denominator needs to include all the other ground tests they did, not just the flights. A more complete view would also include Mercury and Gemini. The Soviets lost a few people in flight during the early days, but the last one was in 1971. There's no reason to think we should have a similar fatality rate in 2017, with modern materials, processes, and control systems. I agree in theory that if a 20% fatality rate were somehow required, it would be acceptable for things like this. My argument is not that it's unacceptable, but that it's so high as to be a hindrance rather than a help, and that it's far beyond what's necessary even in a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" type of program. We don't need airliner-level "one in a billion" safety, but something around 1% seems highly reasonable.
- Nomentatus 10y agoOf the Gemini astronauts, I believe fully one-sixth died in training accidents, mostly flight accidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_non-fatal_training_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_non-fatal_training...
- eru 10y agoDidn't the Space Shuttle go 1000 times (yes, thousand times, not thousand percent) over budget in terms of cost of launching 1kg of payload into space?
- mikeash 10y agoI don't think so. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the lowest cost estimate during development was $635/lb in modern dollars. The actual cost was something like $8,000-$20,000/lb depending on whether you're measuring marginal or total costs.
- eru 10y agoThanks for looking it up. I think Wikipedia has the variable costs? If I remember right, the article I got the shocking estimates from amortized the fixed costs of developing the space shuttle over the entire life of the program---and since they did much fewer missions than planned originally, you get the crazy overrun. Anyway, even your figures are crazy. Part of the reason SpaceX can be cheaper is not because they are smarter---but because they don't have to source parts from each and every congressional district.
- mikeash 10y agoWikipedia has both, thus the range. But I misstated the high end: if you take all costs into account then it's $27,000/lb. Which is an awful lot, to be sure.