4 ms·

Comparing the two does not make sense. If airliners are your standard of safety for space travel, you might as well take a shortcut and just say “don’t launch h

Comparing the two does not make sense. If airliners are your standard of safety for space travel, you might as well take a shortcut and just say “don’t launch humans into space.” It most certainly makes sense. A lot of sense. The Dragon capsule spectacularly blew itself to smithereens. Now is not the time to bring out some duct tape and baling wire to slap the thing back together so that it can attempt to fly astronauts into space before the end of the year. Now is the time for careful and considered testing. Not rushing. This thing needs to be safe. I can guarantee you one thing. If American astronauts die this year because of inadequate testing, that will be the last time you see American astronauts being launched into space on a NASA sponsored platform. If Americans die because this was rushed, you can kiss NASA's manned space efforts goodbye. We'll pay the Russians what it takes to keep going to ISS. And when ISS ends, NASA will be out of the manned space flight business. The operative word going forward will be "robotics".

yellow_postit 7y ago
What leads you to believe this is being rushed?
lutorm 7y ago
Space travel is not "safe", period. If you decide to go into space, you should be aware that you're exposing yourself to significant risk. The question is: what risk are you willing to accept? You may still be right about your prediction, though. But that just says something about people having unrealistic expectations.
FeepingCreature 7y ago
> If American astronauts die this year because of inadequate testing, that will be the last time you see American astronauts being launched into space on a NASA sponsored platform. And that's why the US shut down the manned space program after Challenger. > If Americans die because this was rushed, you can kiss NASA's manned space efforts goodbye. We'll pay the Russians what it takes to keep going to ISS. The lack of recent fatalities with the Soyuz does not mean the Soyuz is "safe". 141 safe launches just implies that the probability of success is p^141=0.5 (since I have no idea how likely this outcome was, I default to 50/50), so 99.5%. (edit: 99.3% with Laplace's rule.) That's very good, but it's also very very far from the safety record of airplanes.
mikeash 7y ago
Just say “don’t send humans into space.” It’ll save you a lot of typing and you end up in the same place.

yellow_postit 7y ago

What leads you to believe this is being rushed?

lutorm 7y ago

Space travel is not "safe", period. If you decide to go into space, you should be aware that you're exposing yourself to significant risk. The question is: what risk are you willing to accept? You may still be right about your prediction, though. But that just says something about people having unrealistic expectations.

FeepingCreature 7y ago

> If American astronauts die this year because of inadequate testing, that will be the last time you see American astronauts being launched into space on a NASA sponsored platform. And that's why the US shut down the manned space program after Challenger. > If Americans die because this was rushed, you can kiss NASA's manned space efforts goodbye. We'll pay the Russians what it takes to keep going to ISS. The lack of recent fatalities with the Soyuz does not mean the Soyuz is "safe". 141 safe launches just implies that the probability of success is p^141=0.5 (since I have no idea how likely this outcome was, I default to 50/50), so 99.5%. (edit: 99.3% with Laplace's rule.) That's very good, but it's also very very far from the safety record of airplanes.

mikeash 7y ago

Just say “don’t send humans into space.” It’ll save you a lot of typing and you end up in the same place.