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'"I am more interested in maximizing the odds of success for this bold undertaking and making it as safe as any human journey into the deep space can be, than I

'"I am more interested in maximizing the odds of success for this bold undertaking and making it as safe as any human journey into the deep space can be, than I am in having NASA meet arbitrary deadlines," Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson — a Democrat from Texas and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology — said at a recent hearing.' Waiting to make a journey until it is "as safe as can be" means that one never makes the journey at all. This has been NASA's curse since the Challenger explosion. Human space exploration is not going to happen with a "safety first" culture.

api 7y ago
It all starts when we leave the womb, which is a stupid reckless decision.
- ijidak 7y ago
  Haha. I have a personal saying that is similar. "Life causes death." So, the key is clearly to never live in the first place. :-)
- Razengan 7y ago
  It all began when the Universe was created, which has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move.
jdkee 7y ago
I would reckon it ain't gonna happen by 2024, given the mission critical failures Boeing has had with the Starliner. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/science/boeing-starliner-nasa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/science/boeing-starliner-... Or the SLS system: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/after-a-corrective-action-boeing-back-at-work-on-sls-rocket-core-stage/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/after-a-corrective-a...
- jessriedel 7y ago
  The Starliner is for low-Earth orbit and is not part of the Artemis architecture for going to the Moon.
johnchristopher 7y ago
"As safe as can be" doesn't mean "It's guaranteed nothing will go wrong". Best efforts vs. guaranteed delivery service.
- mattigames 7y ago
  "Safe as can be" is completely subjective, maybe in 1000 years it will be 100% safe due new technological advances and improvements in simulations, so "as safe as can be" is likely to be way after we are no longer alive.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    "Safe as can be" is objective, it means that considering what we know, our tech and what may go wrong we can say "we are not going to be able to make it safer before a long time, we have eliminated random threats we can foresee but we can't prevent what we don't know that could happen from ever happening". That's what `as safe as can be` mean. `As safe as can be` doesn't mean 100% safe. You are conflating the unknown with subjective.
    - njarboe 7y ago
      Spacecraft are on the edge of known technology. New components, materials, designs, computer simulations, etc., are being created all the time. What we know is constantly changing so "safer before a long time" does not really apply.
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      I'm not so sure that the phrase necessarily means exactly what you are saying it does. Specifically, does it mean "as safe as can be given our actual budgetary constraints" or "as safe as can be given a 1000x increase in funding that would make it marginally safer but certainly not be worth the additional investment" ?
melling 7y ago
Here we go again... Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 Anyway, I think I lost and people were confident that Virgin Galactic would soon be back. I’ll just repost one of my summary thoughts. The entire thread is worth reading. It’ll probably be repeated in some form today. “ Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly. In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe.“
- taneq 7y ago
  > "Someone dying is devastating." But it's not. We're more than happy to throw human lives at most things. Any sufficiently large civilian project (much less anything military) will have a greater-than-zero expected death toll from accidents, on-the-job medical issues, etc. And arguably this is the right way to make the omelette (although we've definitely improved in the past few decades: https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolbox/blog/12096401/looking-back-on-the-worlds-deadliest-construction-projects https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolb...). It's only when we get to space travel that we suddenly become shy about the human cost of progress. It's big and dramatic and failures are very public. Arguably we should be willing to take much greater risks at this point to establish ourselves as interplanetary.
  - yongjik 7y ago
    I think the difference is that most other things have a point other than having a human being in the scene. So if we're building an airport, a crane collapses, and workers die, we mourn and move on. (And hopefully find out what went wrong so that we don't repeat the same mistake.) And the final constructed airport has its uses, so in a morbid way, their deaths were not in vain. On the other hand, there's no other point in human space exploration: almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper. So the point is literally to have a human being there, and having the human die there is not just a risk, it negates the entire premise of the project. No one will plan an Olympic opening ceremony with a non-negligible chance of someone dying on stage. Why? Because the entire purpose of the Olympic is to show off your country, and if someone dies while half of the world is watching, you have failed your project. Same thing.
cumunism 7y ago
"...a Democrat..." lol.
wyxuan 7y ago
safety first doesn't mean no risks can be taken, but rather that concerns like publicity or money don't become a primary concern for NASA the way it <sort> of was with the challenger disaster
kiba 7y ago
The Space Shuttle isn't exactly the safest nor the most efficient design to ferry astronauts into space.

api 7y ago

It all starts when we leave the womb, which is a stupid reckless decision.

ijidak 7y ago
Haha. I have a personal saying that is similar. "Life causes death." So, the key is clearly to never live in the first place. :-)
Razengan 7y ago
It all began when the Universe was created, which has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move.

jdkee 7y ago

I would reckon it ain't gonna happen by 2024, given the mission critical failures Boeing has had with the Starliner. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/science/boeing-starliner-nasa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/science/boeing-starliner-... Or the SLS system: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/after-a-corrective-action-boeing-back-at-work-on-sls-rocket-core-stage/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/after-a-corrective-a...

jessriedel 7y ago
The Starliner is for low-Earth orbit and is not part of the Artemis architecture for going to the Moon.

johnchristopher 7y ago

"As safe as can be" doesn't mean "It's guaranteed nothing will go wrong". Best efforts vs. guaranteed delivery service.

mattigames 7y ago
"Safe as can be" is completely subjective, maybe in 1000 years it will be 100% safe due new technological advances and improvements in simulations, so "as safe as can be" is likely to be way after we are no longer alive.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  "Safe as can be" is objective, it means that considering what we know, our tech and what may go wrong we can say "we are not going to be able to make it safer before a long time, we have eliminated random threats we can foresee but we can't prevent what we don't know that could happen from ever happening". That's what `as safe as can be` mean. `As safe as can be` doesn't mean 100% safe. You are conflating the unknown with subjective.
  - njarboe 7y ago
    Spacecraft are on the edge of known technology. New components, materials, designs, computer simulations, etc., are being created all the time. What we know is constantly changing so "safer before a long time" does not really apply.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    I'm not so sure that the phrase necessarily means exactly what you are saying it does. Specifically, does it mean "as safe as can be given our actual budgetary constraints" or "as safe as can be given a 1000x increase in funding that would make it marginally safer but certainly not be worth the additional investment" ?

melling 7y ago

Here we go again... Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 Anyway, I think I lost and people were confident that Virgin Galactic would soon be back. I’ll just repost one of my summary thoughts. The entire thread is worth reading. It’ll probably be repeated in some form today. “ Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly. In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe.“

taneq 7y ago
> "Someone dying is devastating." But it's not. We're more than happy to throw human lives at most things. Any sufficiently large civilian project (much less anything military) will have a greater-than-zero expected death toll from accidents, on-the-job medical issues, etc. And arguably this is the right way to make the omelette (although we've definitely improved in the past few decades: https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolbox/blog/12096401/looking-back-on-the-worlds-deadliest-construction-projects https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolb...). It's only when we get to space travel that we suddenly become shy about the human cost of progress. It's big and dramatic and failures are very public. Arguably we should be willing to take much greater risks at this point to establish ourselves as interplanetary.
- yongjik 7y ago
  I think the difference is that most other things have a point other than having a human being in the scene. So if we're building an airport, a crane collapses, and workers die, we mourn and move on. (And hopefully find out what went wrong so that we don't repeat the same mistake.) And the final constructed airport has its uses, so in a morbid way, their deaths were not in vain. On the other hand, there's no other point in human space exploration: almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper. So the point is literally to have a human being there, and having the human die there is not just a risk, it negates the entire premise of the project. No one will plan an Olympic opening ceremony with a non-negligible chance of someone dying on stage. Why? Because the entire purpose of the Olympic is to show off your country, and if someone dies while half of the world is watching, you have failed your project. Same thing.

cumunism 7y ago

"...a Democrat..." lol.

wyxuan 7y ago

safety first doesn't mean no risks can be taken, but rather that concerns like publicity or money don't become a primary concern for NASA the way it <sort> of was with the challenger disaster

kiba 7y ago

The Space Shuttle isn't exactly the safest nor the most efficient design to ferry astronauts into space.