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Yes; very good point. Although Blue Origin has done an excellent job so far, it's important to remember that space travel is very dangerous and eventually there
by JanSolo 5y ago
Yes; very good point. Although Blue Origin has done an excellent job so far, it's important to remember that space travel is very dangerous and eventually there will be an accident and people will likely die. It's not an 'if' but a 'when'.
- golemotron 5y agos/space travel/cars/
- dmitriid 5y agoSpace travel is magnitudes of magnitudes deadlier than cars. A large chunk of astronaut training is basically "you're dead in 5 seconds, your actions". Read "An Astronaut's Guide to Living on Earth"
- JanSolo 5y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac... The current statistical fatality rate for astronauts and cosmonauts is 3.2 percent. Lets give Blue Origin the benefit of newer tech and learning from previous mistakes and say they're twice as safe as any other spacecraft. That's still a 1.6% chance you'll die taking a flight in it.
- amelius 5y agoDoes that rate also hold for flights using the same model or even the same vehicle as tested in previous flights? Shouldn't testing bring the rate down?
- Natsu 5y agoYou know that the pandemic has been going on too long when my first thought was "oh, that's about as (un)safe as getting Covid" :(
- midasuni 5y agoExcept blue origin isnt in the same order of magnitude as Gemini, Soyuz, Dragon, etc. How many people have died in suborbital rockets with low apogees and barely any down range movements? Numbers just aren’t there to reasonably draw any conclusions
- Rebelgecko 5y agoSure, but the average car trip doesn't span millions of miles and last for months. If you compare deaths per passenger-mile, space travel is safer than cars (but more dangerous than airplanes). Because Shatt's space trip was relatively short and quick, he's fairly safe if you extrapolate from the statistics. Of course that extrapolation might not be reasonable for various reasons: * There's only been one deadly space incident in the last 30 years, so we don't have a very good sample size * Not all passenger-miles are equally dangerous. Leaving and returning Earth are the most dangerous parts of space travel. However by not going to orbit, Shatt didn't have to leave Earth as quickly, nor did he have worry as much about a speedy reentry. * Most of those passenger-miles were done on vehicles that have a launch heritage than New Shepard
- bobthepanda 5y agoPer mile biases in favor of high speeds though. It would be interesting to do a comparison of deaths / travel time. Challenger exploded 73 seconds into flight.
- pirate787 5y ago> * There's only been one deadly space incident in the last 30 years, so we don't have a very good sample size The Shuttle program lost 2 out of 135 flights over its 30 year life.
- BurningFrog 5y agoThen again, NO ONE has died during space travel since 2003. As any tech matures, it becomes safer. Early flying was a death circus. Now it's the safest way to travel of all. It's hard to say where on the "getting safer curve" space travel is with so few data points. But it just might be pretty good. Time will tell!
- bobthepanda 5y agoMy favorite what-if version of this is that Big Bird was almost on the Challenger. https://www.history.com/news/big-bird-challenger-disaster-nasa-sesame-street https://www.history.com/news/big-bird-challenger-disaster-na... Quite frankly, I don't know if NASA would still exist if they managed to off one of the most popular children's show characters around.