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The Space Shuttle had a 2 in 135 failure rate. Challenger's disaster was the 25th shuttle flight. Columbia's disaster was the 113th shuttle flight. I'm prett

The Space Shuttle had a 2 in 135 failure rate. Challenger's disaster was the 25th shuttle flight. Columbia's disaster was the 113th shuttle flight. I'm pretty sure you could find large numbers of people who would happily climb on board a shuttle mission today, even knowing that history.

pfdietz 3y ago
The Space Shuttle was terrible, but not because it was dangerous. For policy purposes, killing people has a cost that can be estimated by the statistical value of a human life (especially if the people are volunteers with full knowledge of the risk.) The value of a human life is about $9 M (which comes from estimates of how much government spending is needed to save 1 life, for example by medical care, installing guard rails on roads, etc.). If there was a 2% risk of death of the seven crew on a flight, this would have added $1.26M to the expected cost of a launch. This was small compared to the actual cost of a launch. Viewed another way: a $900 M (say) shuttle launch would be killing 100 statistical people each and every launch (in the sense that the money spent on the launch, if spent elsewhere, could avoid 100 deaths). If the results of the launch are worth that many statistical deaths, why not .14 more?
bandrami 3y ago
This is a whole other can of worms, but the requirement that space exploration be manned was made for political rather than scientific reasons and has held back the progress of space exploration for decades. We could have done so much more if we hadn't had to worry about getting a robot back.
guax 3y ago
The purpose was wildy different. What about those odds for Bezos space tourism? Those shuttles were actually used to expand human knowledge. Both titan or blue origin only expand the reach of capitalist tourism.
saberdancer 3y ago
I've seen that point brought up during a conference tech talk and when asked, most of the audience raised their hands up saying they would fly on a Space Shuttle regardless.

pfdietz 3y ago

The Space Shuttle was terrible, but not because it was dangerous. For policy purposes, killing people has a cost that can be estimated by the statistical value of a human life (especially if the people are volunteers with full knowledge of the risk.) The value of a human life is about $9 M (which comes from estimates of how much government spending is needed to save 1 life, for example by medical care, installing guard rails on roads, etc.). If there was a 2% risk of death of the seven crew on a flight, this would have added $1.26M to the expected cost of a launch. This was small compared to the actual cost of a launch. Viewed another way: a $900 M (say) shuttle launch would be killing 100 statistical people each and every launch (in the sense that the money spent on the launch, if spent elsewhere, could avoid 100 deaths). If the results of the launch are worth that many statistical deaths, why not .14 more?

bandrami 3y ago

This is a whole other can of worms, but the requirement that space exploration be manned was made for political rather than scientific reasons and has held back the progress of space exploration for decades. We could have done so much more if we hadn't had to worry about getting a robot back.

guax 3y ago

The purpose was wildy different. What about those odds for Bezos space tourism? Those shuttles were actually used to expand human knowledge. Both titan or blue origin only expand the reach of capitalist tourism.

saberdancer 3y ago

I've seen that point brought up during a conference tech talk and when asked, most of the audience raised their hands up saying they would fly on a Space Shuttle regardless.