- Even with no one on board, losing a Space Shuttle is a big deal - Astronauts received expensive training, you don't want to lose the investment - Astronauts

- Even with no one on board, losing a Space Shuttle is a big deal - Astronauts received expensive training, you don't want to lose the investment - Astronauts are not just random people, they have a hard to find set of qualities - Having people die in public is bad publicity It is not politically correct to say it like that, but it is undeniable that some lives are more valuable than others. $10M is kind of an average. When you build a road for instance, astronauts and violent criminals can both take it. The astronaut is more valuable than the criminal, but it makes no sense to make the road safer for astronauts without making it safer for everyone else, so we take an average. But put in their respective environments (Space Shuttle vs prison), it becomes very obvious whose life is the most valuable.