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Human beings will accept some probability of death on manned missions - notably soldiers, but also miners and fishermen. It's politically unfeasible for NASA to

by comicjk 14y ago

Human beings will accept some probability of death on manned missions - notably soldiers, but also miners and fishermen. It's politically unfeasible for NASA to plan a 5% chance of astronauts not coming home, but private companies could do it (I would take that risk to be an astronaut, especially for a good paycheck).

nknight 14y ago
If you look up the mortality rates for things like mining, fishing, or logging in the US, you'll find that they tend to run between 0.01% and 0.05%. You're proposing a risk 100 to 500 times what the most dangerous ground-based jobs run. I have no doubt there are some people who would accept that risk, but the political problems with it don't end just because they're not government employees.
- lobotryas 14y ago
  Slight quibble because you said "most dangerous ground based jobs". Consider the mortality rates for soldiers in combat zones and police officers in the US. That said, I am curious why people think that space travel is safe or that space casualties are unacceptable. Without implying anything, if we seem to think it's good and honorable to die fighting for your country, then it should be just as honorable to die fighting for you country's scientific advancement.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    In 2006 there were about 861000 police officers in the US, and about 150 die in the line of duty each year. That's about 0.02 % I understand the sentiment, but people are not rational when it comes to risk. See, for example, the number of people who die in road traffic accidents because they're avoiding "dangerous" air travel after terrorist atrocities. EDIT: So politically it's very hard to give any suggestion that your programme of scientific exploration will have anyone dying, even though that's a very real risk. (I may have horribly botched this; I've just woken up.)
    - ktizo 14y ago
      Surely the comparisons should be more in line with mortality rate of pursuits such as Arctic exploration, rather than those of policing a largely sedentry population.
      - nknight 14y ago
        The first few times, sure. But we're past that now. Anywhere from 1000-5000 people reside on Antarctica at any given time. No more than a handful die in any given year.
        ktizo 14y ago
        Sitting inside a research facility is not the same as exploration though.
        nknight 14y ago
        What exploration? The context of this thread is commercial exploitation of a resource. This isn't a search for knowledge. You're caught up in the romanticism of space.
        ktizo 14y ago
        Commercial exploitation of a resource we haven't been to yet would seem to include some level of exploration.
  - nknight 14y ago
    > soldiers in combat zones The very goal is death. The situations are utterly incomparable. DanBC has already addressed the faulty assumption you made as to police. > I am curious why people think that space travel is safe or that space casualties are unacceptable. Nobody made or remotely implied either statement. This is a scale, not an absolute. I would find a mortality rate of 1 in 20 to be unacceptable. I would find a mortality rate of 1 in 1000 entirely acceptable. Somewhere in between is a number I would be prepared to reluctantly accept. > if we seem to think it's good and honorable to die fighting for your country Through a system of intense indoctrination and mass delusion, powerful people have managed to embed such sentiments in the psyche of the masses. That has nothing to do with "thinking" anything.
    - lobotryas 14y ago
      >The very goal is death Are you saying that the goal of soldiers is to die? I assure you that, in reality, it's quite the opposite. Please read nknight's parent post to which I replied. I brought up police officers and soldiers as examples with higher mortality rates than what nknight mentioned. Dan just provided some numbers. >Nobody made or remotely implied either statement It seems the confusion is that you believe I'm talking about other HN posters. In reality I am referring to the American public and Government agencies seem to be making this statement due to their reluctance of embracing risk that's inherent in space exploration. I appreciate that you provided information on what you find acceptable. >indoctrination Are you implying that this is a new phenomenon? The expression "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" has been around since Rome. I would just have us apply the same pride in defending our country to expanding our national scientific advancement. Imagine the day our scientists and researches attain awards and recognition similar to what we offer our military heroes.
dalke 14y ago
US Fatalities per 100K per year: Fishing and related workers: 116 or 0.116%; Logging workers: 91.9; Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 70.6; Farmers and ranchers: 41.4; Coal mining: 38.9; Roofers: 32.4; Refuse and recyclable material collectors: 22.8; Driver/sales workers and truck drivers: 21.8; Police and sheriff's patrol officers: 18.0; Electrical power-line installers and repairers: 15.6. Those are "normal" jobs. High-altitude mountaineering: "23 deaths among 535 mountaineers beween 1968 and 1987", which is 4% or 214/100K per year. Roughly 450 people have flown into space or, like Challenger, tried to. Some 34+ have died. That's 7.5% (over the 5% you say is "politically unfeasible for NASA"), and scales to 151/100K per year. About 375 American soldiers have died per year for the last few years in Afghanistan, out of 43,000 in the country. That's about 870/100K per year.
- true_religion 14y ago
  I think something is wrong with your math. 23 out of 535 Mountaineers is indeed 4%, but its over the course of 1968-1987. So that's an actual rate of 0.2% per year (1.2 deaths per year). You need to do the same math with space travel---dividing the # of deaths by the # of years space travel has been in existance. But to apply a notion from finance, space travel is such a small 'market' that its liable to fall prey to black swan events---e.g. maybe space travel is very very safe or very very dangerous, but the data set we have is non-typical and we'll start seeing 'typical' data once we ramp up to 100,000+ people per year travelling in space.
  - dalke 14y ago
    I including the number of years in the calculation. I wrote "which is 4% or 214/100K per year". That latter number includes dividing by 20 years. Specifically, "23/535 / 20 * 100000 = 214.9" or 215/100K (oops! I rounded down instead of to nearest). Similarly, with 50 years of human space travel, 35 deaths/450 people/ 50 years * 100000 people = 156 deaths / 100,000 per year. I don't know why I wrote "151/100K", I meant to write "150/100K" and not be so precise. In any case, it looks like the source I used wasn't that accurate. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#Percentage_of_fatal_spaceflights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc... for better details. I quote from there: "About two percent of the manned launch/reentry attempts have killed their crew, with Soyuz and the Shuttle having almost the same death percentage rates. Except for the X-15 (which is a suborbital rocket plane), other launchers have not launched sufficiently often for reasonable safety comparisons to be made." That implies that there is enough statistics. In any case, I recall Feynman's essay about the Challenger explosion. He recounts how one person estimated Shuttle disasters as being about 10x safer than the more common unmanned ones, which works out to something like 1 out of every 50-100 Shuttle launches. Thus, other observations help strengthen the possibility that this isn't a black swan event.

by comicjk 14y ago

nknight 14y ago

If you look up the mortality rates for things like mining, fishing, or logging in the US, you'll find that they tend to run between 0.01% and 0.05%. You're proposing a risk 100 to 500 times what the most dangerous ground-based jobs run. I have no doubt there are some people who would accept that risk, but the political problems with it don't end just because they're not government employees.

lobotryas 14y ago
Slight quibble because you said "most dangerous ground based jobs". Consider the mortality rates for soldiers in combat zones and police officers in the US. That said, I am curious why people think that space travel is safe or that space casualties are unacceptable. Without implying anything, if we seem to think it's good and honorable to die fighting for your country, then it should be just as honorable to die fighting for you country's scientific advancement.
- DanBC 14y ago
  In 2006 there were about 861000 police officers in the US, and about 150 die in the line of duty each year. That's about 0.02 % I understand the sentiment, but people are not rational when it comes to risk. See, for example, the number of people who die in road traffic accidents because they're avoiding "dangerous" air travel after terrorist atrocities. EDIT: So politically it's very hard to give any suggestion that your programme of scientific exploration will have anyone dying, even though that's a very real risk. (I may have horribly botched this; I've just woken up.)
  - ktizo 14y ago
    Surely the comparisons should be more in line with mortality rate of pursuits such as Arctic exploration, rather than those of policing a largely sedentry population.
    - nknight 14y ago
      The first few times, sure. But we're past that now. Anywhere from 1000-5000 people reside on Antarctica at any given time. No more than a handful die in any given year.
      - ktizo 14y ago
        Sitting inside a research facility is not the same as exploration though.
        nknight 14y ago
        What exploration? The context of this thread is commercial exploitation of a resource. This isn't a search for knowledge. You're caught up in the romanticism of space.
        ktizo 14y ago
        Commercial exploitation of a resource we haven't been to yet would seem to include some level of exploration.
- nknight 14y ago
  > soldiers in combat zones The very goal is death. The situations are utterly incomparable. DanBC has already addressed the faulty assumption you made as to police. > I am curious why people think that space travel is safe or that space casualties are unacceptable. Nobody made or remotely implied either statement. This is a scale, not an absolute. I would find a mortality rate of 1 in 20 to be unacceptable. I would find a mortality rate of 1 in 1000 entirely acceptable. Somewhere in between is a number I would be prepared to reluctantly accept. > if we seem to think it's good and honorable to die fighting for your country Through a system of intense indoctrination and mass delusion, powerful people have managed to embed such sentiments in the psyche of the masses. That has nothing to do with "thinking" anything.
  - lobotryas 14y ago
    >The very goal is death Are you saying that the goal of soldiers is to die? I assure you that, in reality, it's quite the opposite. Please read nknight's parent post to which I replied. I brought up police officers and soldiers as examples with higher mortality rates than what nknight mentioned. Dan just provided some numbers. >Nobody made or remotely implied either statement It seems the confusion is that you believe I'm talking about other HN posters. In reality I am referring to the American public and Government agencies seem to be making this statement due to their reluctance of embracing risk that's inherent in space exploration. I appreciate that you provided information on what you find acceptable. >indoctrination Are you implying that this is a new phenomenon? The expression "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" has been around since Rome. I would just have us apply the same pride in defending our country to expanding our national scientific advancement. Imagine the day our scientists and researches attain awards and recognition similar to what we offer our military heroes.

dalke 14y ago

US Fatalities per 100K per year: Fishing and related workers: 116 or 0.116%; Logging workers: 91.9; Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 70.6; Farmers and ranchers: 41.4; Coal mining: 38.9; Roofers: 32.4; Refuse and recyclable material collectors: 22.8; Driver/sales workers and truck drivers: 21.8; Police and sheriff's patrol officers: 18.0; Electrical power-line installers and repairers: 15.6. Those are "normal" jobs. High-altitude mountaineering: "23 deaths among 535 mountaineers beween 1968 and 1987", which is 4% or 214/100K per year. Roughly 450 people have flown into space or, like Challenger, tried to. Some 34+ have died. That's 7.5% (over the 5% you say is "politically unfeasible for NASA"), and scales to 151/100K per year. About 375 American soldiers have died per year for the last few years in Afghanistan, out of 43,000 in the country. That's about 870/100K per year.

true_religion 14y ago
I think something is wrong with your math. 23 out of 535 Mountaineers is indeed 4%, but its over the course of 1968-1987. So that's an actual rate of 0.2% per year (1.2 deaths per year). You need to do the same math with space travel---dividing the # of deaths by the # of years space travel has been in existance. But to apply a notion from finance, space travel is such a small 'market' that its liable to fall prey to black swan events---e.g. maybe space travel is very very safe or very very dangerous, but the data set we have is non-typical and we'll start seeing 'typical' data once we ramp up to 100,000+ people per year travelling in space.
- dalke 14y ago
  I including the number of years in the calculation. I wrote "which is 4% or 214/100K per year". That latter number includes dividing by 20 years. Specifically, "23/535 / 20 * 100000 = 214.9" or 215/100K (oops! I rounded down instead of to nearest). Similarly, with 50 years of human space travel, 35 deaths/450 people/ 50 years * 100000 people = 156 deaths / 100,000 per year. I don't know why I wrote "151/100K", I meant to write "150/100K" and not be so precise. In any case, it looks like the source I used wasn't that accurate. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#Percentage_of_fatal_spaceflights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc... for better details. I quote from there: "About two percent of the manned launch/reentry attempts have killed their crew, with Soyuz and the Shuttle having almost the same death percentage rates. Except for the X-15 (which is a suborbital rocket plane), other launchers have not launched sufficiently often for reasonable safety comparisons to be made." That implies that there is enough statistics. In any case, I recall Feynman's essay about the Challenger explosion. He recounts how one person estimated Shuttle disasters as being about 10x safer than the more common unmanned ones, which works out to something like 1 out of every 50-100 Shuttle launches. Thus, other observations help strengthen the possibility that this isn't a black swan event.