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Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. Astronauts

Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. Astronauts (and anyone intelligent who intentionally puts themselves in a life-threatening situation) have a more nuanced understanding of risk than can be represented by a single % risk of death number. "I'm going to space with the best technology humanity has to offer keeping me safe" is a very different risk proposition from "I'm going to space in a ship with known high-risk safety issues".

iamthirsty 2y ago
> Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. It's definitely built in. The Apollo LM was .15mm thick aluminum, meaning almost any tiny object could've killed them. The Space Shuttle flew with SSRB's that were solid-fuel and unstoppable when lit. Columbia had 2 ejection seats, which were eventually taken out and not installed on any other shuttle. Huge risk is inherently the deal with space travel, at least from its inception until now.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Without links to more information on these engineering decisions, I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate whether these are serious risks, and I don't believe you are either. I tend to listen to engineers.
WalterBright 2y ago
> the best technology humanity has to offer keeping me safe Nobody can afford the best technology humanity has to offer. As one adds more 9's to the odds of success, the cost increases exponentially. There is no end to it.
- Timwi 2y ago
  If nobody can afford it, then it's not on offer.
  - recursive 2y ago
    How about this. Humanity can only offer the best once. Because we will have spent the sum total of human output delivering the first one.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      How about we make an effort to understand each others' intent instead of pedantically nitpicking each other's wording.
      - recursive 2y ago
        I'm in favor. "The best humanity has to offer" seems like a slippery concept. If something goes wrong in retrospect, you can always find a reason that it wasn't the "best". How would you determine if a thing X is the best? How do you know the best is a very different thing from a "high risk" scenario?
        kerkeslager 2y ago
        That phrasing wasn't meant to be taken literally. It's an American expression. "The best humanity has to offer" just means that people put in a good faith effort to obtain the best that they were capable of obtaining given the resources they had. It's a fuzzy concept because there aren't necessarily objective measures of good, but I think we can agree that, for example, Boeing isn't creating the best products humanity has to offer at the moment, because they have a recent history of obvious problems being ignored. > How do you know the best is a very different thing from a "high risk" scenario? Going to space is inherently a high risk scenario. As for whether what you have is the best you can have: you hire subject experts and listen to them. In the case of Challenger, the subject experts said that the launch should be delayed for warmer temperatures--the best humanity had to offer in that case was delaying the launch for warmer temperatures.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  True, but that's semantics at best--as the other post said, if something is better but humans can't afford it, then it's better than humanity has to offer. In the context of this conversation, there were mitigations which was very much within what could be afforded: wait for warmer temperatures, spend some money on testing instead of stock buybacks.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > but that's semantics at best The problem is when people believe that other people should pay unbounded costs for their safety.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      The incessant "won't someone think of the downtrodden rich and powerful" attitude is tiring. There is not a systemic problem with people paying too much for safety in the US. In every case where a law doesn't apply, the funders are the ones with the final say in whether safety measures get funded, and as such all the incentives are for too little money spent on safety. The few cases where laws obligate employers to spend money on safety, are laws written in blood because employers prioritized profits over workers' lives. In short, your concern is completely misplaced. I mean, can you point out a single example in history where a company, went bankrupt because they spent too much money on keeping their workers safe? This isn't a problem that exists.
      - recursive 2y ago
        Lots of companies have gone bankrupt. In almost all of those cases, I don't know the reason.
        kerkeslager 2y ago
        Which is why I set the bar so low. One real world example. I'll be happy to provide, say, 50 examples of companies cutting safety costs resulting in people dying for every example of a company going bankrupt because they actually gave a shit about the safety of their workers. If you don't know why companies are going bankrupt, then you don't know that they're going bankrupt due to safety spending. So that's basically admitting your opinion isn't based in any evidence, no?
deleted 2y ago
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iamthirsty 2y ago

> Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. It's definitely built in. The Apollo LM was .15mm thick aluminum, meaning almost any tiny object could've killed them. The Space Shuttle flew with SSRB's that were solid-fuel and unstoppable when lit. Columbia had 2 ejection seats, which were eventually taken out and not installed on any other shuttle. Huge risk is inherently the deal with space travel, at least from its inception until now.

kerkeslager 2y ago
Without links to more information on these engineering decisions, I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate whether these are serious risks, and I don't believe you are either. I tend to listen to engineers.

WalterBright 2y ago

> the best technology humanity has to offer keeping me safe Nobody can afford the best technology humanity has to offer. As one adds more 9's to the odds of success, the cost increases exponentially. There is no end to it.

Timwi 2y ago
If nobody can afford it, then it's not on offer.
- recursive 2y ago
  How about this. Humanity can only offer the best once. Because we will have spent the sum total of human output delivering the first one.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    How about we make an effort to understand each others' intent instead of pedantically nitpicking each other's wording.
    - recursive 2y ago
      I'm in favor. "The best humanity has to offer" seems like a slippery concept. If something goes wrong in retrospect, you can always find a reason that it wasn't the "best". How would you determine if a thing X is the best? How do you know the best is a very different thing from a "high risk" scenario?
      - kerkeslager 2y ago
        That phrasing wasn't meant to be taken literally. It's an American expression. "The best humanity has to offer" just means that people put in a good faith effort to obtain the best that they were capable of obtaining given the resources they had. It's a fuzzy concept because there aren't necessarily objective measures of good, but I think we can agree that, for example, Boeing isn't creating the best products humanity has to offer at the moment, because they have a recent history of obvious problems being ignored. > How do you know the best is a very different thing from a "high risk" scenario? Going to space is inherently a high risk scenario. As for whether what you have is the best you can have: you hire subject experts and listen to them. In the case of Challenger, the subject experts said that the launch should be delayed for warmer temperatures--the best humanity had to offer in that case was delaying the launch for warmer temperatures.
kerkeslager 2y ago
True, but that's semantics at best--as the other post said, if something is better but humans can't afford it, then it's better than humanity has to offer. In the context of this conversation, there were mitigations which was very much within what could be afforded: wait for warmer temperatures, spend some money on testing instead of stock buybacks.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > but that's semantics at best The problem is when people believe that other people should pay unbounded costs for their safety.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    The incessant "won't someone think of the downtrodden rich and powerful" attitude is tiring. There is not a systemic problem with people paying too much for safety in the US. In every case where a law doesn't apply, the funders are the ones with the final say in whether safety measures get funded, and as such all the incentives are for too little money spent on safety. The few cases where laws obligate employers to spend money on safety, are laws written in blood because employers prioritized profits over workers' lives. In short, your concern is completely misplaced. I mean, can you point out a single example in history where a company, went bankrupt because they spent too much money on keeping their workers safe? This isn't a problem that exists.
    - recursive 2y ago
      Lots of companies have gone bankrupt. In almost all of those cases, I don't know the reason.
      - kerkeslager 2y ago
        Which is why I set the bar so low. One real world example. I'll be happy to provide, say, 50 examples of companies cutting safety costs resulting in people dying for every example of a company going bankrupt because they actually gave a shit about the safety of their workers. If you don't know why companies are going bankrupt, then you don't know that they're going bankrupt due to safety spending. So that's basically admitting your opinion isn't based in any evidence, no?

deleted 2y ago

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