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> due to its poor safety record. Per passenger mile traveled, the most common measure, it's one of the safest vehicles ever created and flown. > will people
by akira2501 2y ago
> due to its poor safety record.
Per passenger mile traveled, the most common measure, it's one of the safest vehicles ever created and flown.
> will people even remember the Space Shuttle in a good light?
This is an honest question, since my childhood was squarely in the 1980s, but how can you possibly not? Are you so young that your only perspective of this program and all it's missions and accomplishments are purely in retrospect and colored by the zeitgeist of our current civilian space contractors?
- ianburrell 2y agoNot even close to safest vehicle unless mean space vehicle. Space Shuttle was in orbit for 21k orbits and traveled 542 million miles. Which gives 28 deaths per billion miles. Airliners are running 0.01 deaths per billion miles. Driving is 15 per billion miles. So it was worse than driving. Airliners beat it by 3 orders of magnitude. Which isn't surprising when US airliners travel distance of Space Shuttle in less than month.
- akira2501 2y agoYou are off by a factor of at least 5, because it's _passenger_ miles, not _vehicle_ miles. This is also why airlines are "so safe," because we put 300 people on them at a whack, if you were wondering where the "three orders of magnitude" actually comes from. It's still a man made machine being operated by humans. So it's 5.1. Three times safer than driving. You might apocryphally conclude they were at greater risk taking the astro van to the pad.
- Vecr 2y agoNah, the van goes slow and they have medical people right there, you could die there but it's essentially not going to happen.