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>Life is not as precious as it is often thought to be by most of us here on this site starting anything by throwing out the value human life seems like a bad d

by knome 2y ago

>Life is not as precious as it is often thought to be by most of us here on this site starting anything by throwing out the value human life seems like a bad direction.

somenameforme 2y ago
I think the person you're responding to had a solid point, but he derailed it with his own examples. It's not about "throwing out the value of human life" but appreciating that risk is something that, in many endeavors, is going to remain relatively high even if you make every effort to minimize it. When we went to the Moon, the obituary for the astronauts was written before they even took off. And the astronauts themselves felt they had somewhere from a 50% to 70% chance of success. Everybody was well aware of the extreme risks, but they still voluntarily participated, because they felt the achievement was worth the risk. And indeed those brave men inspired an entire generation to science and achieved what many believe was still the greatest achievement in humanity's entire history. The first missions to Mars will always be high risk, because the fundamental issue is that you're always going to be doing a bunch of things that no other human ever has. There's just so many unknown unknowns there that we're going end up getting surprised by something. So all we can do is make sure we have highly capable people and try to prepare as well as we can. But in the end, even when you work to minimize risk as much as you possibly can, that mission will always qualify as 'risky.'
- XorNot 2y ago
  Conversely humans are absurdly bad at statistics - i.e. "an astronaut feels he has a 50 to 70% chance of success"...isn't a real prediction. It isn't based on any failure analysis. The actual failure analysis and engineering was substantially more confident, because otherwise why go? 50% is a coin-flip, but those odds were already proven wrong by the missions before Apollo 11 anyway (since there was more then 1).
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    You're doing some improv here based on your intuition when history has a way of surprising us. So what was the "actual" failure analysis and risk percent? It didn't exist. "Mathematical risk analysis was used in Apollo, but it gave unacceptably pessimistic results and was discontinued." [1] Of course there were working assessments internally and they generally put the figure at about 50%. That figure is from Gene Krantz's excellent book "Failure Is Not an Option." The reason you go is because you cannot find any other practical way to significantly reduce the risk, and are willing to accept the risk you end up with. Also I feel you're somewhat denigrating the astronauts with your comment by saying their estimations weren't "real". These weren't just adrenaline junkies looking for a wild ride - they were extreme intellectual outliers with higher degrees in aerospace engineering and extensive backgrounds in the development and application/flight of all sorts of aerospace systems. Like that paper also mentions, "The only possible explanation for the astonishing success [of the Apollo Program] – no losses in space and on time – was that every participant at every level in every area far exceeded the norm of human capabilities." [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190002249/downloads/20190002249.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190002249/downloads/20...
- knome 2y ago
  the reasons a person does something are important, because those reasons influence every decision that goes into doing that thing. the difference between the perspectives of "yes, we go into this knowing it is dangerous and that the challenge may be insurmountable, but we believe the potential rewards are worth that risk" vs "lives aren't actually worth much so why not spend them because we'll just waste them somewhere else anyways" is a gulf.

by knome 2y ago

>Life is not as precious as it is often thought to be by most of us here on this site starting anything by throwing out the value human life seems like a bad direction.

somenameforme 2y ago

I think the person you're responding to had a solid point, but he derailed it with his own examples. It's not about "throwing out the value of human life" but appreciating that risk is something that, in many endeavors, is going to remain relatively high even if you make every effort to minimize it. When we went to the Moon, the obituary for the astronauts was written before they even took off. And the astronauts themselves felt they had somewhere from a 50% to 70% chance of success. Everybody was well aware of the extreme risks, but they still voluntarily participated, because they felt the achievement was worth the risk. And indeed those brave men inspired an entire generation to science and achieved what many believe was still the greatest achievement in humanity's entire history. The first missions to Mars will always be high risk, because the fundamental issue is that you're always going to be doing a bunch of things that no other human ever has. There's just so many unknown unknowns there that we're going end up getting surprised by something. So all we can do is make sure we have highly capable people and try to prepare as well as we can. But in the end, even when you work to minimize risk as much as you possibly can, that mission will always qualify as 'risky.'

XorNot 2y ago
Conversely humans are absurdly bad at statistics - i.e. "an astronaut feels he has a 50 to 70% chance of success"...isn't a real prediction. It isn't based on any failure analysis. The actual failure analysis and engineering was substantially more confident, because otherwise why go? 50% is a coin-flip, but those odds were already proven wrong by the missions before Apollo 11 anyway (since there was more then 1).
- somenameforme 2y ago
  You're doing some improv here based on your intuition when history has a way of surprising us. So what was the "actual" failure analysis and risk percent? It didn't exist. "Mathematical risk analysis was used in Apollo, but it gave unacceptably pessimistic results and was discontinued." [1] Of course there were working assessments internally and they generally put the figure at about 50%. That figure is from Gene Krantz's excellent book "Failure Is Not an Option." The reason you go is because you cannot find any other practical way to significantly reduce the risk, and are willing to accept the risk you end up with. Also I feel you're somewhat denigrating the astronauts with your comment by saying their estimations weren't "real". These weren't just adrenaline junkies looking for a wild ride - they were extreme intellectual outliers with higher degrees in aerospace engineering and extensive backgrounds in the development and application/flight of all sorts of aerospace systems. Like that paper also mentions, "The only possible explanation for the astonishing success [of the Apollo Program] – no losses in space and on time – was that every participant at every level in every area far exceeded the norm of human capabilities." [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190002249/downloads/20190002249.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190002249/downloads/20...
knome 2y ago
the reasons a person does something are important, because those reasons influence every decision that goes into doing that thing. the difference between the perspectives of "yes, we go into this knowing it is dangerous and that the challenge may be insurmountable, but we believe the potential rewards are worth that risk" vs "lives aren't actually worth much so why not spend them because we'll just waste them somewhere else anyways" is a gulf.