4 ms·
Space travel is not safe and never will be, you can always get randomly sideswiped by a piece of debris in LEO and that's that, even if everything goes perfectl
by moffkalast 7mo ago
Space travel is not safe and never will be, you can always get randomly sideswiped by a piece of debris in LEO and that's that, even if everything goes perfectly. If the astronauts understand the risks involved then I would say it's their call. Living on Earth isn't safe for that matter, driving has a 1 in 100 chance of death throughout your lifetime, so that margin isn't significantly more given that you get to go to the frickin Moon.
I don't really buy the "if they die, it strands human spaceflight for years out of PR reasons" argument since what that argues for and against has the same result: nobody goes space for a while. In the end there will always be someone willing to roll the dice. ESA is already playing it 100% safe, that niche is covered.
- dingaling 7mo agoThere's a difference between quantifiable but unmanageable situational risk and predictable, manageable technical risk. The heatshield issue is the latter. $100 billion has been spent on this project. Ablative heatshield coatings have been used since the Atlas ICBM in 1957. Yet they still flew Artemis with significant technical risk on a political grandstanding mission that delivered no significant science.