Risk Aversion At Odds With Manned Space Exploration 371
Several readers including tyghe!! sent in a Popular Mechanics piece analyzing the Augustine Commission's recommendations and NASA itself in terms of a persistent bias towards risk aversion, and arguing that such a bias is fundamentally incompatible with the mission of opening a new frontier. "Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer finds the report a little too innocuous. In this analysis, Simberg asks, what happens when we take the risk out of space travel? ... Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if we're not killing people, we're not pushing hard enough. That might sound harsh to people outside the aerospace community but, as Rutan knows, test pilots and astronauts are a breed of people that willingly accepts certain risk in order to be part of great endeavors. They're volunteers and they know what they're getting into."
On Decision Heuristics: (Score:1, Interesting)
I recommend Kahneman and Tversky [google.com].
I hope this helps the discussion.
Yours In Akademgorodok,
Kilgore Trout
Re:Misses the point (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this article [reason.com] your lifetime chance of dying in a car crash is 1 in 83.
Per-person odds, I'd take a one-time shuttle ride over a lifetime of driving.
Thankfully... (Score:2, Interesting)
... China and India will do some pretty awesome things in the next couple of decades, by using the go go go mentality we had in the 60s.
Hopefully, getting passed in current race will take us back to that attitude.
Re:I doubt there'll be much progress from us now (Score:3, Interesting)
>>"I think that western society has correctly reassessed the value of life. When you consider that it costs roughly 200k to raise a child in the United States, trading that human's life for certain goals is not necessarily worthwhile now, while it would have been worthwhile 200 or even 100 years ago. "
If what you write is true, then Western society will be (is?) in decline. Others who make a different valuation will take the risks. They will reap the rewards - as well they should. We'll be the poor spectators.
Re:Misses the point (Score:4, Interesting)
So a better question is, do the astronauts have a right to hear the CORRECT figures, not the wild wishful-thinking executive estimates?
Do you really think the original badasses who fought hard to be a part of the program were concerned with the executive estimates?
THAT statement is a perfect example of the difference between now and then. They knew damn well that risk was a major part of it; they flew in the face of it anyway. Today, we care more about someone's calculated "risk aversion" numbers than we do about staring in the face of a challenge, albeit it risky, and going for it. If someone's willing to risk it all to meet the challenge, we don't need some desk jockey's numbers stopping him or her.
Re:Risk aversion stems from funding sources (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference between then and now is that the political climate was one of "We must beat the Russians at all costs" - as such alot of people got to play with the frontiers of knowledge. We're at a point in history where international struggles don't contribute much to the space programme. Business does. We're in a recession, and the space programme is at the mercy of budget cuts. There is more than one dissenting voice in congress now.
What "manned space exploration"? Who's exploring? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Life is terminal (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say it's a perfectly natural reaction to the way society has evolved. We are continuously improving medicine and safety so that less and less people die early of injury and illness. The average life expectancy has gone somewhat up too, but the outliers have gotten a lot smaller. If you survive your first year there's a 90% probability you'll be 55+ years old and 70% probability of becoming 70+ and that is total figures including all Darwin award winners, suicides, drug overdoses and whatnot. Normal healthy people are probably way higher than that again, so you kinda come to expect it.
Even those doing extreme sports are fairly non-extreme when it comes to dying. It's more the thrill of bungee jumping, skydiving and mountain climbing than the reality that you're using extremely tested equipment with lots of procedures to ensure you actually don't die even though you're hanging off a cliff edge. Of course there's the really, really extreme but they're few enough to be statistical noise. I guess those are the people we should use for space exploration, but don't expect people to understand them. Even the thrillseekers don't seem to understand those that are really careless with their lives.
Re:Misses the point (Score:5, Interesting)
People need to stop and think a little. Back in the 1400's and 1500's when people were exploring the world, who went out? Was it the candy asses? Did the mama's boys go forth? The fruit cakes who dressed up as dandies to hang around a court yard in some dank castle? Of course not.
I can write paragraphs badmouthing old Chris Columbus, and the conquistadors who put much of Latin America to the torch, raping, murdering, and plundering. Paragraphs? Hell, I could write books! But, despite that, they were badass mofos. Yeah, they had a lot of luck on their side, not to mention some slightly advanced technology, germ warfare was on their side, and they had better warfare strategies and tactics. But, they were badasses, willing to put their lives on the line.
The same goes for all the other settlers who came to the new world. Candy asses and sissies who counted the risk assessment beans stayed at home, or at least waited many years for the real bad asses to create a safe place for them.
Today? Phhht.
I put my faith in SpaceX and places like China to put man into space. The US government has to many bean counters who won't risk losing a few beans.
I've said it before, I'll repeat it here. I'll haul my ass up onto that rocket making a one-way trip to Mars. Light that big bastard off, and send me on my way. You would do better to send a younger man - but if you can't find one with the balls to go, I'm ready. Just send the equipment and supplies necessary for the job, and I'll put in a few years work, trying to find a reason that convinces the candy asses that it is worth sending a colony to Mars.
Don't worry about any silly assed funeral when I finally croak - when the time comes, I'll drop my drawers and lie face down in plain site of the earth. Those who count will remember me - and the rest can kiss my ass.
Re:Misses the point (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think they are. The odds come out to ~1 in 50 flights having a fatal accident. Now, even with columbia, that makes the Shuttle the safest spacecraft ever, but that's still pretty crappy. Now, the reason I think they're getting smoke blown up their arses about the shuttle specifically is that some of them have families.
1 in 50 is an insane risk for someone with kids to come home to. No sane parent would take those odds. And definitely no one would compound the risk by repeatedly casting the die. Rick Husband was on two flights. His lifetime risk was worse than 1/26.
Re:The astronauts would go anyway... (Score:1, Interesting)
Isn't this what 'Project Virgle' is essentially trying to do?
Re:How soon we forget (Score:1, Interesting)
My favorite statistic? Every single one of the original 75 Roanoke colonists died sometime during the *first* winter in 1585. The next 117 disappeared completely (see Croatoan).
It took until 1607 until a colony in the Americas survived for more than a year. Oh, and only barely. 500 colonists landed in 1607, 60 greeted a supply boat in 1610.
Estimates range from two to twenty thousand dead colonists before the American continent was viable.
Re:Misses the point (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>The US government has to many bean counters who won't risk losing a few beans.
And yet they spend ~2000 billion on bank bailouts, corporate bailouts, and "stimulus" bills without even reading the fucking laws. I thought it was funny when Conyers said, "People keep saying read the bill. Have you seen the bill? It's over 1000 pages long and requires two lawyers sitting by my side to explain what it means! We don't have time to read the bill. We need to get it passed."
So they just vote "aye" and hope for the best. I'm sure if they can spend all that, without even knowing what they are spending it on, they can spare 0.1 billion for NASA each year.
Re:Misses the point (Score:2, Interesting)
How so?
Challenger => o-ring seal on one of the solid-fuel rocket boosters shattered in the cold weather. FAIL IT. (The shuttle can't launch without them, and they were developed specifically to launch the shuttle, so they are part of the shuttle)
Columbia => Tile breaks loose due to ice build up (amazingly, Columbia and Challenger launched on the same day in February like 20 years apart...go figure) shuttle burns up on reentry. FAIL IT. (The heat tiles are part of the shuttle proper).
Re:Misses the point (Score:2, Interesting)
You need to repeat this paragraph to the airline industry who claims "only 1 accident per million miles" (or whatever). I'm more interested in knowing what my odds of dying are *per trip* which is not much better than a car.
This is an oversimplification (Score:3, Interesting)
IAASE (I am a safety engineer). This is a silly question to even ask. It's not possible to "take the risk out of space travel". It's not possible to take the risk out of anything - getting out of bed is risky (you might slip and fall) but so is staying in bed (you might get bedsores). The best we can hope for is to 1) identify the risks involved in space travel, 2) mitigate the ones we can, and then 3) decide whether the remaining risk is worth taking. And there are a whole lot of people in this thread advocating for taking these risks with other people's lives, or volunteering to take these risks themselves in spite of the fact that they don't really understand their severity or probability.
People on slashdot need to get a realistic understanding of what we get out of space travel. The benefits consist of 1) scientific progress - which for the most part can be obtained just as successfully and more cheaply with automated systems, and 2) glory and adventure. I submit that glory and adventure in themselves are not a very good reason to get people killed, especially people who haven't been able to provide actual informed consent to the risks.
Almost certainly not true (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Misses the point (Score:3, Interesting)
The length of a shuttle mission probably doesn't affect the odds of disaster much, because the main risk is during launch and re-enrty. Planes have increased risk during takeoff and landing, but the length of the flight must affect the risk also. As long as your flight is near average length the per mile statistics should work just fine. Car trip accident odds are likely strongly related to distance driven. So when you compare a plane flight to a car trip be sure to compare it with a long car trip. The odds of an accident are obviously much larger on a cross country car trip than a five mile local trip.
Re:Depends on the "Purpose" (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not so certain we can extrapolate the future based on what we currently know. It's better to have some practical knowledge of space colonization than have none. In general, it's good to have manned space knowledge and ability. Perhaps a real Bruce Willis in Space moment will come upon us.
I agree there is no single reason to justify it, but there are 5 pretty-good reasons that weighed as a sum, favor a manned colony:
1. Colonization learning curve
2. Bruce-Willis-like emergency readiness.
3. Science
4. National prestige and inspiration factor
5. Side technological benefits (new materials, etc.)
Perhaps we as a nation are confused because we cannot find a single good reason. But that may be a mistake.
You raised some good points, though, that help us clarify this.
Don't know much about history... (Score:4, Interesting)
The fruit cakes who dressed up as dandies to hang around a court yard in some dank castle? Of course not
It was the disinherited - the landless - the second and third sons of the nobility - who ventured out.
The eldest son would have been nailed to the floor if he tried.
The Admiral of the Ocean Sea intended to set up shop somewhere off the Chinese coast and become the funnel for all trade with the West.
The conquisitor was going for the gold.
In 1624 Captain John Smith published a bill of particulars - a shopping list for the prospective colonist. It makes interesting reading:
John Smith's Bill: Then & Now [americanheritage.com]
Capt. Smith was at heart a bean counter and his profession, survival:
At one point, when Newport returned a second time with seventy settlers, among them a perfumer and six tailors, Smith, never one to keep his opinions to himself, penned a Rude Reply to his London superiors:
"When you send againe I entreat you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees, roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as we have. For except we be able to lodge and feed them, the most will [be lost therough] want of necessaries before they can be made good for anything."
Was John Smith a Liar? [americanheritage.com]
Re:Misses the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WHAT?!!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Right. And then the 1930s-era Supreme Court declared the Tenth Amendment has no meaning, thereby giving Congress a blank check to do virtually anything it wants.
The good news is that more-recent court decisions (1992 and 97) have revived the 10th Amendment as protection against the U.S. forcing states to enact laws the states do not desire to enact. For example the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act required state and local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on persons attempting to purchase handguns. Another Congressional act required states to take possession of used uranium or radioactive waste.
Both were unconstitutional.
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
So your argument is we need to artificially raise the cost of energy. That sounds like an economic winner.
That's not artificial. There is a real cost that SOMEONE will have to pay eventually. These are called externalities. You cannot allow an industry to externalize the expense associated with their product to the point where there's no competition.
>What does "hegemony" in the Middle East have to do with the price of a gallon of gas? The bulk of our imported oil comes from friendly Western hemisphere sources. Europe and China are much more reliant on Middle Eastern oil than we are -- perhaps we should let them try their hand at stabilizing the region?
Well, there are several political realities here. First is that we are in the middle east precisely to have veto power over other nations. It's a political power play that's been going on since the British navy switched from steam to diesel.
However, if you cut out the availability of Middle East Oil, you would see prices as they were in the 70s. The simple fact that we are reliant on an external entity for our cheap transportation means it isn't cheap. It's just cheap right now.
All countries that don't have to pay the full cost of their own national defense, by virtue of being under the American umbrella. How much would England, Germany and France have spent on defense in the latter half of the 20th century if they had to build up the forces on their own to deter the Warsaw Pact?
They may have spent more. I doubt they would have refused to defend themselves. It's difficult to extract the guns and butter question from the Cold War, I can agree, but that ended 20 years ago. If the cold war was really the driving force behind our military expenditure, whey didn't it dramatically fall after the CCCP collapsed?
The market can value every one of those things just fine if people would stop interfering with it. The reason we have a piss poor last mile telecommunications infrastructure in this country is because of Government granted monopolies.
It's because corporations were handed the keys at all. If they have 95% coverage in an area, they do not give a shit about the last 5%. The only entity that would sanely care about 100% saturation would be a highly regulated non-profit or county level telco. If there were no regulation, the US would look just like Latin American countries where the rich suburbs are wired, sewered, watered, and the rest of the country is left to their own devices.
One of the reasons our health care system is in shambles is because a huge health care customer (Uncle Sam, via Medicare) pays below-market rates for services rendered, thus leading to the rest of us being charged more to make up the difference. I want to scream at the TV every single time somebody mentions Medicare as a model because it has "lower costs" -- it's easy to have "lower costs" when you don't even pay a break-even price to the provider of the services you receive.
America pays 16% of GDP for it's healthcare. The rest of Europe pays less than 10% of GDP, and they are just as healthy, and they all have coverage. You're going to have to overcome that fact before you have a persuasive argument.
Medicare is an interesting example. It works so well that when they allowed private corporations to compete, they couldn't. Private Medicare providers receive government subsidies just to stay in business. I don't see any reason to create a profit motive where the need for one doesn't exist.
Transportation would also work better if Government would stop picking winners and losers. Why don't trucks have to pay full price for the damage they do to the roadways? Perhaps if they did other methods of moving goods around (trains, waterways, etc) would be more competitive. Instead we effectively subsidize the trucking industry with our taxes that
Re:Depends on the "Purpose" (Score:2, Interesting)
Russia's record is more open since the end of the Soviet era. Even if we ignore the Soviet era, their ships have a pretty good record, and still much cheaper than the Shuttle.
(As a side story, one Apollo-comparable rocket ground explosion in the Soviet era killed dozens if not hundreds of space-agency employees by some accounts. And in China, one wayward rocket is suspected of having hit a city.)
Re:Misses the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, you missed the small text at the bottom of the page that said "*** per component" !
It's also worth noting that this sort of "component-based" risk assessment, where you determine the chance of failure based on the known probabilities of particular components failing, only predicts a tiny percentage of launch failures. The vast majority of launch failures are due to components failing in ways that weren't anticipated and/or flaws in the overall design. Rockets don't typically fail in the ways you expect them to.
Jeff Greason stated this rather elegantly during one of the Augustine Committee public meetings, but I can't find the quote for the life of me. Anybody else know where to find it?