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Artemis II is not safe to fly

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Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#331

Post by TeMPOraL »

randallsquared wrote: post #271
eru wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 'Stimulating the low-Earth orbit economy' is a joke. Spending money not as a means to an end, but as the end in itself? Apart from the research into the effects of microgravity on humans, pretty much everything else could have been done cheaper and better without humans. Or take this example: > Deployment of CubeSats from station: CubeSats are one of the smallest types of satellites and provide a cheaper way to p…

> Spending money not as a means to an end, but as the end in itself? Welcome to the macroeconomics practical, where we'll dig a ditch, refill it, and count it as a productive addition to the economy both times!

If doing it lowers the cost of earth movers and gets 20 other groups to each dig their own ditch, that's actually money well spent.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#332

Post by CWuestefeld »

actimod wrote: post #309
chadd wrote: post #292

I'm literally guest lecturing at a Harvard class tomorrow on systemic failures in decision making, using the Columbia and Challenger disasters as case studies, and changed my slides last night to include Artemis II because it could literally happen again. This broken safety culture has been around since the beginning of the Shuttle program. In 1980, Gregg Easterbrook published "Goodbye, Columbia" in The Washington Mo…

It is bound to happen again and again considering humans are so oblivious to safety.

humans are so oblivious to safety

It seems that in modern times, humans focus on safety almost to the exclusion of everything else. As much as the more traditional salutations "godspeed" or "have a nice day", we're even more likely to hear "drive safe" or "have a safe trip" or "be safe".

We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe. Surely you've heard the mantra "...if it saves just one life...".

The optimal amount of tragedy is not zero. It's correct that we should accept some risk. We just need to be up-front and recognize what the safety margins really are.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#333

Post by TeMPOraL »

eru wrote: post #106
cultofmetatron wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. some of our best technologies came about to solve problems related to space travel which we later found useful for mundane problems at home. gps, digital cameras immediately come to mind. The only other phenomena I can think of with similar effects on human progress is war... I'll take a space race thanks

Have you heard of opportunity costs? About war: in our universe we got the first digital computers because of military efforts during the second world war. However, without a war IBM and Konrad Zuse and others would have gotten there, too. With much less human suffering.

You are serious? Up until this point I thought you're writing in jest, because all the things you mention are actually good ideas - including especially funding manned space flight from entertainment budget, because:

1) It's better aligned with mission profile (inspirational, emotional, but not strictly necessary;

2) There's much more of it to go than NASA gets;

3) It would be a better use of that money than what it's currently used for.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#334

Post by irchans »

actimod wrote: post #309
chadd wrote: post #292

I'm literally guest lecturing at a Harvard class tomorrow on systemic failures in decision making, using the Columbia and Challenger disasters as case studies, and changed my slides last night to include Artemis II because it could literally happen again. This broken safety culture has been around since the beginning of the Shuttle program. In 1980, Gregg Easterbrook published "Goodbye, Columbia" in The Washington Mo…

It is bound to happen again and again considering humans are so oblivious to safety.

Us humans do have difficulty with safety. Sometimes we are able to overcome that problem to an extent. Here are some the few examples where humans have done well with safety: FAA commercial airlines, Soyuz, ISS, Shinkansen trains, US Nuclear power post 3 mile island, Vaccines, and the Falcon 9.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#335

Post by cubefox »

decimalenough wrote: post #178
cubefox wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read one blog post ("Musk on Mars") and it was indeed excellent. He seems to have quite a small readership though, judging from the Substack reactions.

It's subscribers only and costs $5/month.

Yeah, though some posts a free. I think real problem is that he decided to start a Mars blog two weeks before SpaceX announced they are now focusing on the moon instead, and prior to that merging with xAI, effectively cancelling any Mars plans.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#337

Post by [deleted] »

lostlogin wrote: post #58
delichon wrote: post #22

I am very not brave but I'd volunteer. The trip is far more awesome than anything I have planned for the rest of my life. And if the shield fails on reentry it would only hurt for a few seconds. So if the crew and the backups and their backups read this and have second thoughts, ping me.

My theory is that this is something I’d say/do aged 20, and laugh at aged 60. I’m slightly closer to 60 and am into the ‘No’ zone.

[deleted]

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#338

Post by TeMPOraL »

eru wrote: post #266
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unlikely computing would have developed as quickly as it did without the Cold War. IBM's Sage and MIT's TX0 were both Cold War projects - one for a national early warning system, the other as an R&D platform for flight simulators. Most US investment in associated tech - including the Internet - came through DARPA. Not pointing this out because I support war, but to underline that the US doesn't have a culture of…

Why does it have to be government R&D?

It doesn't, but it was, because it was tied to administration and nuclear physics and then rocketry.

Private sector doesn't do much without obvious short-term gain, and it especially doesn't do basic research. It may be good at fitting more pixels in ever thinner phones, but it wouldn't get to that point if not the government that needed number-crunching machines for better modelling of nuclear fission some 80 years earlier.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#339

Post by thesuitonym »

chadd wrote: post #292

I'm literally guest lecturing at a Harvard class tomorrow on systemic failures in decision making, using the Columbia and Challenger disasters as case studies, and changed my slides last night to include Artemis II because it could literally happen again. This broken safety culture has been around since the beginning of the Shuttle program. In 1980, Gregg Easterbrook published "Goodbye, Columbia" in The Washington Mo…

``It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.''

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#340

Post by eru »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #331
randallsquared wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending money not as a means to an end, but as the end in itself? Welcome to the macroeconomics practical, where we'll dig a ditch, refill it, and count it as a productive addition to the economy both times!

If doing it lowers the cost of earth movers and gets 20 other groups to each dig their own ditch, that's actually money well spent.

No, it depends on what else you could have spent the money on. Perhaps that would have been even better?
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