Artemis II is not safe to fly • Hacker News Board

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#341

Post by eru » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

allenrb wrote: post #298

ekianjo wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with a pretty great return in research, engineering and education to boot. If a company could spend 24B in research they would probably produce a lot more things than NASA

Absolutely! Think of the many new ways to display advertising that are being neglected while we foolishly launch people and things into space.

Well, NASA itself is a good counterexample here:

NASA could do a lot more good science, if they didn't (have to) launch primates into space.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#342

Post by eru » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #338

eru wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I said, IBM and Konrad Zuse were already on the cusp of general computing.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#343

Post by eru » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #333

eru wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I'm saying manned spaceflight is a waste of money and resources.

We'd get more and better science by spending it on unmanned space stuff. Or you could even just leave the money with the taxpayer.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#344

Post by eru » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

creaturemachine wrote: post #316

eru wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as they mostly spend VC money, who am I to judge? It's no worse than rich people buying yachts. Just don't spend tax payer money.

But they dodge taxes, so they're effectively spending it anyway.

Are you talking about legal tax optimisation, or illegally not paying your taxes?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#345

Post by mordae » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

randomNumber7 wrote: post #294

I would like to understand why it happens so often to organizations that a currupted and dyfunctional behaviour takes over. And it seems to happen more often to institutions run by governments. Examples could be the Challenger disaster where managers overruled the engineers (who said in a meeting a launch was too dangerous) or the Boing 737max. Also a lot of companies in germany that I experienced (as employee and as…

> And it seems to happen more often to institutions run by governments.

I've snorted my coffee. I happens to any organization that's run by people who are only in it for power, not outcomes.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#346

Post by tonymet » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #196

tonymet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That... doesn't make any sense.

If the odds were only 1% , how did 14 people die ?

You’re not including the lives in your risk assessment .

There were 135 events and 14 people died .

If you were asked to join mission 136 would you say yes or no?

Which risk profile fits: 1% fatality or 10%?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#347

Post by MeetingsBrowser » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #332

actimod wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

> We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe.

Are we? People saying "have a safe trip" is pretty weak evidence.

The counter evidence is just about everything else going on, at least in the US. Relaxed worker safety standards, weakened environmental protections, and generally moving as fast as possible.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#348

Post by inetknght » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #322

Havoc wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each and every one of them is fully aware that it’s a massive risk and has made their peace with that. You’re getting strapped to a giant rocket. It’s inherently dangerous

I don’t actually think astronauts take massive risks. They take massively well-understood and meticulously mitigated risks. Maybe this is a perspective or semantics thing, but I think it’s distinct and important. They’re not Mavericks they’re Icemans.

> They take massively well-understood and meticulously mitigated risks.

Hopefully they're well-understood and meticulously mitigated risks. Because if they're not... well there's always modern day Boeing.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#349

Post by rjmunro » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #192

GMoromisato wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. What was the probability of Loss of Crew during Apollo? There were 9 crewed missions and 1 almost killed its crew (I will omit Apollo 1 for now). I could argue that Apollo had a 1 in 20 chance of killing a crew. Indeed, that was one reason given for cancelling the program. The first Shuttle launch probably had a 1 in 4 chance of killing its crew. It was the first launch of an extremely complicated system and t…

> There were 9 crewed missions and 1 almost killed its crew (I will omit Apollo 1 for now). I could argue that Apollo had a 1 in 20 chance of killing a crew. That's not how risk analysis works. Let's say every Apollo mission had gone flawlessly, and no one even came close to dying. Would you then say that the risk of death for future missions would be zero? No, of course not.

I thought I'd look this up. If you've had 9 successful attempts, assuming nothing has changed between them and no other prior knowledge about success probability, then Laplace’s Rule of Succession says the probability of the next mission being a success is about 83.3%, i.e. there is a 1 in 6 chance of failing next time.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#350

Post by rjmunro » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

I read something about the Challenger disaster being predicted by an engineer and they wrote a memo about the risk because they were worried about it, but it didn't get through. I wondered if this was the only memo ever about risks to the space shuttle, or if it was one of hundreds and it just got the actual cause by luck.

Does anyone know any more about this?