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How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

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Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#101

Post by brudgers »

redthrowaway wrote: post #95
brudgers wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "as we involve the U.S. military in more and more missions that look highly political" From: "When in the course of human events," through: "and that, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," and even: "We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators" the use of the military for political missions has been more common than for any other purpose.

With the possible exception of economic, although the two are often difficult to distinguish.

Yes, military missions and economic missions are difficult to distinguish.

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#102

Post by pemulis »

redthrowaway wrote: post #92
colanderman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the "wars" we're involved in now could be solved more cost-effectively by literally paying our enemies not to fight. Thereby creating a nation of people dependent on our aid, who, when we cease sending aid due to budget constraints, will likely decide to start a war anyway . cough North Korea cough Not saying that line of reasoning is totally invalid, but it's definitely not so clear-cut that you can use it in an ana…

The intervention in Libya cost about $2.7BB[1]. With things heating up in Syria, and the need to further isolate Iran, we could be looking at another "low-intensity" operation there in support of the pro-democracy dissidents. Now, what would be more cost-effective: a similar campaign in Syria, or paying Assad $1BB to fuck off to Venezuela and stay there, and a further $1BB distributed to military commanders to get th…

The total wealth of the Assad regime and their associates is in the hundreds of billions. You would have to pay them several trillion dollars at a minimum, though I doubt even that would be enough to convince them to leave.

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#104

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

javajosh wrote: post #98
mechanical_fish wrote: post #58

Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. ... well, except for air, and food. But there's water! Which we can detect with sensitive instruments! This whole article has no point. As everyone in the military knows full well, if the benefit is great enough humans will happily risk other human lives, even expend lives,…

"...there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life" Wrong. In the long run, even if we achieve some sort of utopia, all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe. The only way to avoid this fate is to find other places to live. Mars is one of those places; so are the various exoplanets we are finding. Indeed, this is humanities greatest challenge. Can we harness the incredi…

Why? I have never understood this argument. What's so special about "humanity" that it needs to be preserved?

You're born, you live, you die. A species arises, it has its time on Earth, then it's extinct. Why are humans so special that we should bother about eventually going extinct in hundreds of thousands of years?

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#105

Post by stinkytaco »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #104
javajosh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life" Wrong. In the long run, even if we achieve some sort of utopia, all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe. The only way to avoid this fate is to find other places to live. Mars is one of those places; so are the various exoplanets we are finding. Indeed, this is humanities greatest challenge. Can we harness the incredi…

Why? I have never understood this argument. What's so special about "humanity" that it needs to be preserved? You're born, you live, you die. A species arises, it has its time on Earth, then it's extinct. Why are humans so special that we should bother about eventually going extinct in hundreds of thousands of years?

Biology? Because billions of years of evolution have made us all think: "We should have kids and hang around long enough to make sure they have kids too. That way we can keep this caravan rolling."

That's a pretty big motivator.

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#106

Post by astine »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #38

This is about 25 years too late, but good. The problem here is that NASA is a political agency, not a scientific one. Each year, elected politicians sit down and decide how much they're going to get. This means the number one rule is don't make us look bad. You can't waste too much money, you can't go making a bunch of controversial statements, and good grief, whatever you do don't have astronauts getting exploded on…

"as we involve the U.S. military in more and more missions that look highly political"

"War is the continuation of politics by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz)

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#107

Post by mikeash »

aidenn0 wrote: post #100
mikeash wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that hiding things from children the way we do only works because we aren't always successful at it. If we were able to hide things from children with 100% reliability, we'd end up with young adults incapable of functioning in society.

Like the average college freshman from the suburbs.

Which is precisely the sort of thing that leads me to say that!

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#108

Post by fennecfoxen »

pemulis wrote: post #102
redthrowaway wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intervention in Libya cost about $2.7BB[1]. With things heating up in Syria, and the need to further isolate Iran, we could be looking at another "low-intensity" operation there in support of the pro-democracy dissidents. Now, what would be more cost-effective: a similar campaign in Syria, or paying Assad $1BB to fuck off to Venezuela and stay there, and a further $1BB distributed to military commanders to get th…

The total wealth of the Assad regime and their associates is in the hundreds of billions. You would have to pay them several trillion dollars at a minimum, though I doubt even that would be enough to convince them to leave.

I don't know - you don't necessarily have to compete with the hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth; you just need to be able to compete with the expectations of their wealth after you roll in your tanks and attempt to crush them. This is presumably a lower value, iff you have a credible threat to actually go in there and crush them with your tanks (which takes military expertise, expenditure, and the political will to pull it off).

In the current state of the US, however, the political will for new military action is fairly minimal, for better or for worse.

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#109

Post by scott_s »

javajosh wrote: post #98
mechanical_fish wrote: post #58

Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. ... well, except for air, and food. But there's water! Which we can detect with sensitive instruments! This whole article has no point. As everyone in the military knows full well, if the benefit is great enough humans will happily risk other human lives, even expend lives,…

"...there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life" Wrong. In the long run, even if we achieve some sort of utopia, all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe. The only way to avoid this fate is to find other places to live. Mars is one of those places; so are the various exoplanets we are finding. Indeed, this is humanities greatest challenge. Can we harness the incredi…

Your sentiment comes up a lot, and I tend to point to this essay when it does: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2639456

Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

#110

Post by rhino42 »

javajosh wrote: post #98
mechanical_fish wrote: post #58

Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. ... well, except for air, and food. But there's water! Which we can detect with sensitive instruments! This whole article has no point. As everyone in the military knows full well, if the benefit is great enough humans will happily risk other human lives, even expend lives,…

"...there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life" Wrong. In the long run, even if we achieve some sort of utopia, all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe. The only way to avoid this fate is to find other places to live. Mars is one of those places; so are the various exoplanets we are finding. Indeed, this is humanities greatest challenge. Can we harness the incredi…

This.

IMHO, humanity's goal for the next hundred years is to enhance our energy and medical technologies as quickly as possible. (space takes a distant third).

We are essentially in a race against time: if we are too slow, we will deplete our resources and wipe ourselves out.

There are lots and lots of things that are worth a single human's life (or tens, hundreds of lives). Research is one of them. For instance, if we could magically trade a random 100 lives for knowing if there is extraterrestrial life, I believe that it's a worthy trade. That's just one example.

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