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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?

#121

Post by javajosh »

estevez wrote: post #114
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…

> all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe. I'm going to disagree with you there.[1] A bit tongue in cheek, but regarding your larger point, I think that thinking about preserving life in our corner of the universe solely in terms of keeping meat puppets alive in interstellar space is a rather parochial way to think. We already know of two forms of life that are far better suited to the void, autonomous robo…

In the interest of brevity I left out the post-humanist angle. You're right: we can work on the problem from the other angle of making our form more survivable. Various post-humanist ideas, from genetic engineering to uploading mind state into a (presumably more survivable) computational substrate are options. There is a reasonable argument to be made that our time would be better spent achieving these forms before attempting serious colonization. However, I suspect that "meat puppet" colonization is easier than we think, especially if we accept the OP's argument that we need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot with unreasonable safety requirements.

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

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rhino42 wrote: post #110
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…

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…

You know where there are lots of resources? Space. Recently ran an economic projection for a venture that was being proposed out of Russia - tugging an asteroid of copper into orbit around Earth and mining it would alleviate the environmental impact of surface mining while cutting the price of these materials to a fraction of what they are today.

Speaking about energy, check out space-based solar power. I will be the first to admit that present conceptions are as pre-mature as the solar industry in general, but, it is theoretically a vastly more efficient way to generate power than other options, barring nuclear.

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

#123

Post by drblast »

arctangent wrote: post #120
VMG wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me that on a tech site you are getting downvotes for this. Human space travel is a waste of money from a scientific standpoint. Why a libertarian magazine like reason.com supports human space travel at all is a mystery to me.

> Human space travel is a waste of money from a scientific standpoint. It's hard to weigh up the relative merits of spending money on human space travel now over spending (perhaps less) money a few tens or hundred years from now to achieve the same effect. But if mankind doesn't eventually colonise other planets then we're almost certainly going to be wiped out by a big rock hitting our planet and killing every last…

What's the point? It's not going to occur in a reasonable amount of time, and if you say, "Well, eventually it will..." then eventually everything that exists will cease to exist anyway.

Why not focus on things that are problems now?

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

#124

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ap22213 wrote: post #67

If an astronaut dies during a mission, there's a lot more indirect cost incurred than just the astronaut's life. There are the endless investigations and media coverage and related activities that are hard to put a number on. Simply put, government funded programs receive more scrutiny than commercial ventures. If a private inventor dies while experimenting with their own invention, there isn't the massive, longtime…

True, but I'd say this is something of the Pygmalion effect en masse. We have coddled the public into expecting risk-free space ventures and so they react accordingly when risk-free turns out to be risk-fraught.

Few government leaders will take on that much risk themselves

This is why I support NASA's initiatives to privatise the risk (and responsibility) of certain missions.

That being said, we accept risk in the military. The solution is to create an institution that is protected from political whims so it can take the long-run risks it needs to.

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

#125

Post by JumpCrisscross »

VMG wrote: post #62
jordanb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA is a political organization, but that's why the manned space program exists. It long ago ceased to make sense from a cost/scientific-benefit perspective. Manned flight continues only on the argument that it excites the public and fuels interest in space. Bearing that in mind, the entire thing is showboating on TV, and it's pretty silly to angst if over this, that, or the other bit of it is compromised by politic…

It amazes me that on a tech site you are getting downvotes for this. Human space travel is a waste of money from a scientific standpoint. Why a libertarian magazine like reason.com supports human space travel at all is a mystery to me.

from a scientific standpoint

Agreed. But there are other things being looked at in space in the commercial realm (ranging from tourism to resource extraction to energy generation) that require humans.

There is also an argument for positive externalities. I don't think anyone concretely foresaw the technological developments shot off the side of the Apollo missions. That's not a sufficient justification. But if one has two nations, one pursuing manned space missions and one not, the technological developments will happen in one and not the other. A more cosmopolitan perspective would be if you had two universes, one with a species that did this and another without...

In this entire discussion I'm not bringing up national pride, either, which has real-world significance in terms of how it affects the flow of intellectual talent, i.e. the brain drain.

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

#126

Post by arctangent »

drblast wrote: post #123
arctangent wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human space travel is a waste of money from a scientific standpoint. It's hard to weigh up the relative merits of spending money on human space travel now over spending (perhaps less) money a few tens or hundred years from now to achieve the same effect. But if mankind doesn't eventually colonise other planets then we're almost certainly going to be wiped out by a big rock hitting our planet and killing every last…

What's the point? It's not going to occur in a reasonable amount of time, and if you say, "Well, eventually it will..." then eventually everything that exists will cease to exist anyway. Why not focus on things that are problems now?

The point is that we don't know exactly when an unpreventable extinction-level event will happen. It makes sense to plan for such an event as early as possible.

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

#127

Post by warfangle »

VMG wrote: post #62
jordanb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA is a political organization, but that's why the manned space program exists. It long ago ceased to make sense from a cost/scientific-benefit perspective. Manned flight continues only on the argument that it excites the public and fuels interest in space. Bearing that in mind, the entire thing is showboating on TV, and it's pretty silly to angst if over this, that, or the other bit of it is compromised by politic…

It amazes me that on a tech site you are getting downvotes for this. Human space travel is a waste of money from a scientific standpoint. Why a libertarian magazine like reason.com supports human space travel at all is a mystery to me.

Human space travel is a waste of money from a capital market sense, perhaps.

Think of all we've learned by putting humans into space. Think of all we'd have to learn to put humans permanently on the moon - from long-term temperature regulation to ecosystem habitats and materials science.

It's not the destination of the journey that matters. It's what we need to figure out in order to get there that does.

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

#128

Post by hartror »

Starting with near zero space capability in 1961, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) put men on our companion world in eight years.

The whole premise of this article, that we can't send people beyond LEO any more because of risk aversion, is based on this line and it is wrong. There are several differences between today and the 1960s that make manned space flight less feasible. This can be summarised as political and manufacturing, with the former driving the latter.

Politically the world and the US are different places, the cold war is over so the need for grand gestures for moral building and propaganda has gone.

However the OP's line of near zero space capability is wrong, ICBMs were being designed and tested at a furious rate throughout the 1950s. This created a massive pool of people with first hand knowledge, and a massive manufacturing base from which to draw upon.

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

#129

Post by bitwize »

huxley wrote: post #118
joshuahedlund wrote: post #10

This article answered for me one of those things I'd always wondered but never took time to figure out: why no one has been back to the moon even though our technology has advanced exponentially in the last 40 years. An irrational emphasis on risk makes perfect sense. Still doesn't explain why no other country has done it, though. Well, except for the boring explanations about high costs and no immediate benefits bes…

How about moon dust that eats away at your equipment, sticks to everything, and can cause iron poisoning (and possibly a lung disease similar to silicosis)? “The dust was so abrasive that it actually wore through three layers of Kevlar-like material on [Apollo 17 astronaut] Jack [Schmitt]’s boot,” Taylor says. That abrasion happened over 3 moonwalks (each lasting a bit over 7 hours). http://www.sciencedaily.com/relea…

Makes a great portal conductor, though.

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

#130

Post by javajosh »

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?

The only counter-argument is this: I want humanity to survive long enough to ponder those questions.
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