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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?

#161

Post by Gormo »

jordanb wrote: post #53
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…

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…

If something provokes interest and generates demand, then there's an economic case for it. Plenty of people want to see manned missions to Mars, etc. as ends in themselves, and this will motivate independent efforts to explore space. We're at the point where political monopolies are a hindrance.

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

#162

Post by ericd »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #86
rflrob wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, humans are so much more effective than robots at planning and independent decision making, which is critical when there's a 8-40 minute communications round trip time. The two wildly successful MER probes Spirit and Opportunity traveled a combined ~40km in around 4,000 sols. A human areologist could cover that much in a week.

And just how many Spirit probes could one send to Mars for the cost of sending a single human? Based on a bit of Googling, the answer seems to be on the order of "ten", as a minimum. Numbers of $20 billion or so were being thrown around for a manned mission, and the currently-in-transit Mars Science Lab is up past $1.5 billion after a 30% cost overrun: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/Bal... G…

It's not something that can just be parallelized away with identical probes. It's the difference between a multifunction calculator and a PC. The PC may weigh 100x as much, but it has an infinitely greater breadth of capability. That's why human spaceflight is going to be important for the foreseeable future. Unless you want to design a separate probe for every conceivable task (some of which we undoubtedly don't know yet).

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

#163

Post by pippy »

Statistically, the Russian space program is safer than the American. They're not exactly famed for their health and safety, in a hilariously stereotypical tradition Russians piss on their rocket (it dates back to Yuri's flight) and until recently they carried shotguns to ward of bears after returning.

The problem is outlined in the article, but not expanded. Every year politicians change NASA's goals. If the project you're working on keeps changing spec it's going to expand the timeline. Didn't Bushes plan call for us to be on the moon by 2015?

Another problem is the way NASA makes their vehicles. Private companies make products with the goal of making a profit. NASA's goal is to get people into space. The space shuttle is an example of this failure: it was overpriced, so dangerous cutbacks were made which ruined two of the vehicles. In an ironic twist, the soviet Buran suffered from none of these issues.

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

#164

Post by ansible »

Jach wrote: post #142
ansible wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're looking at option 3. With advanced technology, we can modify humans to more easily survive in space. With sufficiently advanced technology, we can just upload them into robot bodies. That will make space missions as cheap as they are now, and without the risk. Because instead of sending up bags of meat that have to be protected from vacuum, radiation, freezing, boiling and dehydration, we can send up AI…

While I agree that 3 is the most optimal solution in the sense that "all these other problems are solved given 3", we still don't have a firm time frame on it. It could be 1 year, it could be 50 years. (I wouldn't put it at 100 or above personally, barring global catastrophe.) So we do things in parallel and hedge our bets. Could we get a self-sustaining colony on the Moon (or Mars, or somewhere else) within 50 years…

Time frame is always a tough one. Let's try to bracket it with what we know, and be clear about the goal.

First, if we're talking about running an uploaded human-equivalent AI, we've got the processor power for that now, but it takes up a large server room. So I'd say we need to shrink stuff by at least 2 orders of magnitude to launch that into space. With corresponding gains in efficiency. So for that I think we're looking at 10 years at current rates of progress. Tack on another 5 for radiation hardening, because that estimate was based on commercial-grade hardware, which is almost as fragile as meat.

After you have that, it is a small matter of programming :-)

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

#165

Post by koningrobot »

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…

There's nothing for humans to do in "other places to live" either. We accomplish nothing by being here. In fact it would be better if we gave up already.

A human is born in need of air, water, food, and pastime, and the best we can do is satisfy these needs only partially. There is no reason to create these needs (other than to partially satisfy existing needs that didn't need to be created), but there are many reasons not to create these needs.

You correctly note that the universe is extraordinarily harsh. I see no rational reason to continue fighting it. There are only superstitious reasons, like pride, sunk costs, think of the children, equivocating humanity the race with human the individual, identifying with your genetic material, assigning intrinsic value to life, etc.

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

#166

Post by bjornsing »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

This article ended up being more interesting than I expected. Particularly noteworthy is the point that if a program sets an unusually high value on human life, it diverts resources from other programs also intended to protect human life, and thus brings about LESSENED protection of human life through that drain on resources. This provides thoughtful perspective on policy trade-offs. As Thomas Sowell has written, "Th…

The most interesting aspect IMHO is that just about everybody would agree that this reasoning brought to its logical conclusion is immoral.

For example, a Space Shuttle launch costs on average $450 million, kills on average 0.1 astronauts and destroys 0.015 shuttles (worth $3 billion). If the Space Shuttle could be redesigned so that on average it cost $300 million to launch but killed two astronauts every time, predictably, would that be morally right?

I would say no. But I agree that contradicts logic. I draw the conclusion that logic is for deciding some things and feelings are for deciding others.

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

#167

Post by rbanffy »

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?

May I remind you the dinosaurs died because they had neither nukes nor rockets.

Nor telescopes, but that's beyond the point.

Mankind puts all its eggs in one basket. Our odds of survival against planetary catastrophes increase with the number of planets we colonize. The more spread we are, the bigger the chances. The timescales involved are huge but, just like someone wins the lottery every week, I'm willing to bet that, as we discuss, a civilization we know nothing of is being wiped out by an unforeseen catastrophe precisely because all of them lived on top of a single rock.

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

#168

Post by rbanffy »

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 scientific standpoint.

It all depends on your kind of science. For an astronomer, manned space travel is pointless. In fact, space travel is pointless unless we invent some kind of FTL propulsion that can actually put a probe close to some interesting phenomena or allow us to look from another direction.

OTOH, a thousand rovers will tell us nothing about how human societies would organize in artificial habitats. A machine cannot tell how it feels to be able to hide Earth from view with your extended hand.

That's what manned space travel is for. It's not to bring back measurements or soil samples. It's to bring back stories that reminds us how extraordinary we can be.

And to inspire us to be extraordinary.

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

#169

Post by jessriedel »

CamperBob wrote: post #158
chernevik wrote: post #46

Apollo was a national security project -- demonstration of our system, exploration of technology of potential military importance. Fixing Hubble was really important. I'm not sure how much the shuttle's work was of the same magnitude, or couldn't have been done with automated gear. BUT bureaucratic and political imperatives called for continuation of the space program, at scale, and that called for justification of t…

Fixing Hubble was really important. I'm not sure how much the shuttle's work was of the same magnitude, or couldn't have been done with automated gear. Although a staunch supporter of Zubrin and his Mars strategy, as well as a supporter of the HST maintenance effort, I think he shot down his own proposition in this particular article. He points out that Hubble cost $5 billion, while elsewhere, he casually mentions th…

You misunderstood. The total value of the physical Shuttle itself is $3 billion. The average cost per trip is $450 million. The marginal cost per trip isn't available, but it is undoubtably less. Probably around $200-300 million.

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

#170

Post by warfangle »

quanticle wrote: post #151
warfangle wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what, specifically, about space travel would cause us to make those discoveries about temperature regulation and ecosystem habitats? Unless there's something specifically about hard vacuum and freefall that makes it easier to study these topics, they could be more easily and far more cheaply studied on Earth.

Sorry, I was writing more in context of permanent outposts due to recent political rhetoric.
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