That's a wise policy:
=== To avoid such deadly waste, the Department of Transportation has a policy of rejecting any proposed safety expenditure that costs more than $3 million per life saved. ===
How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
31–40 of 186 posts
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#32What is the risk a mountaineer or fighter pilot or car racer facing? Should we ban these people from taking calculated risks? Are there some stats about how risky various adventure sports are compared to Space Exploration?
Another question is what is the worth of revisiting the moon to set up a hyper expensive tourist camp there? Should it not be NASA's job to focus on research that lays the groundwork for entrepreneurs like Elon Musk to expand human presence beyond Earth?
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#33This 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…
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
It's an interesting thought experiment, but of course that's not really relevant to the example at hand. If NASA insisted on 1e-10 astronaut risk, it would not divert any money from other programs that protect human life, because the NASA appropriations are not for that purpose. It would just mean that NASA got nothing done, and maybe eventually it would be shut down. But assuming that there's a rational and efficient allocation of resources for a clear goal seems just as much a fiction as other economic concepts like "efficient markets".
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#34The article is thought-provoking, but marred by an enormous and unsupported leap of logic at the outset: Yet despite vastly superior technology and hundreds of billions of dollars in subsequent spending, the agency has been unable to send anyone else farther than low Earth orbit ever since. Why? Because we insist that our astronauts be as safe as possible. Safety concerns undoubtedly carry a cost at NASA, but they ar…
> as a percentage of the Federal budget it was over 5x today's level. This is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the absolute budget, adjusted for inflation. In addition, given the greatly improved technology, we should be able to get to the moon for far cheaper. In fact, all the R&D has already been done . It should be a cake walk on half the budget.
The share of the budget reflects the level of political support. So it's not irrelevant---undertaking something like a lunar mission requires long-term commitment, not just year-by-year budget equivalence. And during the Shuttle era, there was no political will to commit to a lunar or Mars mission in addition to building the Space Station. Even if the lunar mission did cost half as much, it would still mean doubling the budget.
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also misses things like: What's the cost of a million schoolchildren watching a space shuttle explode?
I reject the notion that we should coddle our children. The teacher is there for a reason. To provide context to what the child is being exposed to. And that can make all the difference. Yes, you can die. Yes, it is dangerous. Yes, these brave men risked their lives and they lost. And if they had to do it all over again, they would risk their lives again. Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitt…
"Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitting in a cave poking a fire with a stick."
Because of them, we now have large sticks which take us to space by poking the Earth with fire. :)
I agree with your entire comment. Think about the explorers of old, crossing oceans and continents, in hazardous conditions, with little technology to aid them, and with even less knowledge of where their journeys would lead. We stand on the brave shoulders of the countless who have come before, and it would be an insult to their accomplishments if we, as humans, suddenly abandoned, in the name of ultimate safety, the wonder of exploration, and the courage required to see it through.
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#36The article is thought-provoking, but marred by an enormous and unsupported leap of logic at the outset: Yet despite vastly superior technology and hundreds of billions of dollars in subsequent spending, the agency has been unable to send anyone else farther than low Earth orbit ever since. Why? Because we insist that our astronauts be as safe as possible. Safety concerns undoubtedly carry a cost at NASA, but they ar…
> as a percentage of the Federal budget it was over 5x today's level. This is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the absolute budget, adjusted for inflation. In addition, given the greatly improved technology, we should be able to get to the moon for far cheaper. In fact, all the R&D has already been done . It should be a cake walk on half the budget.
The human-exploration portion of NASA has shrunk in comparison to where it was during Apollo. We have a lot of Earth-observing instruments now, planetary missions to Mars, etc. (This is not a bad thing, but it complicates the comparison.)
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#37Space is dangerous. We should stop pretending it can be made "safe". It just gives politicians something to wag their tongues at when something inevitably goes wrong. If you go to space you might not come back. That's why explorers rock and everyone else watches TV. The article also misses an important variable. How much is discovery worth? Once that's added to the plus column, all of the other costs seem insignifica…
It also misses things like: What's the cost of a million schoolchildren watching a space shuttle explode?
Children should be exposed to the world, not sheltered from it. A parent's job is to prepare the child for the world, not hide the world from them with some naive and damaging attempt to keep them innocent. Sheltered children wind up unprepared for reality when it hits them smack in the face when they get on their own.
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#38This 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 TV.
The analogy with the mission-centric military was a good one. Unfortunately, as we involve the U.S. military in more and more missions that look highly political, we're going to end up with a badly broken military, for exactly the same reasons.
NASA should have but one mission: lower cost to orbit. If they can reach a 1000-fold reduction in cost to low-earth orbit, a lot of scientific research, exploration, and commercialization can take place.
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also misses things like: What's the cost of a million schoolchildren watching a space shuttle explode?
I reject the notion that we should coddle our children. The teacher is there for a reason. To provide context to what the child is being exposed to. And that can make all the difference. Yes, you can die. Yes, it is dangerous. Yes, these brave men risked their lives and they lost. And if they had to do it all over again, they would risk their lives again. Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitt…
I couldn't agree with this more. Life is filled with risks, pretending otherwise is not good for anyone. But pushing the frontiers, exploring the boundaries comes with much greater risks.
Yet those risks can come with great rewards when they pay off and it is only by accepting those higher risks that society can advance and improve.
Re: How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?
#40As he barely acknowledges, the problem isn't necessarily that NASA is too risk-averse when it comes to human lives, it's society at large. After every failure, there is a massive outcry along the lines of "how much money did we give you again? And you still couldn't get it right?" The argument that the money could be spent elsewhere has been around since the beginning of the space program, I think. Do the people maki…
the problem isn't necessarily that NASA is too risk-averse when it comes to human lives, it's society at large.
I couldn't agree more. I'm continually saddened that the traditional salutation to a guest leaving your home, for example, is "have a safe trip". In my dream world, people would wish each other a "a rich life of fulfilling experiences".
We shouldn't be trying to wrap ourselves into cocoons, setting a goal of simply surviving for the longest possible time. The length of the life shouldn't be paramount: it should be the area under the curve: how much did we experience, to what extent were we able to pursue our dreams?