How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by macspoofing » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

wbienek wrote: post #41

Here is where you supposedly "smart" people are morons. We didn't go to the moon in the first place. They jumped the shark when they showed people on dune buggies on the moon. They won't go back because when people see how hard it is to land and relaunch with human life in tow, the world will know we didn't go in the first place. Nobody will be going to the moon until it doesn't matter that the world finds out we did…

>scamming a trusting, patriotic 60's public on TV or landing a human being on a foreign planet

Not only 60's public but also the public of every subsequent year (and by "public" you have to include scientists, engineers and otherwise intelligent men and women from all walks of life). Given all that I'd say the former is much harder (downright impossible) to accomplish.

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

#52

Post by learc83 » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:53 PM UTC

uberalex wrote: post #24

I like the article but I wonder a little about the figures. He seems to assume that the extra research measures push the likelihood of a successful mars mission from 90% to 95%. I think this underestimates the complexity of the problem. Two thirds of automated mars missions have failed, with an especially dark period around the time of the 1980s, when we were to have sent out the first Astronauts. I think that there…

>He seems to assume that the extra research measures push the likelihood of a successful mars mission from 90% to 95%.

He doesn't assume that at all. That was just a hypothetical situation, he never implied that those were actual figures.

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

#53

Post by jordanb » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:53 PM UTC

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 politics.

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

#54

Post by Symmetry » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

wiredfool wrote: post #45

When discussing the 2 rovers with a 90% success rate, the author comes to the conclusion: The right answer is to go for two rovers, because if you do it that way, you will have a 99 percent probability of succeeding with at least one of the vehicles Which is not exactly right. It's correct if you're looking at random, uncorrelated factors. However, two rovers from the same program are not going to be uncorrelated. If…

Or they could not launch the two rovers at the same time and use the failures of the first rover to make the second work, in which case the errors become anti-correlated.

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

#55

Post by svmegatron » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

Lost me after defining the worth of an astronaut to be $50 million, and the value of scientific knowledge obtained from a longer-lived Hubble to be incalculable.

Even though I think the author makes a point worth considering, I found that a really sloppy justification.

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

#56

Post by DMalloy » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:57 PM UTC

One cost-effective proposal for a mars mission that was actually discussed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay

Btw, -many- people died during early space travel.

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

#57

Post by brudgers » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:57 PM UTC

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"

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.

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

#58

Post by mechanical_fish » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:57 PM UTC

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, by the thousands and even millions.

The "problem" is that there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life. This isn't 1937 anymore; the transistor and the IC have been invented and we know how to build robots. These days even the military pilots on Earth spend more and more time in chairs on the ground, steering robots, often from halfway around the world.

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

#59

Post by learc83 » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:58 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #51

wbienek wrote: post #41

Here is where you supposedly "smart" people are morons. We didn't go to the moon in the first place. They jumped the shark when they showed people on dune buggies on the moon. They won't go back because when people see how hard it is to land and relaunch with human life in tow, the world will know we didn't go in the first place. Nobody will be going to the moon until it doesn't matter that the world finds out we did…

>scamming a trusting, patriotic 60's public on TV or landing a human being on a foreign planet Not only 60's public but also the public of every subsequent year (and by "public" you have to include scientists, engineers and otherwise intelligent men and women from all walks of life). Given all that I'd say the former is much harder (downright impossible) to accomplish.

Also none of the thousands of people involved, who would have had to be in on the secret, have come forward.

It would be much harder for thousands of people to keep such a secret, than it would to just go to the moon.

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

#60

Post by sliverstorm » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 5:59 PM UTC

kscaldef wrote: post #11

noonespecial wrote: post #5

Space 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?

I can't speak for everyone, but I feel like something like that would have guaranteed I become either an astronaut or aerospace engineer.