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How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?

reason.com

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

#61

Post by nkoren »

Splines wrote: post #47
maratd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That's a false dichotomy. Children don't need to watch a shuttle burst into flames in order for science to progress.

Children don't need to watch a shuttle burst into flames in order for science to progress.

Yes, they do. Progress with zero risk of failure is no progress at all. To even attempt progress with zero risk of failure is to ensure that:

1.) You will minimize your progress

2.) You will fail anyway

...As the Shuttle all too ably demonstrated.

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

#62

Post by VMG »

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…

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.

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

#63

Post by chillyconker »

svmegatron wrote: post #55

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.

Indeed. I would say that in truth an astronaut's life and a bunch of money are incommensurable.

The value of the article lies in showing that if agencies pretend to assign a certain value to a human life then they can become less inconsistent. (And if in this case it serves Zubrin's laudable aim of getting to Mars now, so much the better.)

For Zubrin himself to be consistent, OFC, he should have tried to assign a value to, say, another decade of Hubble data. Omitting that was, as you say, sloppy.

BTW I find it quite shocking that neither the article nor the other comments so far consider the relevancy of the astronaut's opinion of what is an acceptable risk for him. It is, after all, his life, and he remains a taxpayer like everyone else.

I guess in the future where things like life extension and legal suicide are commonplace it will be considered strange to ignore a person's wishes in this way

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

#64

Post by ew6082 »

timwiseman wrote: post #39
maratd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I still remember watching it happen in class. Those men and women were all heroes, and inspired many of us to go into STEM careers.

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

#65

Post by Cushman »

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…

I think it's the same situation. Our military is geared up to fight yesterday's war; the "wars" we're involved in now could be solved more cost-effectively by literally paying our enemies not to fight. The next real war, if it happens, will be fought almost entirely with semi- and fully-autonomous machines. All of the lessons we've learned will be pointless.

Similarly, NASA is geared up for yesterday's space race. We have to send a man to space! We have to send two men to space! We have to send a man to the moon! Uh, now what... We have to send a man to MARS!

Well, no, we really don't. Yes, we could. We know we could. We wouldn't learn anything significant by doing so that we couldn't learn for much cheaper here on Earth. It would be a massively expensive, complicated and dangerous tourist expedition-- a lot like sending soldiers to the Middle East, actually.

We all already live in space, on the largest, safest, most self-sustaining spaceship any of us can conceive of. The future of space exploration lies in the hands of semi- and fully-autonomous machines. There's no good reason for people to be in space, not for the foreseeable future at least.

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

#66

Post by lutorm »

lutorm wrote: post #15

Interesting, but I thought it sort of built a straw-man argument in that the main premise, that all the delay on a Mars mission is just to lower risk to the astronauts, isn't really substantiated. The calculation that ends up showing that the cost of a Mars mission is a hugely inefficient way of reducing risk to human life assumes the entire cost is to lower human risk. So it's only an upper limit, and there is no wa…

Sure would be interesting to know what people disagree with so strongly that it warrants putting me in the negatives. This seems like a noncontroversial comment to me.

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

#67

Post by ap22213 »

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 affecting fallout similar to a government disaster.

Now, sure, I am a proponent of space exploration and its advancement. But, having worked with the government in the past, I kind of understand why their risk management is so heavy handed. Few government leaders will take on that much risk themselves.

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

#68

Post by Splines »

nkoren wrote: post #61
Splines wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitting in a cave poking a fire with a stick. That's a false dichotomy. Children don't need to watch a shuttle burst into flames in order for science to progress.

Children don't need to watch a shuttle burst into flames in order for science to progress. Yes, they do. Progress with zero risk of failure is no progress at all. To even attempt progress with zero risk of failure is to ensure that: 1.) You will minimize your progress 2.) You will fail anyway ...As the Shuttle all too ably demonstrated.

I think we misunderstand. I'm arguing that children don't need to watch potentially disturbing imagery to ensure that they contribute to furthering science in the future.

The argument "we should not coddle children because science" rings false to me. "Coddling children" is a bit of a strawman; there are things we don't tell children because of their innate immaturity. As are most things, it's a spectrum.

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

#69

Post by rflrob »

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,…

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.

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

#70

Post by heliodor »

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…

You bring up one factor left out of that calculation of how much an astronaut's life is worth, namely "don't make us look bad". The value of keeping up appearances is very high indeed!
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