"James Oberg" wrote in message . ..
"Every endeavour that continuously pushes the boundaries of human achievment
can have times of both great triumph and great tragedy. The space agencies
and nations around the world that are our partners in the Station understand
that and they have experienced it," B.G.

I'm sick to death of hearing this self-justificatory blather, as if the
self-inflicted disasters
are some natural, unavoidable part of spaceflight, something that actually
consecrates the activity as somehow more worthy BECAUSE of the cost.

I'm sick to death of the zero-defect mentality that has infected our
society, largely due to media pressures, in the past 30 years. This
mindset considers any failure that is retroactively preventable, no
matter how tenuous the chain of events to prevent it, to be a
"self-inflicted disaster." The term 'disaster' to describe the failure
of an experimental vehicle is itself a misnomer.

Webster's defines 'disaster' as 'a sudden calamitous event bringing
great damage, loss, or destruction; broadly : a sudden or great
misfortune or failure'

In other words, 9/11 should qualify. An experimental vehicle failure
resulting in the deaths of seven people should not. Nevertheless, a
ratings-driven media has defined down disaster to mean more closely
'any failure of a public nature,' or to more closely mean, "any
failure of a highly public nature, resulting in death or not." As a
result, ANY failure of a public system is defined as a 'disaster.' And
yet we demand

As we have grown increasingly risk-averse, the bar for
'preventability' has also been ratcheted up, so that even an unforseen
failure mode is deemed as 'preventable," as long as some outside
chance of preventing the failure existed at the time of the failure,
if the failure had been realized. This is madness. We don't do
business this way in any other aspect of our lives.

The same 'forseeability' that is seen as necessary for safety is
forbidden to be applied to actual failure rates, although they are
calcuable and real. Indeed, although we rationally know that a certain
percentage of shuttle flights are going to result in 'self-inflicted
disaster,' we are not allowed to say this, as any admission of the
possibility of failure is bad.

When a motorcyclist who is aware of the dangers involved gets killed
in an auto accident that is 'preventable' (because he could have been
driving a safer car), it is not considered 'a self-inflicted
disaster.' We haven't outlawed motorcycles. Not yet, anyway. Yet we
damand a far higher standard in regards to spaceflight. If it gets any
worse, odds are we will remain forever planet-bound, doomed to
stagnation and regression. Farewell to courage: Preventability has
entered the building.

But perhaps the blame does not lie with the media. Perhaps the blame
rightly belongs on officials who do not have the balls to admit
publicly to Congress that 'based on the current configuration and
flight rates, I expect at least two shuttles to be lost during space
station construction, with probable death for the crew resulting each
time.'

Tom Merkle