Back to the moon? When?

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:26:33 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
:Quadibloc made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
:such a way as to indicate that:
:
:On Nov 9, 12:12 pm, John Schilling wrote:
:
: The point is, A: human lives are *meant* to be risked, on account of
: they are each and every one of them guaranteed to be lost whether you
: risk them or not, and B: humans are roughly a thousand times better
: than the best contemporary robots at doing the sort of things space
: scientists care about (and better still at doing the sorts of things
: politicians care about), so sending them off to do space science and
: whatnot is a really amazingly good way to risk a human life.
:
:It's bad enough that, yes, humans will eventually die of old age. But
:every death of an innocent human being is a tragedy of such immense
:proportions that it is not at all true to say that human lives are
:"meant to be risked". Only the most serious reasons should lead us to
:do such a terrible thing.
:
:Of course, there's nothing wrong with your second point - and yes,
:since people will accomplish more in studying Mars than machines will,
:of course it would be legitimate for people to want to go there. At
:some risk to their lives.
:
:Spending absurdly high amounts of money to reduce risks in ways that
:don't even work is not what I recommend. But the opposite temptation
:of rushing and cutting corners is always present as well.
:
:The approach to risk in space should be one that leaves no ambiguity,
:but instead makes it resoundingly clear:
:
:- the astronauts themselves are brave individuals who were willing to
:face the hazards of space, and
:
:- we, on the ground, did everything we could as best we could to get
:them back safely.
:
:Then space will remain forever unaffordable.
:

As will life on Earth, if we apply the same rule here.


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden

On Nov 28, 4:44 pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:

I do. The general public needs to be educated that this is a
frontier, and that people will die on it, as they have on other
frontiers. We managed to advance aviation by huge measure without
making it a national trauma when we lost a test pilot (or even
passenger, for that matter). Until we can do this with space, it's
going to be hard to make much progress.

The cure for that *is* the progress. When lots more people are going
into space, so that it is genuinely routine, then a few accidents will
be treated the same way as car accidents are now.

In the near term, the way to make sure that tragedies don't damage the
space program is for those involved in it on the ground to do their
jobs conscientiously, and to be seen to do their jobs conscientiously.
It's when negligence - or, worse yet, a cover-up - is suspected that
you have the search for scapegoats that resembles a feeding frenzy.

Build trust.

No one would disagree with that. The problem is defining what "within
reason" means.

Well, I wasn't trying to put forwards a strict definition in my
original post on this subject. Rather, I was objecting more to the
previous poster's wording - phrases such as 'human lives are meant to
be risked' create the wrong impression.

The consistent message has to be: some risk is indeed an unavoidable
part of space exploration, but we are never complacent about this, and
we do not rest from seeking to reduce the hazards.

Think good spin, conscientious work on the part of the ground crews -
not hideously extravagant mission plans. That isn't where I'm coming
from.

John Savard

On Nov 8, 8:22 pm, "Erich Kohl" wrote:
Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

Then where's Venus? (a11, a14 and a16 should have been impossible to
have ignored Venus at better than twice the albedo of Earth and a good
7 fold more vibrant than our physically dark moon)
- Brad Guth