Re: Back to the moon? When?

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:56:24 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
Quadibloc <jsavard@xxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

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.

Perhaps I should have inserted the word "reasonable" in my second
point, then.

As long as space _is_ unaffordable, and astronauts are celebrities, we
do want people to have confidence that should anything untowards
happen, it won't be because of negligence bordering on the criminal.

Actually, current astronauts aren't celebrities, until we kill them.
Few people could name any, let alone most of them. They only learn
the names after they die in some spectacular fashion. And then,
shortly thereafter, they forget them.

I don't think that's an unreasonable thing for the general public to
ask.

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.

I'm not saying not to take risks, just that risks to human life are
always, even in the service of space, to be minimized (within reason),
always recognized as an undesirable, although to some extent
unavoidable, part of space exploration.

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

Relevant Pages

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