Space Travel - is it leisurely possible? (Can we tolerate risk?)

[DeepSeaBase]

An interesting point developed in another thread but because it's not directly related to that thread I'll just ask the question here and see what discussion forms of it. It fascinates me that NASA actually has asked this question in response to the loss of the Columbia. Brief background, Columbia is just one of many missions that had foam insulation come off the tank and break off tiles. Before whoever throws NASA under the bus, they actually ran through a lot of scenarios to evaluate the tiles and see if the Atlantis should be sent or a jury-rigged repair be made. They determined an unplanned spacewalk is a far higher risk than what had been happening.

In hindsight this is now called "normalization and deviance".

We normalize recurring mistakes that did not reveal themselves to be mistakes because of no consequence until we deviate so far from a standard that a consequence is probable or certain.

K -------------------- having set that aside we can get on with the question of space travel.

Is it right to think that risk acceptance is built into space travel?

Another way of asking: is it reasonable to think we can accept higher amounts of risk to make it more affordable?

I think a lot of us who would love to go into space, I'm certainly one of them, say we would accept a higher tolerance of risk, but when that risk rises above a certain threshold would we really?

https://www.intechopen.com/books/into-space-a-journey-of-how-humans-adapt-and-live-in-microgravity/the-mortality-of-space-explorers

Let me really start to blow your mind.

Astronaut deaths are actually quite high.

Job related fatalities are in the 10% range. 1 out of 10 Astronauts are killed by being Astronauts, whether that's training accidents or dying in actual spacecraft related incidents.

So where does all this stand? My opinion is that space travel is so infrequent that we as people have no clue how dangerous it really is.

Airplane crashes: Chance of death 1 in 5,882,352 https://www.paddleyourownkanoo.com/2020/04/07/the-chance-of-dying-in-a-plane-crash-more-than-halved-last-year-according-to-new-research/#:~:text=IATA concluded that the chance,accident with just one fatality.

Car crashes: Chance of death 1 in 103 https://valientemott.com/blog/chances-of-dying-in-a-car-crash/#:~:text=According to the National Safety,crash is 1 in 103.

Ok, so let's put that into perspective.

If we were sending 4,600 tourists into space at current statistics, 460 of them would die in fatal accidents. These statistics are muted by the fact that Apollo 13 did not end in disaster (took a huge amount of effort to pull that off) and Mir didn't kill everyone on board in a docking accident (3 Astronauts), so we are missing 6 probable deaths from the statistics.

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I'm not saying we should halt space travel. I'm saying that there's so little of it that we haven't had exposure to how dangerous it really is. As such, people are grossly underestimating that danger. If car crashes were as fatal as space travel then:

365,690 Americans would die each year from driving their car, or almost as many Americans as died in all of WW2.

That put into perspective:

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Can we afford even higher risk to cheapen space flight further for tourism?

Can we afford to be complacent?

Can we afford to normalize and deviate from already standard practices when the cost is this high already?

[beecee]

27 minutes ago, DeepSeaBase said:

I'm not saying we should halt space travel.

I see even the thought of that as stagnation and a total lack of foresight.

27 minutes ago, DeepSeaBase said:

I'm saying that there's so little of it that we haven't had exposure to how dangerous it really is. As such, people are grossly underestimating that danger. If car crashes were as fatal as space travel then:

Actually the opposite. The scientists at NASA and the ESA and other space companies, know too well the dangers of space travel. As a great President of the USA once said, "we don't do these things because they are easy; we do them because they are hard" 

27 minutes ago, DeepSeaBase said:

Can we afford even higher risk to cheapen space flight further for tourism?

Can we afford to be complacent?

Can we afford to normalize and deviate from already standard practices when the cost is this high already?

Space flight including tourism will in time get cheaper as technologies and safety improve.

No we can't afford to be complacent, and I don't believe we generally are.

Space travel and tourism, will become the norm in the course of time and as safety and technological concerns are overcome.

The Apollo adventures became the norm and people became rather blaise about these dangerous adventures after Apollo 12: It took a near disaster with Apollo 13 to establish interest again.

I did mention it somewhere in the other thread, but its worth contemplating that everyday now for more then 20 years the ISS has had permenant occupancy. What is the daily risk of living in LEO on the ISS?

How many space walks have been undertaken in those 20 years?

Of course that is an international effort, and such an effort I believe should also occur in putting boots on Mars.

Edited May 11, 2021 by beecee

[DeepSeaBase]

15 hours ago, beecee said:

I see even the thought of that as stagnation and a total lack of foresight.

I agree, sometimes it's hard for enthusiasts or even industry-professionals to separate the complexities of adding "safety" and "assurance" and stagnation. So often times we get pushed onto timeframes that are unrealistic, or expectations that compromise safety and think of that as progress but really we could have done it better had we remained focused.

16 hours ago, beecee said:

Actually the opposite. The scientists at NASA and the ESA and other space companies, know too well the dangers of space travel. As a great President of the USA once said, "we don't do these things because they are easy; we do them because they are hard" 

That's an oversimplification. Just before JFK said that h spent 5 minutes detailing the national security risks of allowing Russia to advance rocket technology while the US remains behind, and made the other point that Russia was poised to militarize space unopposed and the US better seize the opportunity of space exploration before that happens.

16 hours ago, beecee said:

Space flight including tourism will in time get cheaper as technologies and safety improve.

I see an opposite trend. Test flights have increasing frequencies of failures which is a strong indicator of the manufacturing methods employed. What's happening is the mainstreaming of space. The question is can we tolerate the current hazard levels it is at?

[Prometheus]

As sub-orbital flights start to, er, take off, a more accurate estimate of the commercial safety profile can start to build. It's not fixed, as with aviation safety will likely improve with time.

How much risk to tolerate is a personal choice. I imagine there will be an initial wave of intrepid tourists willing to take the risks, and as price goes down and safety increases more and more people will consider it an option (i guess it will remain the domain of the wealthy for a few decades though).

I imagine the fledgling space tourism companies will understand how bad any fatalities will hurt their PR and so take it very seriously.

With the New Shepherd starting to take tourists this summer we won't have long to see how the industry approaches things.

[SpaceJac111]

All depends on your desired destination. If you want to travel to the Moon, it can be possible. But as I understand 'space travel' means going far away from Earth.  It's impossible in present-day realities, of course if you want to come back home.

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, SpaceJac111 said:

But as I understand 'space travel' means going far away from Earth.

No, that's wrong. Space travel is ANY travel above about 100 km altitude. 

 

 

[beecee]

9 hours ago, SpaceJac111 said:

All depends on your desired destination. If you want to travel to the Moon, it can be possible. But as I understand 'space travel' means going far away from Earth.  It's impossible in present-day realities, of course if you want to come back home.

As was flying just a little bit more then a 100 years ago. And with the dangers and difficulties of space travel well known by those that matter, and the continuing research into and with advanced technologies into eliminating and/or reducing those risks and dangers, in the course of time, we will go further afield and return, as the situation allows.