HeatherN wonders whether NASA is holding itself back by putting too much emphasis on astronaut safety.
According to this interview with Dr. Robert Zubrin, NASA is putting too much importance on astronaut safety. Basically, his argument is that because it costs so much to put an astronaut into space, NASA has a responsibility to actually do something with that money. He then goes on to suggest that NASA’s policy of putting astronaut safety as the top priority is needlessly holding it back.
Would NASA do well to be less cautious with their astronauts’ lives?
Image of astronaut courtesy of Shutterstock
I Think what is being missed in this commentary is that crux of Dr. Zubrin’s argument is that Nasa has become obsessed with safety over the last fourty years, and it is this hyper focus on safety that is needlessly hampering human exploration of space. If you look back through history of human expansion and exploration of the world, A lot of what you see are people of that made huge risks and did dangerous things. Often they would be lost to this storm, or died from that disease. The very nature exploring requires one to take on risk, and… Read more »
The problem is not astronaut safety. The problem is ASTRONAUTS. NASA is holding itself back by excessively spending money on manned space flight. Its incredibly stupid. It makes no sense to spend on manned missions at this time. Spend on robots instead. There are many advantages to this approach. 1) Its much cheaper and simpler because robots don’t need life support systems, require far less space and can be made very small. They don’t lose muscle due to low gravity, they don’t need oxygen, food. They are far better adapted to space travel than humans. Remember the cost of sending… Read more »
This is exactly what the robots want us to think. All part of their cunning plan for global domination….
When dealing with space the stakes are MUCH higher.
A trajectory miscalculated by a few degrees.
A single wire burns out in a vital system.
A small tear/crack in a suit/hull.
A pilot burns just a few pounds too much in fuel.
Any one of these things could literally be the death of an astronaut.
And even in the cold calculating sense of dollars and cents a human life is very valuable.
Stay cautious.
P.S. If you think medical care is too expensive now, imagine if the value of each American’s life was 28 billion dollars. That would require spending 28 billion per person. Lots of luck.
I’m a bit horrified reading this article, probably because I place an infinite dollar amount on a single person’s life. I would say any person’s life is worth way more than twenty-eight billion dollars. Now, if the astronauts are willing to take the risk, then let them, but to ask “is one astronaut’s life worth twenty-eight billion dollars” rather undermines the value of human life, in my opinion.
I’m in total agreement here…just want to put that out there. I kept my little piece on it sort of neutral to maybe spark a bit of discussion. By yeah, I definitely think that an astronaut’s safety should be top priority.
Also, I think the key thing to remember is that astronauts are intelligent well-informed people. If they know the risks and are willing, and if those risks are unavoidable with our current technology, etc., then they shouldnt be held back.
How about the life of a soldier in the US military?
I don’t think Heather agrees with this person’s thesis that NASA values human life too highly, but rather that there are many, many jobs where we value human life significantly less. Such as a soldier, a person on a deep water fishing boat, diamond miners, miners of all variety really, men working on oil rigs, etc.
Sorry, this is going to sound very callous, but it is actually impossible to put an infinite value on a human life. At some point, on some level, we all place a finite value on a human life. If we really put an infinite value on human life, none of us would dare to get out of bed in the morning. No one would ever be allowed to drive, and the entire federal budget would go to saving the life of one sick child. If the value of a human life really was infinite in our society, there would be… Read more »
If the only way to get to mars involves developing every form of abdominal cancer known to modern medicine then it’s probably not worth it.
Exploration has to be practical and the safety standards being developed and tested by astronauts are an integral part of their mission.