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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

We are probably not taking enough risk, esp. for manned missions. If qualified astronauts are willing to take a 10% risk of death, why spend far more to engineer for a sub-1% risk? Over time risk declines with more missions and experience.

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Because in case of the astronaut's death, public opinion of the organization diminishes. You could say that the astronaut's life is more valuable to the organization than the astronaut himself

That's what I was thinking too. Looking back at Apollo, it seems like they were far more willing to tolerate a higher % risk. What changed? The lack of competition with the USSR? A general shift in our culture?

It's not only the US, risk aversion has increased all over Europe, as well. Drink bottled water, travel to safe destinations, god forbid you find an insect or even hair in your food, don't let the kids outside by themselves, don't play with dangerous things like electrical equipment or chemicals, don't move unless you know someone in that new city, etc.

I don't know why, maybe the media's constant reporting of the worst things has taken its toll, maybe it's the government micromanaging everything, but most people today are afraid of risks of any kind.

I had the opportunity a few years ago to see Buzz Aldrin speak at Facebook for the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. Someone asked him about the speech that was prepared for President Nixon in the event that Neil and Buzz had been stranded on the Moon; Buzz's answer was basically that he wasn't worried since the engineers had told them they had a ~95% chance of making it back to Earth safely, which I thought was interesting, since I have no idea how idea how they could be that confident about doing something so risky for the first time (although I guess the different pieces of hardware involved had been tested on prior missions).

> What changed? The lack of competition with the USSR?

That exactly.

I imagine NASA became a lot more risk averse after actually losing astronauts in the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

If I recall, quite a few astronauts were killed on the way to the moon.

3 died on the ground during a test exercise. No American astronaut died _in space_ until the Challenger explosion.

> No American astronaut died _in space_ until the Challenger explosion.

No American astronaut died in space then, either.

No American astronaut has ever died in space. The astronauts of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia all died in the Earth's atmosphere.

You must be fun at parties.

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