Can't all space nerds get along?

Passengers are not cheaper payloads. People will still need high-
reliability launch systems, but obviously what I'm saying implies
that most payloads should not be people.

If we have spacecraft assembled from from mass-produced modular
components, and a hundred launches blow up out of a thousand in a
typical year, no one will care. The won't be reading about the
failed launches: they'll be reading about the asteroid arriving at L6
and the big drop in the price of catalytic converters because of all
the platinum suddenly on the market.

As for the space tourists, we need a better name. Would we remember
Sir Edmund Hillary if he'd been known as a "mountain tourist"?

More to the point, if you're dead set on tourism as the future of
space, then yes you need ultra-cheap ultra-safe launches. But not
every space nerd is. The number of very very rich people interested
in going to space isn't going to sustain a hotel, so you need it
cheap enough for the merely kinda rich. And tourism will dry up
after the first "Hindenburg" story hits the media echo chamber. Otoh
if everyone's bottom line is on the line because space is doing
something big like large scale solar energy and fuel cells, people
will accept a few deaths just as they do when it's coal miners.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, DOUG MAY wrote:
>
> I agree that perceived lack of safety could bring space ventures
(especially space tourism) to a sudden halt, but interestingly,
automobile travel is incredibly unsafe. Its the most dangerous thing
we humans do, yet people aren't the least bit afraid of it for some
reason. Still, a rocket carrying tourists to a space hotel exploding
would be front page headlines. The Challenger blew up in 1986. How
many of us can name a car crash that occurred that year? Likewise,
the Columbia blew up in 2003. Few of us can remember a car crash that
year, or even a plane crash for that matter. Disasters in the early,
pioneering days of space settlement would be catastrophic to public
perception. Perhaps someday, space travel will be so common that a
disaster or two here or there will be tolerable, but for the next few
decades, the public will need to feel safe, or few will go.
>
> Douglas May
> CWA Local 6215 - Steward
>
> From: Xenophile
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 9:18:16 AM
> Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Can't all space nerds get along?
>
> NO NO NO!
>
> Where would aviation be today if they had decided that the best
thing
>
> to do was to "tolerate more explosions at the airport?" Putting
>
> thousands of people into space (which you're going to have to, if
you
>
> want to fill a habitat) requires INCREASED safety, not an
>
> explosion killing hundreds (and costing millions) every few days.
It