Cathedrals vs. bazaars

In the case of Vulcanology, the cost of the mission
costs less than $10,000 to virtually any spot on the
globe. Like Everest if people want to spend their
money and take the risk there is little reason to stop
them. I sure am not going to admire them or sponsor
them to do so.

In the case of Deap Sea fishing and Oil exploration,
these are established natural resource industries with
years of experience. People are well paid to take
dangerous job and the society as a whole cannot do
without either oil or food.

None of these examples is like the tax payer funded
enterprise of human space travel. Aside from war we
don't fund people to risk their lives needlessly and
it looks mighty embarrassing when a crew dies.

Is it a safe conclusion then that private funding is
required to allow astronauts to have a higher risk of
dying? NASA doesn't have such a great track record -
that isn't for trying though.

- Thor

On Saturday, February 14, 2004, at 03:49 PM, Ed
>
> To proceed beyond the NASA mindset of the past
>thirty years, one must accept that PEOPLE WILL DIE
>colonizing space. They will die of all sorts of
>grisly and in some cases excruciating and drawn out
>deaths.

As long as the people involved fully understand the
risks, this simply should not be an issue. There's no
reason space exploration should be
held to a higher standard than vulcanology, deep sea
fishing, or oil exploration. The problem arises when
astronauts are both explorers and PR representatives.
That's one reason I dislike the "inspire youth"
justification for the space program - not only is it
redundant (a truly
dynamic space program will be inspiring without any
need for a PR office), but it also places astronauts
in the spotlight, where it's bad
PR to get them killed.

Nobody wants needless deaths, but there are plenty of
people willing to accept substantial risks in order to
be part of opening the high
frontier. I know I'd be willing to accept
considerable risk in order to be a hands-on
participant in opening the high frontier, and I don't
doubt that many others on this list feel that way too.

Burt Rutan (in his typically blunt way) recently said
that the problem with NASA is that they aren't killing
enough astronauts. His point was
that pushing the envelope involves risk, and if you do
it enough, sooner or later someone's number is going
to come up. It's not callous, it's just reality.

......Andrew

Softly, softly, catchee monkey...