I originally posted this as an almost off-handed reply to Laurele on Yet another solar system question thread. It really belongs on "Space Exploration" forum, though -- hence the re-post. Romanus and Ken G obviously agree with me; I suspect some people will disagree strongly.

There are several reasons for my pessimism. The biggest one is this: NASA can not admit that space is dangerous. Normally in any dangerous activity, be it soldiering, firefighting, or test-flying airplanes, the people in charge decide what level of risk is acceptable, and plan their budgets, training, and operations accordingly. The lower is acceptable risk, the less operation can be carried out on a given budget, and vice versa. The risk level decisions are almost never publicized – on your local fire department’s website you won’t find "we expect X deaths and Y injuries over next decade", - but you can be sure fire chief has that information, and brings it up at the next municipal budget hearing. And both fire chief and city council know that the only way to bring X (let alone Y) to zero is not fight fires at all. So fire departments balance expected deaths, expected number of fires and available money, and when someone dies they grieve, do their best to learn from the experience, and carry on.

The quandary of NASA’s Office of Manned Spaceflight is that it is too much in the public eye, yet does not have a clearly defined purpose. A city can not live without a fire department; nothing drastic will happen to USA if Office of Manned Spaceflight closed tomorrow. Mike Griffin knows that space is dangerous and every once in a while people will die – but he wouldn’t last a week if he went before Congress and said "This mission architecture cost X dollars, has Y percent chance of landing on Mars on schedule, and Z percent chance of killing one or more astronauts. Double the X, and Y will increase such and such, and Z will decrease such and such." Even though it would be the truth. Far too many people who for whatever reasons do not want a Mars mission (or even just do not care about it) would seize on Griffin’s words and demand to know "Why are we risking astronauts lives?" Which, BTW, is as legitimate a question as "Why are we risking firefighters lives?" or "Why are we risking test pilots lives?" The difference is that the latter two have clear, generally accepted answers, and the former one does not.

Hence we get slogans such as "Safety first!" and "Failure is not an option", which sound good, but really do not make much sense. If safety really is your first goal, you should not fly at all. If you do fly but claim perfect safety, you are perpetuating a fraud. Without a fixed, admitted level of acceptable risk NASA is forced to minimize risks endlessly – which causes delays and cost overruns, and never ends, and always fails sooner or later. And when it fails (Challenger, Columbia) there is hand wringing, and Congressional investigations, and design changes, and projects put on hold, and ultimately nothing changes because the fundamental philosophy is fraudulent.

So I expect VSE, or whatever Mars mission, to get endlessly redesigned and delayed in the name of safety, because you can never get safe enough without the honest quantitative definition of "enough". Which ain’t gonna happen.

While all this drags on, two other developments will continue. One, improvements in robotics will keep giving more ammunition to proponents of robotic science (who can and do apply realistic risk analysis). Two, private spaceflight will strip NASA astronauts from what’s left of their heroic aura. Both developments will make manned Mars trip harder and harder to justify as time goes by – especially when (as I expect will happen) private operators will begin selling seats at competitive prices and no red tape to researches who need manned presence in space. This will undermine "No Buck Rogers, no bucks" argument of government-sponsored manned spaceflight.

So I expect NASA manned Mars mission to die eventually burdened by all these difficulties. First person to walk on Mars will not be paid for by US (or any other) government. He or she will do so when Mars trip is within scope of private companies. And for all my hopes on private spaceflight, I do not expect it develop fast enough to make a manned Mars trip profitable (big dfference between doable and profitable) before 2100 or so. And by that time I expect the said person to be adapted for space through biotechnology and/or cyborg implants -- put as much life support as possible inside the astronaut.

Unless either a) life is unambiguously discovered on Mars*, or b) military-related reason to go there comes up. Then all bets are off.

* In fact, if life is unambiguously discovered on Europa, I would expect a manned expedition to Jupiter BEFORE one to Mars.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

It is an interesting idea Ilya, I'm not sure I agree, I just don't have enough information. I do agree that, at least in the US and probably throughout the West, there is an increasing "necessity" for zero-risk, no matter what the reward. And I agree, that is probably not realistic.

One question I have for you, why will NASA manned spaceflight be limited by this risk aversion, but commercial spaceflight will not? I don't see any intrinsic reason why the tourist flights will be any safer. Will all that shutdown after the first fatal accident?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Because the latter is not paid for by the public. Well-meaning efforts to end, or to regulate heavily, extremely dangerous activities such as cave diving exist, but do not get much traction. Americans (don't know about other Westerners) are much less likely to get incensed by someone who risks his own life than by government risking someone's life, especially when the risk is seen as unnecessary -- AND expensive.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Adults never let us have any fun...

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"The only way to explore the universe is to go and look." - Brian Cox
Well, the best way to find out is to go there and, find out. - Raven's Cry
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

NASA isn't the only game in town. With half a century or so to catch up, there will be other contenders.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Very good point. Even if all that was said about NASA is true (and I'm still not convinced), I don't suspect that China will have the same issues.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Wrong. Fail.


"I was always aware of the risk, as most of us, almost all of us, have been. We always knew that space flight was risky; we always viewed it as risky. I've never viewed it as something that was routine or operational."
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/pre...amarda_04.html



" It's a fact of existence that exploration is dangerous, and we have learned that yet again. But we knew it anyway."
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/pre...binson_04.html

"We take spaceflight for granted, and it's still pretty darn dangerous,"
http://www.aol.in/news/story/2007061...011/index.html


"It is a risky activity."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092301691.html

"He added that flying into space "with the technology we have will continue to be expensive, difficult, and dangerous.""
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/eve...iffin_wia.html


Indeed - something that several senior NASA managers have said, multiple times, in press conferences.

All of these quotes are from astronauts preparing to fly right after Columbia disaster. The only time when nobody can pretend it is safe. You don't see such quotes in 1990's. Not because astronauts were unaware of risks, but because saying it out loud was bad PR. How long after Challenger did it take for NASA to slip back into "all is pefect" mode?
You omitted what Griffin said immediately afterward:

Yes, Griffin is being honest here. He is an exception. The rule are "generations of upper-level NASA managers".

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Certainly straight out lies were told about the safety of the space shuttle. Or if they weren't lies then NASA was massively incompetant, which isn't a good thing either.

I think that improvements in technology will make it possible for people to go to mars before 2100 at relatively low cost and risk. However, rather than get into a discussion about future rates of technological development, if we simply assume a 3% economic growth rate, then in 75 years a mars mission would effectively cost about one eighth as much as it does now, which certainly could make it seem worth while.

I disagree. I think safety will force them to focus on simpler systems instead of more complicated systems that have more things that can fail. Simpler systems will make space access cheaper, which will make a mission to mars cheaper as well as safer.

Perhaps the shuttle being safe is a fraud, but future spacecraft need not be fraudulent in terms of safety.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

In Australia regulation of cave diving has been extremely successful and reduced the acident rate to effectively zero. There have been no fatalities for many years, despite a great increase in the activity.

Actually, they're for some years afterwards. You said that NASA 'can not' admit spaceflight is dangerous.

If you had said 'NASA didn't admit space flight is dangerous before the Columbia accident' - I'd partially agree.

You fail to comment on the fact that several senior NASA managers often state, in reply to media questions, that the safest thing to do is to not fly at all.

NASA can, and does admit, and indeed publicly states that spaceflight is hard, it is risky, it is dangerous. Saying they don't is fundamentally wrong. Fact.

Doug

I don't know about that, 2100 is a long way away. I don't think humans will make it there before 2037, but I would bet they will before 2100. If I had to pick a year I would say 2050.

NASA always admits spaceflight is dangerous. They have to. If not, then what's to stop the criticism from the public and congress for failing to admit any disclosure of risk when accidents happen that result in astronaut fatalities. In other words they have to cover their rear. Not to mention that it is obviously dangerous to put someone on top of a potentially explosive rocket.

I also don't agree that a private company will land on Mars before a nation. Maybe a 'teaming up' of public and private may occur, but not solely private. NASA is way ahead of the private sector (already has landers and orbiters at Mars) so I just can't see a company with a smaller overall budget surpassing NASA.

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Show me the money
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I don't know about the time frame or that commercial missions have a better chance of reaching Mars, but the OP's basic premises are sound, IMO.

I see the same thing with nuclear power. We all need electricity, every form of generating it in a big way involves significant (mostly financial) risk and yet plastered over all the walls and PR submissions is "Safety First!".

Uhh, yeah, safety must be a high priority, but I think the point is to send electrons down the wires, not make sure nobody gets hurt doing it. Nobody mentions how 'unsafe' things are during a blackout.

NASA may often proclaim that spaceflight is risky and dangerous and all that, but as stated by Ilya, I think they are loath to say just how dangerous and quantify it in terms of dead astronauts.

I can't find a specific reference, but I have heard them say EXACTLY that - the statistical chance of fatalities per mission. They've also done the work on the statistical chance of a death during ISS construction. They've done the maths to figure out if the Hubble mission is any less or more dangerous than any ISS mission.

Yeah - they're not going to take full page adverts in the newspapers saying "Shuttle Launch - 1:100 shot" - but to deny that they acknowledge, calculate or work with those sorts of figures is just wrong.

Perhaps the problem is not one of NASA at all. Perhaps what you're actually talking about is the PUBLIC's loathing of acknowledging the risk. After all, we want heroes, not statistics.

Doug

Well, going to the Moon is risky, too.

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"Shut up and calculate" R. Feynman

I think you are on to something here. I am a realist also, because I was one of those whose high hopes were dashed when Apollo 18 was cancelled. There are all these problems, and I even greatly fear a "freak out" incident on a long trip to Mars. I think the best solution is to develop Mars rockets which reach the planet in a week or two, not several months. That will be much more doable and sustainable. It may take a century to develop this new generation of rockets. Of course, I don't seriously expect "warp drives" to be developed, just a realistic advanced breed of rocket.

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"fifty is nifty" , unknown poet

What a bunch of WIMPS we have turned into. Oh no, we are stuck in a small space for a few months with communication taking HOURS, oh help, we can't take it! Get over yourselves, wooden sailing vessels would be at sea for months. Sure they could breath the air, but they couldn't drink the water. They faced many dangers that the sailors of the infinite sea will never have to face, like storms and heat stroke, being becalmed, pirates. And they had NO WAY to communicate to home base. NOTHING. No cheery email from your wife, no new pictures of the kids, NOTHING. Sure the logistics are different, but the psychological problems were the same, if not WORSE. So batten down the hatches boys, we have done this before, just the destinations diffract. And lets stop shoving these dates ahead. We where supposed to have been there, the year I was BORN. If we don't believe we can do it, then who will?

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