Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Safety In Space

4 Comments

“…is not negotiable”?

A bunch of hooey from Doug Cooke.

I love this:

Some critics attempt to trivialize the transition from cargo to human transportation, suggesting that designing a lower-cost vehicle at the expense of crew safety is perfectly acceptable. It is not. In fact, accident investigations and legislation have consistently dictated that crew safety should be the highest priority in the development of any human-rated spacecraft, reflecting concerns from past accidents.

Hey, we have to be stupid. It’s the law!

4 thoughts on “Safety In Space”

  1. Most of his article did not seem too controversial. His big mistakes are in falsely characterizing opposing voices, as pointed out by the first commenter. He also seems naïve in believing that operating government contracts under FAR’s instead of the SAA format is well intentioned, and not a feature exploited by political forces for graft, or to outright kill competitive entrants.

  2. “Today there is widespread agreement that Mars is our human space exploration “horizon goal.” ”

    There is? I guess it is called a horizon goal because you never reach the horizon.

    Stan makes the good point of mis-characterization. No one is advocating cutting costs at the expense of safety.

    It is also interesting to see an insider’s perspective on the development of human safety standards. “If we are willing to fly astronauts on commercial vehicles, the same level of requirements should also be satisfactory for the SLS and Orion.” It reads like NASA didn’t have any set standards but began developing them to address commercial crew and then after using private industry as the guinea pig, will apply those standards to SLS and Orion. But hasn’t SLS and Orion been in development longer? Shouldn’t safety concerns be addressed earlier in the design process? I guess you can always make changes and commercial crew will fly long before SLS and Orion but it just looks like a flawed process.

  3. I hope the day isn’t far away when a NASA press release states words to the following, “…after careful review of the process and procedures already in place for conducting the routine flights from Galveston TX to Bigelow-III aboard the SpaceX Dragon V5 (162 incident free to date), NASA has approved the existing space vehicle launch system for resupply of cargo and crew to the ISS, now approaching its 33rd year of service….” Which is what I believe we have to look forward to if the last ‘A’ in NASA remains.

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