Doug Messier has written the first review of my book that is less than glowing (though he still recommends it), which I actually appreciate — I’ve gotten very little negative feedback so far. I’m busy, and have only skimmed, but I may respond some time this week.
11 thoughts on “A Critical Book Review”
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Unsurprisingly, Doug successfully makes the argument that trial and error on the open market is what made boilers (on both steamships, railroads and in your basement) safe enough for most customers, and claims that it was government regulation did the deed.
It’s the typical opinion that without government intervention there’d be more accidental deaths in whatever it is that is under discussion, when the reality of the situation is that areas where there is the least government intervention we see the greatest improvements in safety (e.g., skydiving) and we see the least improvements in safety in areas where there is the greatest government intervention (e.g., the horrendous government owned and operated highways.)
The particularly lovely part about this review is that Doug seems to be completely unaware that he’s contradicting himself. It’s a fabulous example of cognitive dissonance.
You should read “Hack Your Showerhead”, free online, by Jeffrey Tucker about regulations. Government forces companies to make bad showerheads, lawn movers, dish washers and so on. Sometimes the manufacturer makes good products for export, and puts a piece of plastics inside them to reduce their efficiency for regulated markets where good products are illegal. He describes how the consumer can remove such modifications.
Government doesn’t create anything. It just steals or forbids what other produce. It cannot create safety, it can only outlaw those who produce space flight.
Scuba Diving is regulated by trade associations that developed common standards thru ANSI to avert government regulation.
.. and there’s abundant examples like this. Whenever government has tried to regulate “for safety”, or worse yet, just nationalize an industry, they produce not just worse results than you’d expect from an industry led effort, but often worse results than you could possibly imagine. If you have an industry that you want destroyed, just cry safety and demand government regulation.
Ok once, we have 3 or 4 commercial suborbital companies, they can join an association and help develop
universal safety standards. And if these associations don’t screw up to much, then one doesn’t need as much governmental involvement.
But.. but.. customers need government protection now! Why should they have to be “guinea pigs” so industry can work out the best way not to kill them when the all knowing government can just decree the best practices and force industry to do it?
Doug finds your apparent lack of empathy for the victims disturbing.
“The FAA has extended its “moratorium” on regulations due to the lack of progress. Now, there is an effort by the FAA to begin imposing some basic safety regulations when the moratorium expires in 2015 rather than extending it another eight years as the industry wants to do. The agency is worried that one bad operator could ruin it for everyone. ”
See more at: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/08/22/review-safe-option/#sthash.bYepDH1u.dpuf
What one bad operator do they imagine- Virgin Galactic?
They should be against extending the “moratorium” on basis, that they don’t want the government bureaucracy to “get in the habit” of extending the “moratorium”.
So don’t extend it, 8 years, extend it 7 seven years, or if excessive cautious, 6 or 5 years. So the habit, include reducing any future extensions, which might happen in future.
But other than maybe getting closer to an actually sub-orbital commercial flight, nothing has changed. Or what was a good idea of having a “moratorium” is still valid reason to have “moratorium”.
In the case of the FAA, there are many engineers that I’ve talked to who believe the regulations are impeding technology developments that can improve safety. One example is fitting an angle of attack instrument on a certified aircraft. It’s a real hassle which drives up the cost. However, monitoring angle of attack during an approach is far better than monitoring airspeed (which is why the military, especially the Navy, rely on angle of attack). Likewise, almost all piston-engined airplanes other than the diesel models still rely on magnetos for ignition. As the late Molt Taylor said, “Magnetos belong on a 1930s tractor, not an airplane.” Various FADEC systems have been developed but getting a certified version on an airplane engine is difficult. FADEC greatly reduces pilot workload, improves engine efficiency, and should improve reliability. Even getting an IFR certified GPS installed into a plane take far longer and costs far more than it should, much less retrofitting an existing plane with a glass cockpit. Glass cockpits allow for much greater situational awareness and allow for synthetic and enhanced vision. They also are more reliable than gyro-driven “steam guages”, leading to greater safety. The FAA should be modifying the regulations to make it easier to install these technologies, but except for some action on angle of attack instruments, they aren’t.
Government regulations certainly have their place. In aviation, the old saying is that “regulations are written in blood” because most were the result of accidents. Howver, too rigorous a regulatory burden passes the point of diminishing returns and can even make things less safe.
Doug picks an odd example to buttress his assertion that government regulation is a boon to safety. What ended the epidemic of boiler explosions in the 19th Century was the creation, by maritime insurers, of an organization of engineers that inspected and certified the boiler systems of ships and stationary installations. It was known as the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. It still exists. Soon after, no ship or building whose boiler lacked such certification was insurable.
The same model was applied, by some of the same insurers, but also by others not originally in the maritime insurance business, to electrical devices when they became commonplace. Underwriters Laboratories is, needless to say, also still very much a going concern.
The review was a bit confused, I thought. As I read the book, it had two main points; one, that in general the best way to achieve safety in space was to gain much more practical experience, which can be accomplished only by flying more different varieties of more vehicles more frequently. Anything that works against this accumulation of an experience base is itself detrimental to the improvement of spaceflight safety. Basically, we still don’t have enough experience with spaceflight to create truly safe spacecraft by regulation.
The other point was that we are wildly inconsistent in our valuation of human life in higher-risk research environments such as space, polar research, and undersea exploration and recreation. Because of the peculiar environment of the Cold War space race, we backed into, more or less by happenstance, rhetorically-derived de-facto standards that were basically unobtainable by current engineering methods, and ended up with a sort of safety kabuki theatre that delivered neither good engineering practice, nor actual safety. This legacy is still with us in NASA operations, and it would be disastrous for the development of the commercial launch industry if it were to be be imposed on their operations as well.
Both of these points might be usefully critiqued, but the review did not do that. Instead, it got sidetracked in a philosophical discussion of the desirability of safety and regulation per se, which as I read the book was not in dispute.
History has proven that both technological evolution and mandatory regulations are required to improve safety and to protect the public.
This is simply bias with many counterexamples.
Now where did I put my ‘state shtupper stamp?’