Bill Whittle’s latest Firewall is up. Yours truly is paraphrased.
10 thoughts on “The Bloody Road To Safety”
Truly excellent.
One of the many pithy aviation sayings is “Regulations are written in blood.” They’re lessons learned from accident investigations and while pilots may chafe at some of the regulations, they’re an integral part of doing business in the air.
We’re going to have fatalities in commercial spaceflight. That’s a given. Will we learn what happened and tighten operations (or make necessary design changes) or will we cower? Have we become so risk adverse as a society that we’re unable to not only face our own deaths but unwilling to allow anyone to risk theirs?
Time will tell.
“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Speech in Detroit, June 23, 1963
US black civil rights leader & clergyman (1929 – 1968)
“We lost the stomach for [space] because we didn’t go anywhere or do anything new. Part of the deal, you see, is that you pay in blood for progress. If there’s no progress, what’s the point?”
There is a fundamental misunderstanding among many people about progress. Is diverting most of NASA funding to build a rocket capable of lifting a huge undefined payload someday really progress? Or is investing that money in new technologies that can change the current launch-everything-at-once paradigm a better definition of progress?
Well, that depends on the end goal. If one accepts the space settlement goal that Jeff Greason outlined at ISDC, then progress is measured for now in terms of the cost of getting a person to orbit. If that number drops then we have progress. In that case, clearly progress is inhibited by SLS.
We’re going to have fatalities in commercial spaceflight. That’s a given. Will we learn what happened and tighten operations (or make necessary design changes) or will we cower?
The risk-management approach suggests an entity similar to the FAA to codify those written-in-blood regulations, do accident investigations and so forth. NASA is not the entity to accomplish this sort of task. A Space Guard of the sort proposed by Bennett would be perfect for this kind of thing.
then progress is measured for now in terms of the cost of getting a person to orbit
Sorry, but I really have to disagree with you here Ed. It’s pretty simple to say, “we’ve got to get the costs down.” But that’s just mom and apple pie.
The SLS isn’t even a circus, it’s a circus sideshow with billions of tax dollars being thrown around by people that don’t have a clue.
I think you miss the point of the vid if you put the focus back on dollar costs rather than the cost of failing to spend dollars in ways that are risky but result in a moving forward.
I outlined a plan the other day that would put us on mars in five years. I guarantee people would die doing it. That’s what we should be doing if we were serious. I’m serious, but lack $38b.
However, I see serious people that do not lack the funds. So I’m their fanboy instead.
The risk-management approach suggests an entity similar to the FAA to codify those written-in-blood regulations
NASA is not the entity to accomplish this sort of task.
NASA has no regulatory authority and no one is suggesting transferring it from the FAA to them. NASA can only levy requirements on flights for which it is a customer.
Part of the cost problem is not acknowledging that some cargos have a greater acceptable failure rate than others. If you are launching a $200 million comsat, and also arguably if you are launching people (that argument is partly what the video is about) then the launch has to be as risk-free as you can make it. But if you are launching structural beams, or big tanks full of consumables like fuel or water, then some failures are acceptable – as long as you can save enough money on the launches by not having quite as many checks to make up for the losses.
Another reason for the cost problems is lack of scale economies, but that’s been covered lots of times already.
Fletcher, yes and the fact that there’s no market for beams and fuel and water.. why is that? Because you mostly need that stuff for human habitats and launching humans is too expensive. It’s a chicken and egg problem and it saddens me that we’re being forced to fix it by going through the government.
Yes Trent, but what is a market exactly… it’s people, without people you have no market. What’s holding us back is not cost.
IT’S NOT COST
Is there some way I can emphasize that more?
If not cost, what? …mind set. The reason people focus on cost is they are thinking how can I get mine? The real chicken and egg is the answer to that question. They need a market… other people getting theirs.
They need to be enabling those people. How?
Mortgage loans on real assets. What assets? Unclaimed land… lot’s and lot’s of unclaimed land.
Profit put the forces action in the right direction.
Profit for the mortgage lender.
Profit for the mortgage borrower.
Profit for everybody providing services to either.
Somebody write a charter… One claim per rock. One sq. km. per claim. Private individuals only (this is very important.)
oops …forces for action…
Somebody please ask me why private individuals only, please!
Truly excellent.
One of the many pithy aviation sayings is “Regulations are written in blood.” They’re lessons learned from accident investigations and while pilots may chafe at some of the regulations, they’re an integral part of doing business in the air.
We’re going to have fatalities in commercial spaceflight. That’s a given. Will we learn what happened and tighten operations (or make necessary design changes) or will we cower? Have we become so risk adverse as a society that we’re unable to not only face our own deaths but unwilling to allow anyone to risk theirs?
Time will tell.
“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Speech in Detroit, June 23, 1963
US black civil rights leader & clergyman (1929 – 1968)
“We lost the stomach for [space] because we didn’t go anywhere or do anything new. Part of the deal, you see, is that you pay in blood for progress. If there’s no progress, what’s the point?”
There is a fundamental misunderstanding among many people about progress. Is diverting most of NASA funding to build a rocket capable of lifting a huge undefined payload someday really progress? Or is investing that money in new technologies that can change the current launch-everything-at-once paradigm a better definition of progress?
Well, that depends on the end goal. If one accepts the space settlement goal that Jeff Greason outlined at ISDC, then progress is measured for now in terms of the cost of getting a person to orbit. If that number drops then we have progress. In that case, clearly progress is inhibited by SLS.
We’re going to have fatalities in commercial spaceflight. That’s a given. Will we learn what happened and tighten operations (or make necessary design changes) or will we cower?
The risk-management approach suggests an entity similar to the FAA to codify those written-in-blood regulations, do accident investigations and so forth. NASA is not the entity to accomplish this sort of task. A Space Guard of the sort proposed by Bennett would be perfect for this kind of thing.
then progress is measured for now in terms of the cost of getting a person to orbit
Sorry, but I really have to disagree with you here Ed. It’s pretty simple to say, “we’ve got to get the costs down.” But that’s just mom and apple pie.
The SLS isn’t even a circus, it’s a circus sideshow with billions of tax dollars being thrown around by people that don’t have a clue.
I think you miss the point of the vid if you put the focus back on dollar costs rather than the cost of failing to spend dollars in ways that are risky but result in a moving forward.
I outlined a plan the other day that would put us on mars in five years. I guarantee people would die doing it. That’s what we should be doing if we were serious. I’m serious, but lack $38b.
However, I see serious people that do not lack the funds. So I’m their fanboy instead.
The FAA already has that authority.
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/
NASA has no regulatory authority and no one is suggesting transferring it from the FAA to them. NASA can only levy requirements on flights for which it is a customer.
Part of the cost problem is not acknowledging that some cargos have a greater acceptable failure rate than others. If you are launching a $200 million comsat, and also arguably if you are launching people (that argument is partly what the video is about) then the launch has to be as risk-free as you can make it. But if you are launching structural beams, or big tanks full of consumables like fuel or water, then some failures are acceptable – as long as you can save enough money on the launches by not having quite as many checks to make up for the losses.
Another reason for the cost problems is lack of scale economies, but that’s been covered lots of times already.
Fletcher, yes and the fact that there’s no market for beams and fuel and water.. why is that? Because you mostly need that stuff for human habitats and launching humans is too expensive. It’s a chicken and egg problem and it saddens me that we’re being forced to fix it by going through the government.
Yes Trent, but what is a market exactly… it’s people, without people you have no market. What’s holding us back is not cost.
IT’S NOT COST
Is there some way I can emphasize that more?
If not cost, what? …mind set. The reason people focus on cost is they are thinking how can I get mine? The real chicken and egg is the answer to that question. They need a market… other people getting theirs.
They need to be enabling those people. How?
Mortgage loans on real assets. What assets? Unclaimed land… lot’s and lot’s of unclaimed land.
Profit put the forces action in the right direction.
Profit for the mortgage lender.
Profit for the mortgage borrower.
Profit for everybody providing services to either.
Somebody write a charter… One claim per rock. One sq. km. per claim. Private individuals only (this is very important.)
oops …forces for action…
Somebody please ask me why private individuals only, please!