My contribution to the NPRM (which the vendors themselves can't say):

The 30 expected fatalities of the uninvolved public per million flights standard is too stringent. If six families drive from Austin to Las Cruces round trip across half Texas to go to the Spaceport to watch the dads all take a flight together, together they will expect incur 150 deaths per million flights in auto accidents.

The 30 casualties in a million flights rule has a long history in range safety, and I believe one of the biggest drivers for it was limiting potential litigation against the government. Even if you relaxed the 30 in a million rule for private spaceports/spacecraft, I suspect insurance rates for the operator would climb quickly if you showed an expectation of casualty greater than 30 in a million.

There is something called a 'risk profile' curve, that describes the probability of one or more casualties. If I remember correctly, expectation of casualty is the area under this curve. Personally, I feel the shape of the curve is more important than the area under it. If the curve falls off sharply, it maens if you hurt anyone it is just one or two people like a car accident. If it is very flat and level, then if you do hurt someone it means you will hurt many people at once. Like if a dam burst. Obviously, you prefer not to hurt anyone, but it is much better to hurt fewer people.

Anyways, the 30 in a million requirement can be met if you can accomplish either of two things. Make the spacecraft really reliable, which is hard to prove without hundreds of flights. Or chose your operational site and flight trajectory so that you don't fly over people. A coastal operational site would be ideal for that. A landing site in the middle of nowhere is good for that.

The voting public is in bad need of an education in the rudiments of probability and statistics.
Then, perhaps, there could be some rational decision making about risk and the role of the government in "controlling" it.

Spaceflight isn't important enough to risk the lives of the uninvolved public to a higher degree. I don't want some SS2 crashing through my roof because the government wanted to make it easier for some rich fat cat to take a joy ride into space.

I don't want some SS2 crashing through my roof because the government wanted to make it easier for some rich fat cat to take a joy ride into space.

The probability of that occuring is so low as to be completely ignorable.

And since when should public policy be based on what you, as an individual, want? Think through the consequences of such a position.

"The voting public is in bad need of an education in the rudiments of probability and statistics."

Is this the same public that thinks American Idol is high art? Or is it the public that watches Dancing with the Stars, instead of the State of the Union Speech?

Mathwise, is it the same public that buys 10 identical lottery tickets, when the pot gets REALLY big, thinking 10 tickets is better than one?

Probability would show that the voting public is currently dumbed down enough to not care except at some visceral level of loss when they see the film of the Challenger. They care even less when a company’s plane goes down. They didn’t know anyone onboard and have no monetary attachment to the “metal part” of the problem.

15 minutes later when Emeril, or the race, or college football comes on, NASA crash or private company crash, they’ve forgotten all about the ship the crew and the money.

The Columbia, size of a DC-8, came down over a fairly inhabited area and killed no one.

. If six families drive from Austin to Las Cruces round trip across half Texas to go to the Spaceport to watch the dads all take a flight together, together they will expect incur 150 deaths per million flights in auto accidents.

Ahh, there's a flaw in statistical reasoning for you.

If those 150 deaths per million were a result of the vehicle which the passengers were in failing in some way which resulted in their death, then YES, the government would get involved in a heartbeat.

If they died because they were (a) hit by another car (driver error, not vehicle failure) or (b) ran into an armadillo and wiped out (again, not a flaw of the vehicle per se), or (insert your form of externality here which results in the death of the occupants of an otherwise safe vehicle), then NO, the argument that requiring a 30 expected fatality out of a million flights is too stringent given the likely death rate on the highways is NOT a valid argument.

You are mixing apples and oranges - which might work on a public which is sadly addicted to the reality television crap that constitutes the bulk of successful programming today - but it's still wrong.

It took me a while to find the disconnect in my reading of this post. The 30 per million is of the uninvolved public, not the riders. If your spectator families killed 150 bystanders on their cross country trips, then there would be a problem. I define bystander as someone that is not even on the road. On the sidewalks, in their houses, at resteraunts, etc. Non participants in the act of getting the families cross country.

John: Yes, the families would presumably kill only 75 per million trips of the "uninvolved public" i.e. bikers and other car occumpants, etc. That is still more than the 30 per million flights. If you consider the family of the dad who is flying uninvolved (as you would in a spacecraft accident), then I'm guessing it would be up around 140.

Shubber: The government would get involved, but it sometimes asks questions like, 'Is the cost so expensive that the costs would exceed the benefits(i.e., buying new cars would become too expensive leaving people in less safe used cars)?' And it would get involved very little per accident. There are tens of thousands of fatalities in auto accidents in the US every year and there are not tens of thousands of national investigations into auto safety.

Driver error is a red herring. If you don't drive, you don't have driver error. If you have a redesigned car with crash avoidance radar, lane detectors and sleeping driver detectors, driver error is reduced. The total death rate of the activity is what is important as a fatality tax on others. People discount deaths due to cars because they are common. They are categorized complacently and expected. Space deserves to be held to the same level of risk to others as vacation ('joy ride') driving.

> Spaceflight isn't important enough to risk the lives of the uninvolved public to a higher degree. I don't want some SS2 crashing through my roof because the government wanted to make it easier for some rich fat cat to take a joy ride into space.

I do. I'll happily let private spaceflight kill hundreds, even thousands, of rubes.

Then again, I've figured out that I'll get tomorrow what fat cats get today.

For space flight, I'll happily let quite a few people die.