Launch abort system economically unsound?

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DarkenedOne

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I've always wondered whether or not a launch abort system is worth the trouble for human spaceflight.

First of all, it just does not make any economic sense. In order to judge whether or not a safety system makes sense industries use the cost of life analysis. Essentially a safety system is justified if the economic value of the lives saved is greater than the cost of the safety system that would save those lives. Now there are different values of life for different industries and sectors of society, however rarely do they go over a few million dollars. So essentially we can estimate for a 4 person crew of a Orion capsule the estimate would come to less than 10 million. On the other hand from what I have heard the NASA launch abort system costs hundreds of millions of dollars and years to develop. At the same time if the Ares rocket were to get any where near the reliability that was advertised than the launch abort system would never be needed on any launch.

The fact of the matter is that if human spaceflight is going to be affordable it is going to have to make economically sound decisions.
 
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Booban

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Well, my gut feeling is that astronauts are actually worth more than 10 mil for 4 astronauts. They are just incomparable to civilian earth industries. I'm not saying that poetically, I'm just pretty sure that the government has invested significantly more in these individuals than any other person you're going to meet in your life.

Secondly, if you were to try to apply any cost to value or return of investment analysis to NASA, then you just might as well kill it now and cut any funding to space whatsoever. Nothing about it makes economic sense. This is a government non profit research and exploration agency, costs are so irrelevant it subsidizes private space companies.

Like sending airmen off to war, sending astronauts into space, its an obligation to ensure that they do it safely, regardless of cost. Therefore there are ejection seats in military planes, but none in civilian planes.

But military planes have them because they are shot down! They are otherwise reliable. If the rocket is so unreliable that some kind of abort system is necessary, then we miss the point of building the rocket, which is cheaply and reliably.
 
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DarkenedOne

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Booban":1vw6qgsd said:
Well, my gut feeling is that astronauts are actually worth more than 10 mil for 4 astronauts. They are just incomparable to civilian earth industries. I'm not saying that poetically, I'm just pretty sure that the government has invested significantly more in these individuals than any other person you're going to meet in your life.

Secondly, if you were to try to apply any cost to value or return of investment analysis to NASA, then you just might as well kill it now and cut any funding to space whatsoever. Nothing about it makes economic sense. This is a government non profit research and exploration agency, costs are so irrelevant it subsidizes private space companies.

Your right, which is why human spaceflight under NASA is dying. We must first accept the fact that space travel is inherently risky, thus the only real way to achieve the zero casualties is not simply not go at all. To go to space means accepting the risk and believing that the gains are worth the likely cost of human life is part of space travel.

Like sending airmen off to war, sending astronauts into space, its an obligation to ensure that they do it safely, regardless of cost. Therefore there are ejection seats in military planes, but none in civilian planes.

But military planes have them because they are shot down! They are otherwise reliable. If the rocket is so unreliable that some kind of abort system is necessary, then we miss the point of building the rocket, which is cheaply and reliably.

First of all, safety and war should really never be used in the same sentence. I am glad that you have brought up the military because they are a great example of enacting rational safety measures. Like space travel the only way to never suffer war cassulties is to simply never fight. Every time the military fights a war or battle it tries its best to estimate the benefits, the risks, and the losses. Take the Afghanistan and Iraq war for instance. The military knew with absolute certainty that the war was going to cost lives on both sides. Just by friendly fire loss of life is inevitable as much as they try to prevent it. By going to war indicates that they believe the venture is worth the lives loss.

Your right that the fact that the key to space travel is cheap and reliable rockets. The thing is that if NASA's reliability estimates are correct there would likely never be any accidents with their Ares I rocket.
 
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rcsplinters

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Why buy insurance? Accident will just happen anyway. What's the point of medical care. It just delays the inevitable. Why not just drop soldiers into battle with no exit strategy. They signed up to die, right? Beside, suicide troops are really effective. Why wear motorcyle helmets? They're expensive and anyone getting on one should know the risk. Why wear seatbelts. We've all seen the stats, they really don't work effectively all the time.

Bottom line is space flight is a dangerous business. The craft are listed experimental. They are going to blow up from time to time with the early boost phase being one of the most critical. Human space flight is for the most part, research oriented. Human space flight is NOT economically sound as are most research programs. Elimination safety equipment on such craft would be inhumane. If we are to eliminate those things in HSF with are uneconomical, then we should start with HSF itself.

Maybe for commercial passengers that are only there for a carnival ride this would make sense. They are just going for a thrill anyway, right? This way they can have a cheaper ticket, raise their chances of dying, thus increasing the intrinsic value of the flight. Easy win win. :p As far as our research assets, they are too valuable and we should take steps to prevent their loss.
 
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vulture4

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>>Nothing about it makes economic sense. This is a government non profit research and exploration agency, costs are so irrelevant it subsidizes private space companies.

Research and development is completely different from an operating subsidy. Please consider reading "Engineer in Charge", the history of NACA before the Moon Race. The organization we now call NASA was originally created to support the US aviation industry, doing the R&D that would help commercial manufacturers compete on the world market. With NACA help, the US civil aircraft industry came to dominate the world. NASA needs to get back to its roots. Stop telling industry to build what NASA wants, and start telling NASA to build what industry needs.

As to the LAS, you don't have one in an airliner. And the safety it provides is illusory. We lost one crew on Apollo and nearly lost two more, and a LAS wouldn't have helped any of them. The Soyuz LAS has only gone off twice, both over 40 years ago during the very first flights before the problems were corrected. Once it saved a crew, but the problem has never recurred. On the other occasion it went off while the rocket was being safed after a T-0 shutdown. In that case the LAS set the booster on fire and killed some of the ground crew and injured others. We don't need a LAS. We need a safe vehicle. The most effective way to ensure safety is to get flight experience, at least a dozen launches before you put people in it.
 
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JonClarke

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vulture4":1noehxhc said:
And the safety it provides is illusory. We lost one crew on Apollo and nearly lost two more, and a LAS wouldn't have helped any of them.

Logically flawed. Saying that because a LAS would not have helped Apollo 13 makes it useless is like saying a fire extinguisher is usless during a flood and there we should have one in the house. You can't project against all contingencies, but you can against some. the LAS came close to being triggered twice on Apollo flights (Apollo 12 and 13) and once of Gemini. It was certainly a necessary backup. A viable LAS would have saved the Challenger crew.

The Soyuz LAS has only gone off twice, both over 40 years ago during the very first flights before the problems were corrected. Once it saved a crew, but the problem has never recurred. On the other occasion it went off while the rocket was being safed after a T-0 shutdown. In that case the LAS set the booster on fire and killed some of the ground crew and injured others.

One accident during the early test program is hardly an argument against having one. The fact it worked when required justifies all the work that went into it.

We don't need a LAS. We need a safe vehicle. The most effective way to ensure safety is to get flight experience, at least a dozen launches before you put people in it.
.

Tell that to the families of the Challenger crew.
 
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DarkenedOne

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rcsplinters":3e2l7dcw said:
Bottom line is space flight is a dangerous business. The craft are listed experimental. They are going to blow up from time to time with the early boost phase being one of the most critical. Human space flight is for the most part, research oriented. Human space flight is NOT economically sound as are most research programs. Elimination safety equipment on such craft would be inhumane. If we are to eliminate those things in HSF with are uneconomical, then we should start with HSF itself.

Maybe for commercial passengers that are only there for a carnival ride this would make sense. They are just going for a thrill anyway, right? This way they can have a cheaper ticket, raise their chances of dying, thus increasing the intrinsic value of the flight. Easy win win. :p As far as our research assets, they are too valuable and we should take steps to prevent their loss.

You say they are too valuable, but how valuable are they. Most humans even those who make over a hundred grand a year will not make more than 10 million dollars a year. Adding training costs will probably add a few million.

It is like I said before. NASA has to accept a logical amount of risk in order to perform spaceflight efficiently. Lives will inevitably be lost, but one must accept that the benefits of the increased knowledge to the 6 billion plus people on the planet is worth the lives of a few.

I mean honestly if Christopher Colombus approached Atlantic voyages the same way we approached spaceflight he would never of discovered the new world. He lost a significant number of his people something like over a hundred from what I remember. Now in retrospect we can ask whether it was worth it, which I think everyone would agree it was.
 
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DarkenedOne

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JonClarke":9q1r1rsz said:
vulture4":9q1r1rsz said:
And the safety it provides is illusory. We lost one crew on Apollo and nearly lost two more, and a LAS wouldn't have helped any of them.

Logically flawed. Saying that because a LAS would not have helped Apollo 13 makes it useless is like saying a fire extinguisher is usless during a flood and there we should have one in the house. You can't project against all contingencies, but you can against some. the LAS came close to being triggered twice on Apollo flights (Apollo 12 and 13) and once of Gemini. It was certainly a necessary backup. A viable LAS would have saved the Challenger crew.

The Soyuz LAS has only gone off twice, both over 40 years ago during the very first flights before the problems were corrected. Once it saved a crew, but the problem has never recurred. On the other occasion it went off while the rocket was being safed after a T-0 shutdown. In that case the LAS set the booster on fire and killed some of the ground crew and injured others.

One accident during the early test program is hardly an argument against having one. The fact it worked when required justifies all the work that went into it.

First of all the LAS system not only introduces additional cost, but also additional complexity. It represents one more system that can fail. Of course on a relatively reliable rocket this just makes no sense. It like airliners adding ejection seats for all the passengers. Doing so would increase the complexity immensely as well as the cost. In such a situation it is conceivable that the system will cost more lives than it saves.

We don't need a LAS. We need a safe vehicle. The most effective way to ensure safety is to get flight experience, at least a dozen launches before you put people in it.
.

Tell that to the families of the Challenger crew.

I think the families of the Challenger crew would agree that having a safe rocket is best. That is why I do not understand NASA's insistence on building their own vehicles for everything. Many commercial rockets have comparable safety records to the Space Shuttle, and some systems like the Delta II are even better. Yet NASA does not both to use any of the components or technology from these proven systems.

By simply using variations of these well proven unmanned rockets you significantly decrease the risk factor. That is why I think the Soyuz was such a safe and reliable human transporter. It is just a variation of an already very successful unmanned launcher, thus the rocket component of the Soyuz has never failed.
 
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pathfinder_01

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DarkenedOne":1hxj92wi said:
I think the families of the Challenger crew would agree that having a safe rocket is best. That is why I do not understand NASA's insistence on building their own vehicles for everything. Many commercial rockets have comparable safety records to the Space Shuttle, and some systems like the Delta II are even better. Yet NASA does not both to use any of the components or technology from these proven systems.

By simply using variations of these well proven unmanned rockets you significantly decrease the risk factor. That is why I think the Soyuz was such a safe and reliable human transporter. It is just a variation of an already very successful unmanned launcher, thus the rocket component of the Soyuz has never failed.

One you don't put a crew on an unsafe rocket LAS or not. That would be like putting a people on an unsafe boat. The fact that there are enough lifeboats does not matter if the boat itself is unsafe. Two, I don't think the public is willing to accept 1 in 100 odds of death esp. when a method to increase the crew’s odds of survival is available. I would not fly in any new vehicle that does not have an escape system and honestly would prefer the Soyuz over the Shuttle for launch.

Two, the rocket component of Soyuz has failed in flight and the crew used an automatic abort to get away from the rocket. Not sure if it was the LAS or not. It also has failed on various unmanned flights throughout time.

I also don't think the LAS will be too expensive for commercial. None of the commercial launchers are complaining and none are designing without it. I think this comes out of the HEFT documents when the ORION launched without crew was 200 million cheaper than the one with crew. However not all of that is the LAS. Some of that could be lower training for Astronauts and less vehicle processing. Space X thinks developing one might cost 300 million but those costs would be spread over many flights and for a company its size that cost isn't a killer and can be financed.
 
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SteveCNC

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I would think that a launch abort system could be designed to also be possibly third stage for higher orbits or beyond . Once your past the first stage an abort would not be the same as a launch pad failure so the motor that would have been used for that could then be tasked with another function . In that way the weight and cost becomes an asset that is in one way or another always used .
 
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rcsplinters

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DarkenedOne":1h6xdh77 said:
You say they are too valuable, but how valuable are they. Most humans even those who make over a hundred grand a year will not make more than 10 million dollars a year. Adding training costs will probably add a few million.

It is like I said before. NASA has to accept a logical amount of risk in order to perform spaceflight efficiently. Lives will inevitably be lost, but one must accept that the benefits of the increased knowledge to the 6 billion plus people on the planet is worth the lives of a few.

I mean honestly if Christopher Colombus approached Atlantic voyages the same way we approached spaceflight he would never of discovered the new world. He lost a significant number of his people something like over a hundred from what I remember. Now in retrospect we can ask whether it was worth it, which I think everyone would agree it was.

I'm not sure events of 500 years ago which involve wood displacing seawater and wind for propulsion can be compared to vehicles cranking out 6 1/2 million pounds of thrust which make the same trip in minutes. Well, they can't be compared with the intent of making any sort of relevent point. I would point out that Columbus set out with three boats and came home with one. Perhaps an escape plan would have worked out better for some of his men.

I'm guessing this topic is directed at driving costs out of commercial flight by proposing corner cutting measures, in this case potentially endangering crew safety. I hardly think the commercial players nor government regulation is going to take a step like this. If we can't afford to do it right, we can't afford to do it. Launch abort systems will be part of the system so long as the statisics and engineering dictate such. It will be decades and decades before we see boosters as safe as some seem to believe possible.

Regarding Challenger, I bet I know what their families want. They want their fathers, sons, wives and mothers back. I wish we would have paid whatever it might have cost to give them that.
 
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DarkenedOne

Guest
pathfinder_01":21nb1not said:
One you don't put a crew on an unsafe rocket LAS or not. That would be like putting a people on an unsafe boat. The fact that there are enough lifeboats does not matter if the boat itself is unsafe. Two, I don't think the public is willing to accept 1 in 100 odds of death esp. when a method to increase the crew’s odds of survival is available. I would not fly in any new vehicle that does not have an escape system and honestly would prefer the Soyuz over the Shuttle for launch.

First of all, the economics of LAS and life boats are very different. Life boats are standardized, mass produced, have been already developed, and do not have to be replaced on every voyage. An LAS is a system that has to be developed, then has to be custom made for every single use. Perhaps a reusable one would significantly lower the costs of the system.

Secondly I would prefer the Soyuz over the shuttle simply because it has a better record.

Two, the rocket component of Soyuz has failed in flight and the crew used an automatic abort to get away from the rocket. Not sure if it was the LAS or not. It also has failed on various unmanned flights throughout time.

I also don't think the LAS will be too expensive for commercial. None of the commercial launchers are complaining and none are designing without it. I think this comes out of the HEFT documents when the ORION launched without crew was 200 million cheaper than the one with crew. However not all of that is the LAS. Some of that could be lower training for Astronauts and less vehicle processing. Space X thinks developing one might cost 300 million but those costs would be spread over many flights and for a company its size that cost isn't a killer and can be financed.

Well personally I think the trick would be able to make it reusable. If you have to make a new one for every flight that will be expensive, however if you can just make one and use it for hundreds of flights than I think that will make sense.
 
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DarkenedOne

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rcsplinters":2fstfkkl said:
I'm not sure events of 500 years ago which involve wood displacing seawater and wind for propulsion can be compared to vehicles cranking out 6 1/2 million pounds of thrust which make the same trip in minutes. Well, they can't be compared with the intent of making any sort of relevent point. I would point out that Columbus set out with three boats and came home with one. Perhaps an escape plan would have worked out better for some of his men.

I am not comparing rockets to sailboats. I am comparing exploration mentalities between past exploration successes and today.

I'm guessing this topic is directed at driving costs out of commercial flight by proposing corner cutting measures, in this case potentially endangering crew safety. I hardly think the commercial players nor government regulation is going to take a step like this. If we can't afford to do it right, we can't afford to do it. Launch abort systems will be part of the system so long as the statisics and engineering dictate such. It will be decades and decades before we see boosters as safe as some seem to believe possible.

First of all it is like I said, spaceflight is inherently risky. It is just like everything we do from car travel to airplane travel. Several tens of thousands of people die every year from car accidents, yet we as a society accept that as part of the cost of driving. There is a chance of death. What is necessary is to establish a logical level of risk in order to determine the amount of safety people are willing to pay for.

The problem is that risk aversion and spaceflight do not mix. Here is a good read by the way the illustrates my point.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... ws/4330356
 
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Andorfiend

Guest
Columbus was privately funded by a woman who had the right to have people killed on a whim.

NASA is public funded by a country that throws screaming fits when people die.

Not a good basis for comparison. Not to mention that Columbus was exploring in search on a new trade route, rather a different matter from space exploration at the moment.

As far as the cash value of astronauts go, I think you're off by at least an order of magnitude. The average private in the army is valued at a few million. An astronaut represents over a decade of high level training just to get in. Each mission involves months of preperatory training from a support staff of hundreds in unique facilities. Each astronaut is (no pun intended) an astronomical investment. They are also a rare commodity. They are not to be thrown away casually.

A launch failure where nobody died would be short term disruption of launches. One with casualties shuts down the space program for years. Factor that across your cost/benefit allowance.


A launch abort system is economically unfeasable when the mass penalty makes the mission impossible. Before then it's just gripeing about how you don't like to wear seatbelts.
 
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Booban

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Andorfiend":qly2vp9m said:
A launch abort system is economically unfeasable when the mass penalty makes the mission impossible. Before then it's just gripeing about how you don't like to wear seatbelts.

Well....in our internationally competitive environment its economically unfeasible if someone else can build it cheaper. I have difficulty accepting that we just can't build a safe and reliable method to get to space.

If this was a spacecraft going to Mars, I can understand putting in all the necessary safety features that we can think of and costs be damned.

But we should know how to do this now. We want to commercialize space, we don't want to spend 3-5 times more sending people to space compared to the Russians or Chinese. We want it to be cheaper and better than their rockets are.
 
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oldAtlas_Eguy

Guest
SteveCNC":1ntw7wb2 said:
I would think that a launch abort system could be designed to also be possibly third stage for higher orbits or beyond . Once your past the first stage an abort would not be the same as a launch pad failure so the motor that would have been used for that could then be tasked with another function . In that way the weight and cost becomes an asset that is in one way or another always used .

Yes it is being done. In fact all of the CCDev developers are looking to use pusher abort systems.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/boeing-commercial-space-capsule-space2010-100827.html
 
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aaron38

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rcsplinters":20w5qc2u said:
Why wear motorcycle helmets? They're expensive and anyone getting on one should know the risk. Why wear seatbelts. We've all seen the stats, they really don't work effectively all the time.

The point isn't that safety features should be ignored, it's that in almost every case, safety features came second. Did the Model T have seatbelts, anti-lock brakes and side curtain airbags? Was it "inhumane" that such cars were sold without them? But if they weren't, who would have ever paid to develop an airbag?

I'm fine with safety features right up to the point where the lack of one cancels the mission, or it's inclusion pushes a design over a hard mass limit. In that case it's best to accept the reality of a frontier and keep pushing forward, so that we keep learning how to do things better. Like the pusher system. So much better than the ejected abort tower, in that the fuel is available for use in orbit, and the hardware is reused along with the capsule. A commercial station may very well be able to get a lot of it's reboost from the unused abort fuel of all the visiting ships. And that's a fine architecture.

But if you make absolute safety a requirement for getting off the ground, then you never will.
 
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Skyskimmer

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I probally agree the abort system is completely pointless, however there's alot of politics involved (not just with nasa) you guys can't just say a life is worth 10 mil.
Your ignoring the bulk of the costs associated with death, launch delays, investor fallout, legal fee's, the need for an investigation etc. Of course this stuff will happen regardless, if system fails deaths or no deaths, you gotta realized that a simple disaster in 2003 would of cost nasa billion upon billions. Ironically it didn't because it grounded the most inefficient form of transit in history. However if that happen to spacex it could bankrupt them.
 
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oldAtlas_Eguy

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Skyskimmer":1ixgpzgf said:
I probally agree the abort system is completely pointless, however there's alot of politics involved (not just with nasa) you guys can't just say a life is worth 10 mil.
Your ignoring the bulk of the costs associated with death, launch delays, investor fallout, legal fee's, the need for an investigation etc. Of course this stuff will happen regardless, if system fails deaths or no deaths, you gotta realized that a simple disaster in 2003 would of cost nasa billion upon billions. Ironically it didn't because it grounded the most inefficient form of transit in history. However if that happen to spacex it could bankrupt them.

The commercial crew developers fly on existing cargo carrying LV’s. If the HSF vehicle is down because of a mishap the cargo flights don’t have to be. So the Space X HSF part could be under water while the cargo portion is still flying and making money. The shuttle was both a cargo and a HSF vehicle and the two missions could not be separated, if it went down it was down for both crew and cargo. Like you said since it was such an expensive vehicle to fly NASA actually saved money by not flying it, which is why they wanted to stop flying it in 2010, so that they would have enough money in the budget to do other things.
 
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Skyskimmer

Guest
oldAtlas_Eguy":3isy3vka said:
Skyskimmer":3isy3vka said:
I probally agree the abort system is completely pointless, however there's alot of politics involved (not just with nasa) you guys can't just say a life is worth 10 mil.
Your ignoring the bulk of the costs associated with death, launch delays, investor fallout, legal fee's, the need for an investigation etc. Of course this stuff will happen regardless, if system fails deaths or no deaths, you gotta realized that a simple disaster in 2003 would of cost nasa billion upon billions. Ironically it didn't because it grounded the most inefficient form of transit in history. However if that happen to spacex it could bankrupt them.

The commercial crew developers fly on existing cargo carrying LV’s. If the HSF vehicle is down because of a mishap the cargo flights don’t have to be. So the Space X HSF part could be under water while the cargo portion is still flying and making money. The shuttle was both a cargo and a HSF vehicle and the two missions could not be separated, if it went down it was down for both crew and cargo. Like you said since it was such an expensive vehicle to fly NASA actually saved money by not flying it, which is why they wanted to stop flying it in 2010, so that they would have enough money in the budget to do other things.

Good point.

However I'd still the cost of 10 mil is much lower than it seem in either scenario.
 
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believer_since_1956

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DarkenedOne":k2c6i9ai said:
I've always wondered whether or not a launch abort system is worth the trouble for human spaceflight.

First of all, it just does not make any economic sense. In order to judge whether or not a safety system makes sense industries use the cost of life analysis. Essentially a safety system is justified if the economic value of the lives saved is greater than the cost of the safety system that would save those lives. Now there are different values of life for different industries and sectors of society, however rarely do they go over a few million dollars. So essentially we can estimate for a 4 person crew of a Orion capsule the estimate would come to less than 10 million. On the other hand from what I have heard the NASA launch abort system costs hundreds of millions of dollars and years to develop. At the same time if the Ares rocket were to get any where near the reliability that was advertised than the launch abort system would never be needed on any launch.

The fact of the matter is that if human spaceflight is going to be affordable it is going to have to make economically sound decisions.

My view is each life is unique, therefore priceless. Therefore it is the moral thing to make every effort to preserve a life.
 
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Skyskimmer

Guest
believer_since_1956":3hbpxazu said:
DarkenedOne":3hbpxazu said:
I've always wondered whether or not a launch abort system is worth the trouble for human spaceflight.

First of all, it just does not make any economic sense. In order to judge whether or not a safety system makes sense industries use the cost of life analysis. Essentially a safety system is justified if the economic value of the lives saved is greater than the cost of the safety system that would save those lives. Now there are different values of life for different industries and sectors of society, however rarely do they go over a few million dollars. So essentially we can estimate for a 4 person crew of a Orion capsule the estimate would come to less than 10 million. On the other hand from what I have heard the NASA launch abort system costs hundreds of millions of dollars and years to develop. At the same time if the Ares rocket were to get any where near the reliability that was advertised than the launch abort system would never be needed on any launch.

The fact of the matter is that if human spaceflight is going to be affordable it is going to have to make economically sound decisions.

My view is each life is unique, therefore priceless. Therefore it is the moral thing to make every effort to preserve a life.
I guess but in the big scheme of things, your imposing your own personal views on other. I'm a strong believer in freedom, especially in terms of things regarding mobility. If someone wants to risk their life for something they believe in they should be aloud to do so. I mean obviously things like drugs are beyond that. But you can't be risk averse, on a frontier. This cannot be forgotten.
 
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believer_since_1956

Guest
Skyskimmer":2ei6983k said:
believer_since_1956":2ei6983k said:
DarkenedOne":2ei6983k said:
I've always wondered whether or not a launch abort system is worth the trouble for human spaceflight.

First of all, it just does not make any economic sense. In order to judge whether or not a safety system makes sense industries use the cost of life analysis. Essentially a safety system is justified if the economic value of the lives saved is greater than the cost of the safety system that would save those lives. Now there are different values of life for different industries and sectors of society, however rarely do they go over a few million dollars. So essentially we can estimate for a 4 person crew of a Orion capsule the estimate would come to less than 10 million. On the other hand from what I have heard the NASA launch abort system costs hundreds of millions of dollars and years to develop. At the same time if the Ares rocket were to get any where near the reliability that was advertised than the launch abort system would never be needed on any launch.

The fact of the matter is that if human spaceflight is going to be affordable it is going to have to make economically sound decisions.

My view is each life is unique, therefore priceless. Therefore it is the moral thing to make every effort to preserve a life.
I guess but in the big scheme of things, your imposing your own personal views on other. I'm a strong believer in freedom, especially in terms of things regarding mobility. If someone wants to risk their life for something they believe in they should be aloud to do so. I mean obviously things like drugs are beyond that. But you can't be risk averse, on a frontier. This cannot be forgotten.

I am not imposing my views on anyone I am expressing an opinion.
 
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Skyskimmer

Guest
believer_since_1956":2v3v2wcl said:
I am not imposing my views on anyone I am expressing an opinion.

Sorry when I said big scheme of things I meant that if many people share the same view. They are end up imposing. That's the vib I get with the shuttle disaster.
 
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believer_since_1956

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Skyskimmer":r2jxmhgv said:
believer_since_1956":r2jxmhgv said:
I am not imposing my views on anyone I am expressing an opinion.

Sorry when I said big scheme of things I meant that if many people share the same view. They are end up imposing. That's the vib I get with the shuttle disaster.

Glad we have the misunderstanding cleared up.
I work in the space industry the importance of crew survival can not be understated in that industry. Part of my views come from Christian beliefs, part comes from my military background "leave no one behind, watch your team mates back" thought process.
 
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