Zubrin on NASA aversion to risk

[Warren Platts]

Interesting article by Robert Zubrin that came out a couple of days ago.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astronauts-life-worth

The point is that there is a methodology, well established in other fields, that can help assess the rationality of risk reduction expenditures in the human spaceflight program. If NASA disagrees with the suggested assignment of $50 million for the life of an astronaut, it should come up with its own figure, substantiate it, and then subject its proposed plan of action to a quantitative cost-benefit analysis based on that assessment. ...

This may seem like a harsh approach. But the many billions being spent on the human spaceflight program are not being spent for the safety of the astronauts; they could stay safe if they stayed home. The money is being spent to open the space frontier. ... That mission needs to come first.

[QuantumG]

NASA has no mandate to fly humans in space at all. They're right to fear that more astronaut deaths will get the program shutdown because they're on such shaky ground. A sensible approach to risk can only be taken when there's a sensible tolerance of inevitable failure, and that can only be found in a framework of greater goals. Merely declaring that NASA should be opening the space frontier is not enough, you need to get it put into the National Aeronautics and Space Act.

[Warren Platts]

Well, this article comes out in response to the Gingrich moon base hullabaloo. In that roundtable discussion the topic of the proper level of risk tolerance was discussed. Here's the bit out of the transcript (thanks to "mrmandias"):

NASA guy: we don’t tolerate accidents and failures because the country won’t.  We have to do paper studies and tests like crazy.

Gingrich: how fast would it take to human-rate the Atlas V?

NASA guy: 5 years.

Gingrich: if you had to do it faster, simply as a matter of technology, how long, 6 months, 9 months?

NASA guy: We could probably accelerate it significantly.

Gingrich: I want WWII to be our model, where we did things quickly because we had no choice.

First NASA guy: Then you have to tolerate risk.
First NASA guy: Its not just NASA or just commercial space, it’s a balance.  Money is an issue.

Ph.D. Engineer guy: Red tape and bureaucratic inertia is incredible.  NASA should be in oversight and safety check role, not actually doing the engineering.  The Chinese will beat us at our current pace.

The NASA guys here seem to be passing the buck of irrational risk aversion on to "the country". This is interesting, because it sheds some light on the culture at work here. They're trying to say that they're not the one's with the hangup: it's all on the public. But I don't buy that. Americans in general aren't like that. E.g., when 9-11 happened, we didn't close up the shop: we doubled down and started two frackin' wars! I remember where I was on hearing about both Shuttle disasters; I can't recall anybody around me saying we should get out of the HSF business altogether. If anything, such disasters lead to redoubled resolve.

[Warren Platts]

Also it has to do with the Gingrich proposal to use government prizes to motivate commercial exploration. I guess the idea goes back to Zubrin himself when he turned Newt onto the idea back in 1994.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289775/mars-prize-robert-zubrin

See, the way the prize is supposed to work is that a company will go to Mars, for example, win the prize, pocket the profit from the difference between the prize and their expenses, and then they would sell copies of their flight systems to NASA so that NASA could conduct exploration missions using its own astronaut/scientists.

And there's the rub. The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night commercial operation isn't the same as NASA's. And hence the need to lobby for a higher level of risk tolerance at NASA. Otherwise, the prize system wouldn't work...

[revprez]

And there's the rub. The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night commercial operation isn't the same as NASA's.

The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night operation of any kind isn't the same as any industrial venture either.  There are no half-billion dollar prizes for cheaper oil discovery and no six billion dollar prizes for a new model car for good reason; losers who go long don't get squat.

[revprez]

And there's the rub. The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night commercial operation isn't the same as NASA's.

The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night operation of any kind isn't the same as any industrial venture either.  There are no half-billion dollar prizes for cheaper oil discovery and no six billion dollar prizes for a new model car for good reason; losers who go long don't get squat.

[deltaV]

Imagine that the captain of a $5 billion aircraft carrier let his ship sink rather than allow seven volunteers to attempt a repair, on the grounds that the odds favoring their survival were only 50 to 1. Such an officer would be court-martialed and regarded with universal contempt both by his brother officers and by society at large.

+1 to Zubrin's article.

I would like to see NASA adapt a policy similar to the following:
(a) All major (e.g. multi-million dollar) decisions where safety is a major criterion in the decision-making process should include a calculation of the expenditure of statistical human lives and dollars for the various options.
(b) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at least $5 million.
(c) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at most $1 billion, except that an option costing a specific person a greater than 20% chance of immediate death may be summarily excluded regardless of the cost. Options costing a greater than 20% reduction in a specific person's expected disability adjusted life years may similarly be excluded.
(d) Exceptions should be explicitly justified based on unusual features of the decision seeking an exception.

Many of NASA's choices would probably require exceptions under this policy for exceeding the $1 billion threshold. For example:
* The initial decision not to service Hubble (as mentioned in Zubrin's article).
* Delta IV can launch multi-billion dollar satellites without any launch abort options at all but to launch humans you need to spend billions more on a "man-rated" rocket. Implementing just the relatively low cost abort options isn't good enough.
* The decision to go with the most expensive of the studied Ares I emergency egress system options: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/10/nasas-rollercoaster-escape-for-ares-i/ .
* (Added later with edit) The long stand-down after the Challenger disaster. A reasonable estimate of the probability of a launch failure made a month after the disaster would have been something like 50% if it's really cold and 3% otherwise. These probabilities would support halting all winter-time launches until changes are made, but not all launches.

[Warren Platts]

$1 billion USD per astronaut?!? Talk about statistical murder!

[TomH]

Regardless of what Zubrin says, a NASA spacecraft is not a vessel of war and astronauts are not on military missions (except 1 or 2 shuttle missions).

When it was recently reported that a helicopter of SEALS crashed and several of the Team 6 SEALs who had previously been on the Bin Laden raid perished, no one vocalized angst. Society has finally gotten back to accepting that casualties are a cost of war. Our grandparents knew that well, but Desert Storm and the air war in Serbia lulled us into a false belief that we could wage casualty free war. I think we've been shaken out of that notion.

Though many astronauts are active service personnel on assignment to NASA and more are retired service, when NASA was created during the tensions of the cold war, the U.S. went to great lengths to emphasize that NASA is a civilian organization, not a part of the military. Further, we have gone to great lengths to idolize astronauts. John Glenn's image was pushed forward as the clean cut marine; he was selected to orbit first partially so he could overshadow the bad boy image of some of the other original 7. Kennedy ordered that Glenn not fly again in fear that a national hero might be lost in a tragedy. Kennedy's coddling overprotection of Glenn helped begin shaping a public attitude. The fact that a beloved female teacher perished on STS-51-L allowed the nation to mourn that disaster perhaps more extensively than would have been the case otherwise. Many would say we had no business sending teachers (or senators for that matter) up on STS, but doing that helped create a perception that space flight was for ordinary people. When we learned that engineers had tried to warn managers not only on STS-51-L, but on STS-107 as well, it seemed to me, at least as part of the public who is removed from any inside perspective, that NASA afterwards really doubled down in its dilligence in following protocol. I think some in the public saw that as becoming risk averse while it actually was due dilligence regarding protocol on a craft that had some inherent weaknesses.

I think the public itself, along with the press, have created some sort of perception that space flight should be as safe as commercial air flight. We all know that millions of things have to go right for a successful flight and that space flight is inherently dangerous. I think Zubrin is inaccurate about NASA, but he has a point that risk aversion exists. It is the public that has allowed itself to become risk averse, and Zubrin may be right in that that aversion needs to be let go of.

[deltaV]

$1 billion USD per astronaut?!? Talk about statistical murder!

That may sound high, but most of the damage caused by an astronaut death is not the loss of the astronaut per se but the the value of the damage caused by the inevitable overreaction to the accident. The wasted resources from a long shutdown of a space program can easily reach into the billions.

An upper bound of $100 million may sound fairer in theory, but then NASA would be required to treat astronauts as more or less disposable. If you require that astronaut lives be valued at $100 million with no 20% "no suicide mission" exception then the only manned lunar or Mars mission that NASA would be allowed to do would be one where the astronauts stay on the surface until they're no longer useful for the mission and are then left to die. Even with the "no suicide mission" exception there would be no reason to develop launch escape towers or many other man-rating features. It seems to me that the country frankly does not care enough about space exploration to be prepared to treat astronauts that way.

[QuantumG]

If the country doesn't "care enough" about human spaceflight then stop forcing the country to pay for it.

[Warren Platts]

Society has finally gotten back to accepting that casualties are a cost of war. ...

It is the public that has allowed itself to become risk averse

You just contradicted yourself! Both sentences can't be true. It is the latter one that is false. The public doesn't care all that much if a few astronauts get killed in an accident--especially in this day and age when body bags from Afghanistan are coming back nearly every day. Sadly, but truly, the jokes ("What does this button do?") were flying around within hours after each shuttle loss. People were laughing about Columbia in the bar I was hanging out in on the day it went down. It's not a national tragedy of epic proportions. Life happens. People know that.

The more likely truth is that senior NASA bureaucrats are fearful of losing their jobs if they lose spacecraft with people inside. As long as nothing flies, they get to keep their jobs0--or at least that's what they figure.

But look at O'Keefe. If Zubrin's analysis is correct, he didn't lose his job for losing Columbia, he lost it for chickening out on Hubble.

I would be surprised if NASA is not doing exactly the sort of risk analysis that Zubrin recommends. That's basic. If they're not, that's a scandal.

[Robotbeat]

And there's the rub. The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night commercial operation isn't the same as NASA's.

The risk tolerance of a shoe-string, fly-by-night operation of any kind isn't the same as any industrial venture either.  There are no half-billion dollar prizes for cheaper oil discovery and no six billion dollar prizes for a new model car...

There are, indeed, prizes for new cars (which have been won and the prize money handed out), but they are much smaller than $6 billion (three orders of magnitude smaller, actually):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_X_Prize

[RocketmanUS]

An astronaut ( person ) knows the risks. They go because they want to, not because they have to.

[deltaV]

I would be surprised if NASA is not doing exactly the sort of risk analysis that Zubrin recommends. That's basic. If they're not, that's a scandal.

If they're doing that sort of risk analysis they're doing an awfully good job of hiding that fact.

[A_M_Swallow]

{snip}

I would like to see NASA adapt a policy similar to the following:
(a) All major (e.g. multi-million dollar) decisions where safety is a major criterion in the decision-making process should include a calculation of the expenditure of statistical human lives and dollars for the various options.
(b) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at least $5 million.
(c) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at most $1 billion, except that an option costing a specific person a greater than 20% chance of immediate death may be summarily excluded regardless of the cost. Options costing a greater than 20% reduction in a specific person's expected disability adjusted life years may similarly be excluded.
(d) Exceptions should be explicitly justified based on unusual features of the decision seeking an exception.
{sniP}

I am not certain about the values.

A traditional response to an accident is to launch a rescue mission.  Falcon 9s cost $59.5 million, the capsule is extra.
Dragons and DreamChasers can take 7 people.

$59.5M / 7 = $8.5 million

So people will have to be valued as at least $10 million to launch a rescue mission.

[RocketmanUS]

{snip}

I would like to see NASA adapt a policy similar to the following:
(a) All major (e.g. multi-million dollar) decisions where safety is a major criterion in the decision-making process should include a calculation of the expenditure of statistical human lives and dollars for the various options.
(b) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at least $5 million.
(c) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at most $1 billion, except that an option costing a specific person a greater than 20% chance of immediate death may be summarily excluded regardless of the cost. Options costing a greater than 20% reduction in a specific person's expected disability adjusted life years may similarly be excluded.
(d) Exceptions should be explicitly justified based on unusual features of the decision seeking an exception.
{sniP}

I am not certain about the values.

A traditional response to an accident is to launch a rescue mission.  Falcon 9s cost $59.5 million, the capsule is extra.
Dragons and DreamChasers can take 7 people.

$59.5M / 7 = $8.5 million

So people will have to be valued as at least $10 million to launch a rescue mission.

Is it not in the value in why we go and not in the rescue cost?

Do we determine by cost if we rescue people or not from a sinking ship?

People die every day by auto accidents, but we still drive anyway!
People die in auto races, but we still have legally organised auto races!

Fact of life is we can die so we might as well enjoy life. Take reasonable precautions though.

[deltaV]

{snip by deltaV}
(b) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at least $5 million.
(c) All decisions should be consistent with a value of a statistical human life at most $1 billion, except that an option costing a specific person a greater than 20% chance of immediate death may be summarily excluded
{snip by deltaV}

I am not certain about the values.

A traditional response to an accident is to launch a rescue mission.  Falcon 9s cost $59.5 million, the capsule is extra.
Dragons and DreamChasers can take 7 people.

$59.5M / 7 = $8.5 million

So people will have to be valued as at least $10 million to launch a rescue mission.

You can't pick a single value for a human life that's applied to both astronauts and non-astronauts alike without causing ridiculous results. If you pick a low value similar to the $5-$10 million currently in use in the rest of the federal government then you'd get uncomfortable results like not mounting rescue missions because they're too expensive. If you pick a high enough value to ensure astronaut lives are significantly valued you'd get silly results such as NASA adding extra strength to its cars to make them safer in collisions. To avoid this problem I'm proposing that NASA decision makers continue to make their own decisions on safety using informal means as long as the decisions pass the sanity check of valuing human life at some value between $5 million and $1000 million. I get the impression that even this minimal sanity check would help significantly.

My proposal as written would permit (but not require) most LEO rescue missions. It would prohibit most Mars rescue missions because they'd be too expensive (unless an exception was granted as it likely would be). If that's a bug it could be fixed by extending the suicide mission exclusion so that any time there's two options (even in the middle of a mission after a mishap occurs) and a specific person's probability of survival differs in those two options by more than 20% then the requirement to keep the value of a statistical human life at most $1 billion is waived. At first glance this modification seems to make the proposal better fit contemporary American ethics, so it's probably an improvement to my original proposal.

[QuantumG]

What's this rescue mission nonsense? Everyone has heard Walter Cronkite telling school children in the 60s that rescue from space is impossible. No-one declared this was unacceptable. The public expects spaceflight to be daring and dangerous.. it's spaceflight. The fact that the numbers back up the public perception is a good thing. That NASA seriously talks about rescue missions is proof of Zubrin's argument.

[TomH]

Society has finally gotten back to accepting that casualties are a cost of war. ...

It is the public that has allowed itself to become risk averse

You just contradicted yourself! Both sentences can't be true.

Warren, you assume an equivocation between troops in combat with civilians (including teachers and senators) taking a ride into space.  Those things are not equivocal. I posit that the general public has returned to the point of accepting military casualties in combat, but that it has become averse to civilian loss of life on a spacecraft having a resemblance to a commercial airliner. Those two things certainly can both be true.

The people I was around surely were not joking about either disaster, in fact I don't remember a single person joking about it; they were all dumbfounded.

Now I am not saying society should be that way.  I talked to quite a few people who were asking, "How could this have happened?" and answered them with, "Statistically, I'm surprised it hasn't happened more than it has," and gave numerous reasons why. I think the public needs to be reeducated as to how dangerous this endeavor actually is.

[QuantumG]

I would think that the public is against having teachers and senators flying on the shuttle because it's a waste of their money. It has nothing to do with safety. Kill a school teacher and people start asking why you were flying a school teacher. Big surprise.

[TomH]

I would think that the public is against having teachers and senators flying on the shuttle because it's a waste of their money. It has nothing to do with safety. Kill a school teacher and people start asking why you were flying a school teacher. Big surprise.

I completely agree with you, and I am a teacher. There is no reason public money should be wasted sending unqualified people into space, and that includes any 77 year old senator who used to be an astronaut, no matter how significant he was in an earlier generation.

[deltaV]

What's this rescue mission nonsense? Everyone has heard Walter Cronkite telling school children in the 60s that rescue from space is impossible. No-one declared this was unacceptable. The public expects spaceflight to be daring and dangerous.. it's spaceflight. The fact that the numbers back up the public perception is a good thing. That NASA seriously talks about rescue missions is proof of Zubrin's argument.

A mishap during a sortie mission is likely to kill the crew too quickly for rescue, but with a base a rescue is more likely to be feasible. For example if a Soyuz docked to the ISS were found to be inoperable then a rescue mission, namely sending the next Soyuz up with a reduced or no crew, seems quite doable.

[QuantumG]

You're leaving something out there.. the mission.

How does the inoperable Soyuz affect the mission of the ISS? Let's say the dilemma here is that the next flight was going to carry a Progress with important resupply parts for an ongoing project that will be destroyed if it doesn't arrive on time. Do we scrub the Progress and replace it with a Soyuz flight to get the crew back down right now or can the crew wait until the flight after the Progress delivers its valuable cargo?

The risk to the crew is a few more months in zero-g - which has health implications and may even be fatal if there is a fire and the crew need to escape - but the risk to the project is failure.

[deltaV]

You're leaving something out there.. the mission.

Huh? I never claimed rescue missions were always a good idea, only that they were possible and that the cost/benefit policy should probably allow them even when expensive.

[QuantumG]

But that's the problem right there. The cost/benefit policy should come first and if rescue missions pass it, they should happen.

even when expensive.

What does that mean? How do you judge when something is expensive? A cost/benefit analysis.. right?

When they worked out the cost/benefit analysis of fixing the Hubble they initially said no, not because it was "too dangerous", but because they included a rescue mission in the cost. When it was decided to go, it was because the rescue mission was removed from the cost and all of a sudden it was no longer too expensive. That took hard nosed decision making that I expect we wouldn't get today.

[Comga]

$1 billion USD per astronaut?!? Talk about statistical murder!

While I don't have the details handy, which included the predicted LOC probablilities presented to the Augustine Commission for Ares-1 and EELV, it was possible to calculate that, for a 100 mission run of the Constellation system, NASA found it to be warranted to spend $480 Billion to prevent the loss of one crew of four.  That's $120 Billion per life.  The number gets higher with fewer flights, which would be more realistic.   $1B/astronaut would be a comparative bargain, even while being statistical murder.

And no, NASA is not doing this calculation.  To some they could not admit doing it.  To the rest they could not admit the result.

[A_M_Swallow]

What's this rescue mission nonsense? Everyone has heard Walter Cronkite telling school children in the 60s that rescue from space is impossible. No-one declared this was unacceptable. The public expects spaceflight to be daring and dangerous.. it's spaceflight. The fact that the numbers back up the public perception is a good thing. That NASA seriously talks about rescue missions is proof of Zubrin's argument.

This is sarcasm but I will give it a straight answer.

In the 20th century NASA did not have the facilities to launch rescue missions, although Hollywood made at least on film about it.  Following a Shuttle disaster NASA instituted a new safety procedure of having a second Shuttle ready to launch during missions.  This was called LON - Launch On Need.

Many of the Shuttle procedures can be duplicated for missions using the CCDev spacecraft.  By the third flight of the manned Dragon it should be possible to have a LON on hot standby.  Welcome to the 21st century.

The LON spacecraft and launch vehicle may require an extra launch pad, resulting in additional expense.  With the correct organisation the Atlas V and Falcon 9 LV could act as LON for each other.

[HIP2BSQRE]

To me..an astronaut life is not worth $1billion.  Maybe $10 million...more than that..so sad...too bad.  Yes--I am not the one whoes husband/wife may be lost.  I am the one paying for all this safety equipment.  Was the west won with people saying no lives can be lost?  How many people die skydiving, mining coal, etc??  If we lost 10 astronauts a year/so what???  Yes--cold..but you cannot build a bridge/society without some eggs being broken!  Think of the American Revolution--people believed in it and were willing to die for it.  I can beat you--if you said to the American public--we need 10 people to go to Mars and it would be a one way trip--guess how many qualified volunteers you would have?  People would die and???  Part of living is people die.  :-(  Explain the risk and let the public accept it.  The problem comes when we tell people its safe and people will not die.  Nothing is safe in life.  You can stay at home and a plane comes down on it.  :-(   If you asked people to fly on Atlas as is--no LAS--people would do it.  If 1 in 100 did not make it--that is 7 people a year--that is NOT a very high number--so be it.  We lose how many people in car accidents and we are scared to lose 7 people a year? 

[Warren Platts]

$1 billion USD per astronaut?!? Talk about statistical murder!

While I don't have the details handy, which included the predicted LOC probablilities presented to the Augustine Commission for Ares-1 and EELV, it was possible to calculate that, for a 100 mission run of the Constellation system, NASA found it to be warranted to spend $480 Billion to prevent the loss of one crew of four.  That's $120 Billion per life.  The number gets higher with fewer flights, which would be more realistic.   $1B/astronaut would be a comparative bargain, even while being statistical murder.

And no, NASA is not doing this calculation.  To some they could not admit doing it.  To the rest they could not admit the result.

Wow! That is just crazy! I'd like to see more details of that calculation, but that's very interesting if true. @ $8B/year it would take 60 years of NASA's HSF budget just to make it safe to fly!

@ a 2% risk of loss per flight, the expected loss per flight is ~$10 billion. Since the cost to mount a mission is only 1 or 2 $B, then we shouldn't be flying at all. And guess what: we're not! Maybe they are performing an explicit risk analysis... 

EDIT: Conversely, we can calculate the risk they would have to get down to:

If one flight (in round figures) is $1B, then if a crew is worth $500B, then to make it worth it, they would have to get the expected risk of loss per flight down to on the order of 0.1% or 1 loss per thousand flights....

[QuantumG]

This is sarcasm but I will give it a straight answer.

I wasn't being sarcastic at all.

In the 20th century NASA did not have the facilities to launch rescue missions, although Hollywood made at least on film about it.  Following a Shuttle disaster NASA instituted a new safety procedure of having a second Shuttle ready to launch during missions.  This was called LON - Launch On Need.

And the great thing was that it was only a marginal expense.. they were going to launch that Shuttle anyway so giving it a rescue mission instead isn't that big of a deal.

[spectre9]

I support Zubrin.

Keep fighting to open up the new frontier whatever way you can.

Mars first!!!! 

Mars Direct!!!

Mars 1 overdue!!! 

Massive applause falls on deaf ears... 

[kkattula]

What's this rescue mission nonsense? Everyone has heard Walter Cronkite telling school children in the 60s that rescue from space is impossible. No-one declared this was unacceptable. The public expects spaceflight to be daring and dangerous.. it's spaceflight. The fact that the numbers back up the public perception is a good thing. That NASA seriously talks about rescue missions is proof of Zubrin's argument.

You're right.  The problem is NASA backed itself into a corner a long time ago.

It told everyone how dangerous spaceflight was, then discovered it could present test pilots as celebrities and create a myth of infalliability. All to ensure political support by turning NASA into an american icon, with astronaut heroes.

The media jumped on the band wagon because they need heroes, even more so when those heroes fail. They turned the Challenger and Columbia losses from tragic accidents into 'national disasters'.  9/11 was a disaster, the Japan earthquake was a disaster. The loss of 7 people doing a dangerous job is regrettable and a personal tragedy for their friends and colleagues, not a disaster. Maybe for the program.

Space IS dangerous. so if we were actually serious about exploring it, you might expect a lot more people would be getting killed.

[aquanaut99]

To me..an astronaut life is not worth $1billion.  Maybe $10 million...more than that..so sad...too bad.  Yes--I am not the one whoes husband/wife may be lost.  I am the one paying for all this safety equipment.  Was the west won with people saying no lives can be lost?  How many people die skydiving, mining coal, etc??  If we lost 10 astronauts a year/so what???  Yes--cold..but you cannot build a bridge/society without some eggs being broken!  Think of the American Revolution--people believed in it and were willing to die for it.  I can beat you--if you said to the American public--we need 10 people to go to Mars and it would be a one way trip--guess how many qualified volunteers you would have?  People would die and???  Part of living is people die.  :-(  Explain the risk and let the public accept it.  The problem comes when we tell people its safe and people will not die.  Nothing is safe in life.  You can stay at home and a plane comes down on it.  :-(   If you asked people to fly on Atlas as is--no LAS--people would do it.  If 1 in 100 did not make it--that is 7 people a year--that is NOT a very high number--so be it.  We lose how many people in car accidents and we are scared to lose 7 people a year? 

That is your belief, it is not shared by many.

We accept casualties in war or people dying in car crashes because we think the benefits are worth the risk.

The problem is, manned spaceflight produces precisely ZERO benefits for the average citizen, but is funded with his/her tax money.

We already have difficulty accepting why we have to pay for something that we get nothing out of (other than a few pretty pictures on TV). Why, then, must we also risk people's lives for something that has no benefit? (Note: this is not my belief, but it is what I hear time and again from others).

Remember Mondale wanting to use the Apollo 1 tragedy as an excuse to shut down NASA (and divert the money to his pet projects). There's still plenty of people like him around. Which is why NASA wants to avoid losing astronauts at any cost. They remember how close Mondale came to killing Apollo just because of 3 American deaths.

[QuantumG]

Remember Mondale wanting to use the Apollo 1 tragedy as an excuse to shut down NASA (and divert the money to his pet projects). There's still plenty of people like him around. Which is why NASA wants to avoid losing astronauts at any cost. They remember how close Mondale came to killing Apollo just because of 3 American deaths.

That and a treaty ending the space race was signed on the same day...

[Warren Platts]

We accept casualties in war or people dying in car crashes because we think the benefits are worth the risk.

The problem is, manned spaceflight produces precisely ZERO benefits for the average citizen, but is funded with his/her tax money.

Non sequiter to the point of being off topic. Yet another one of your tired arguments against human spaceflight, but this one fails as well. It's ridiculous to think that if there were no benefits to driving cars, that that car companies would strive to make them even safer!?! The very idea is crazy. If you believed your own argument, you would have to be against the existence of NASA HSF altogether.

[A_M_Swallow]

In the 20th century NASA did not have the facilities to launch rescue missions, although Hollywood made at least on film about it.  Following a Shuttle disaster NASA instituted a new safety procedure of having a second Shuttle ready to launch during missions.  This was called LON - Launch On Need.

And the great thing was that it was only a marginal expense.. they were going to launch that Shuttle anyway so giving it a rescue mission instead isn't that big of a deal.

A similar low cost method of LON can probably be used with Atlas 5 and Falcon 9 LV.

[Will]

Zubrin is, as usual, missing the point. Astronauts on mission have an immense symbolic value to Americans as emblems of national pride and prestige. They treat the deaths of seven of them in the course of a mission as a far, far greater blow than the loss, say, of a multi-billion dollar spysat.

They're paying the bills so NASA is going to respect their preferences.

[dafixer]

Space flight would have to become routine before loss of life became a more acceptable risk to the public.

Look at aviation. The first flyers were celebrities and their deaths were big news. Now when an airliner goes down, the lives lost are statistics. Nobody talks about giving up on flight because everybody uses it.

 

[FinalFrontier]

Space flight would have to become routine before loss of life became a more acceptable risk to the public.

Look at aviation. The first flyers were celebrities and their deaths were big news. Now when an airliner goes down, the lives lost are statistics. Nobody talks about giving up on flight because everybody uses it.



 

1. Spaceflight will never be routine. Its spaceflight.

2. When you consider the thousands of different stresses and variables affecting an aircraft in flight, you realize that is anything but "routine" as well.

Just because air transportation is widely used, just because there are not very many accidents these days, does not mean its routine.

On the contrary it just means we have learned enough and improved upon the mistakes of the past, and that technology has advanced enough, to better handle all of those variables and stresses, but it does not mean they suddenly don't exist.

The same is and always will be true of spaceflight. Anything going that fast and that high, into that environment, is not routine.

[dafixer]

1. Spaceflight will never be routine. Its spaceflight.

2. When you consider the thousands of different stresses and variables affecting an aircraft in flight, you realize that is anything but "routine" as well.

Just because air transportation is widely used, just because there are not very many accidents these days, does not mean its routine.

On the contrary it just means we have learned enough and improved upon the mistakes of the past, and that technology has advanced enough, to better handle all of those variables and stresses, but it does not mean they suddenly don't exist.

The same is and always will be true of spaceflight. Anything going that fast and that high, into that environment, is not routine.

Air travel is routine. It is so routine that you can book a ticket to fly on a certain date at a certain time months in advance. If that isn't routine, I don't know what is. Just because something is hard (like flight) doesn't mean it can't become routine. Heck, going 80mph in an automobile creates all kinds of mechanical stresses, from engine components to chassis and suspension. That doesn't mean travel by automobile isn't routine.

I guess it depends on what your definition of routine is.
Webster defines it as:
 b : habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure <the routine of factory work>

Your assertion that spaceflight will never be routine echos what was said during the early days of powered flight. I hope that you are proven wrong in my lifetime (one can always hope right? ).

[strangequark]

1. Spaceflight will never be routine. Its spaceflight.

2. When you consider the thousands of different stresses and variables affecting an aircraft in flight, you realize that is anything but "routine" as well.

Just because air transportation is widely used, just because there are not very many accidents these days, does not mean its routine.

On the contrary it just means we have learned enough and improved upon the mistakes of the past, and that technology has advanced enough, to better handle all of those variables and stresses, but it does not mean they suddenly don't exist.

The same is and always will be true of spaceflight. Anything going that fast and that high, into that environment, is not routine.

1. Never is a long time.

2. Routine (adj.) - Of a commonplace or repetitious nature.
By definition, if air travel is widely used (e.g. commonplace), then it is routine. That's not to say it's as easy as falling off a log, or that the physics isn't complex. As for "thousands of different stresses and variables", that also applies to the phenomenally dynamic, highly transient form of transportation we call "walking". All that "routine" means is that we do it all the time. Which is what the original poster was getting at. Subsonic consumer air travel is commonplace and anonymous. It is not at the forefront of human endeavor any longer, and therefore crashes are "accidents" rather than "national tragedies".

With all of that said, NASA's culture is probably overly conservative, but that is driven by what happens if there is a LOC/LOV event. Namely, you get a 475nm panel led by a 4-star admiral, or a former secretary of state. In the end, the excess conservatism is driven by D.C. That's not to say we should gloss over accidents, but it should be a lot more NTSB and a lot less Nuremberg.

[Comga]

Wow! That is just crazy! I'd like to see more details of that calculation, but that's very interesting if true. @ $8B/year it would take 60 years of NASA's HSF budget just to make it safe to fly!

No, that's not how I did the math.  The LOC probability for missions on EELVs was a small number.  The LOC for missions on Ares-1 was slightly smaller.  (I forget the name of the guy who presented this, but remember how silly the numbers looked.)   I belive that there was something like $8B difference in development cost.  (Also not believable.)  So the $8B bought down the probability of the loss of a single crew over 100 flights by something like 1/60.   $8B/(1/60)=$480B as I recall.   They don't  have to spend the $480, just like they don't have to lose a crew to calculate the probability.

[Patchouli]

Wow! That is just crazy! I'd like to see more details of that calculation, but that's very interesting if true. @ $8B/year it would take 60 years of NASA's HSF budget just to make it safe to fly!

No, that's not how I did the math.  The LOC probability for missions on EELVs was a small number.  The LOC for missions on Ares-1 was slightly smaller.  (I forget the name of the guy who presented this, but remember how silly the numbers looked.)   I belive that there was something like $8B difference in development cost.  (Also not believable.)  So the $8B bought down the probability of the loss of a single crew over 100 flights by something like 1/60.   $8B/(1/60)=$480B as I recall.   They don't  have to spend the $480, just like they don't have to lose a crew to calculate the probability.

I doubt Ares I would in practice have had an LOM/LOC as good as an improved EELV simply because of it's low flight rates.

Either EELV probably would be safer then both the Shuttle and Soyuz.

But Zubrin is correct NASA has become too risk adverse and not just in the area of crew safety.
They have become technologically risk adverse as well which is why CxP was Apollo on steroids and did next to nothing to try out new technologies or reduce costs.

[mrmandias]

Space flight would have to become routine before loss of life became a more acceptable risk to the public.

The lesson here is the same morbid lesson as the comparison with war deaths, which the public largely shrugs off.  Space flight needs more death and more accidents, not fewer.

Or as noted PR man and Madison Avenue mogul Joseph Stalin put it, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

[mrmandias]

A politically incorrect observation also suggests itself:

Riskier missions should have a bias in favor of men.  Preferably, in order of preference, unmarried men, married men whose children are grown, and  married men who are pernamently childless (excluding those who are recently married).

We should also steal a page from the jihadis book and have spacefarers record a video before they go acknowledging the risks, explaining why they are willing to do it, and asking the public not to use any  mishap that happens to them as an excuse to shut down the dream they gave their life for.

[daj24]

Another aspect of the risk averse logic are the political blocs that want to end HSF and use the money for their pet projects. These blocs will try to use any and all LOC/LOV as a rallying cry to stop "wasting" the money used for the HSF project.

[deltaV]

A politically incorrect observation also suggests itself:

Riskier missions should have a bias in favor of men.  Preferably, in order of preference, unmarried men, married men whose children are grown, and married men who are pernamently childless (excluding those who are recently married).

I think it's reasonable for the first dozen missions that go outside the Earth/moon system to involve crewmembers with all their children (if any) grown up. I don't think excluding women would be worthwhile since our culture's willingness to see women die e.g. in combat is increasing. People in their 50s and 60s often have only grown children, and as a bonus radiation has less of an effect on older people's life expectancy.

[stockman]

here's a novel thought.. why don't we solicite qualified volunteers that want to go instead of putting mating/age requirements around them.. quite discriminating in my view - if you have a qualified and willing 35year old female for example - why should she be told that she hasn't had babies yet as per some panel of experts and therefore she is not qualified.. same for a qualified male volunteer that may not have been married and done the societal norms expected of him. 

I think you would have enough volunteers to draw from for these missions without the need to put borders around it..

[mrmandias]

A politically incorrect observation also suggests itself:

Riskier missions should have a bias in favor of men.  Preferably, in order of preference, unmarried men, married men whose children are grown, and married men who are pernamently childless (excluding those who are recently married).

I think it's reasonable for the first dozen missions that go outside the Earth/moon system to involve crewmembers with all their children (if any) grown up. I don't think excluding women would be worthwhile since our culture's willingness to see women die e.g. in combat is increasing. People in their 50s and 60s often have only grown children, and as a bonus radiation has less of an effect on older people's life expectancy.

I accept that.  Women past childbearing age are also acceptable from a public relations standpoint.

[mrmandias]

here's a novel thought.. why don't we solicite qualified volunteers that want to go instead of putting mating/age requirements around them.. quite discriminating in my view - if you have a qualified and willing 35year old female for example - why should she be told that she hasn't had babies yet as per some panel of experts and therefore she is not qualified.. same for a qualified male volunteer that may not have been married and done the societal norms expected of him. 

Societal norms matter if your society is funding your project.

[DarkenedOne]

Wow! That is just crazy! I'd like to see more details of that calculation, but that's very interesting if true. @ $8B/year it would take 60 years of NASA's HSF budget just to make it safe to fly!

No, that's not how I did the math.  The LOC probability for missions on EELVs was a small number.  The LOC for missions on Ares-1 was slightly smaller.  (I forget the name of the guy who presented this, but remember how silly the numbers looked.)   I belive that there was something like $8B difference in development cost.  (Also not believable.)  So the $8B bought down the probability of the loss of a single crew over 100 flights by something like 1/60.   $8B/(1/60)=$480B as I recall.   They don't  have to spend the $480, just like they don't have to lose a crew to calculate the probability.

First of all those LOC figures regarding the Ares I are estimates not actual results from experience.  Historically these estimates regarding human vehicles have been wrong.  The Shuttle was suppose to have a LOC of something like 1 in 1000, but ended up with a LOC of around 1 in 50.

The truth is that it all comes down to the theory of risk.  Many unmanned vehicles have much better reliability records than the Shuttle, yet they have less safety measures. 

The reason is that many failures are due to mistakes and problems that are not accounted for.  The Challenger disaster was caused by the cold temperature's effect on the O-ring of the SRB.  Colombia was caused by foam damaging the heat shield.  Both cases were caused by unforeseen problems, but both cases were learned from.  Modifications were made to the Shuttle to prevent these disasters from happening again.  Future designers now know of these problems, and should not make the same mistakes.

The truth is that the way to make HSF less risky is to simply do it more often.  The more we do it the more we learn and the better we become.

[aquanaut99]

Another aspect of the risk averse logic are the political blocs that want to end HSF and use the money for their pet projects. These blocs will try to use any and all LOC/LOV as a rallying cry to stop "wasting" the money used for the HSF project.

That is what I meant. Apollo was almost shut down by Mondale after the fire. That scared NASA management out of their minds and was the start of the no-risk culture. Remember, Gene Cernan was told by Chris Kraft that, if it were up to him, Apollo 17 wouldn't be allowed to launch, so that there was no risk of them not coming back. They feared that another disaster would kill NASA for good.

[DarkenedOne]

Space flight would have to become routine before loss of life became a more acceptable risk to the public.

The lesson here is the same morbid lesson as the comparison with war deaths, which the public largely shrugs off.  Space flight needs more death and more accidents, not fewer.

Or as noted PR man and Madison Avenue mogul Joseph Stalin put it, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

That is not correct.  It all comes down to the attitude and expectations.  Like the Joker said, "Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying!"

In war casualties are expected.  Body bags are transported to the front.  Procedures and policies exist for how to handle the dead.  National semetaries are built to honor them.  When the dead come in the military expresses condolences to the families, and honors the dead, but at the same time they reiterate that they sacrificed their lives for a greater good and that the mission must continue.

NASA needs to give up the "Failure is not an option mantra", and tell people that there will be loses.  NASA itself has to be institutionally prepared for those loses with policies and procedures.  Some have thrown around the idea of having a national semetary for explorers.  When they die they should express regret, and sympathy, but at the same time reiterate that they sacrificed their lives for a greater good and that the exploration must continue.

NO NATIONAL DAYS OF MOURNING. 

While more casualties would desensitize them I do not think we are going to have enough of them up there to have enough of an effect.

[go4mars]

For uber-high-risk stuff, send people like this with a "brain cloud".  Terminally ill, but still functional people.  Public won't mind if the alternative to a glorious fireball is something less useful but almost as near-term. 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/oAB9Y2CVqZU&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/oAB9Y2CVqZU&rel=1</a>

[mrmandias]

Space flight would have to become routine before loss of life became a more acceptable risk to the public.

The lesson here is the same morbid lesson as the comparison with war deaths, which the public largely shrugs off.  Space flight needs more death and more accidents, not fewer.

Or as noted PR man and Madison Avenue mogul Joseph Stalin put it, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

That is not correct.  It all comes down to the attitude and expectations.  Like the Joker said, "Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying!"

In war casualties are expected.  Body bags are transported to the front.  Procedures and policies exist for how to handle the dead.  National semetaries are built to honor them.  When the dead come in the military expresses condolences to the families, and honors the dead, but at the same time they reiterate that they sacrificed their lives for a greater good and that the mission must continue.

NASA needs to give up the "Failure is not an option mantra", and tell people that there will be loses.  NASA itself has to be institutionally prepared for those loses with policies and procedures.  Some have thrown around the idea of having a national semetary for explorers.  When they die they should express regret, and sympathy, but at the same time reiterate that they sacrificed their lives for a greater good and that the exploration must continue.

NO NATIONAL DAYS OF MOURNING. 

While more casualties would desensitize them I do not think we are going to have enough of them up there to have enough of an effect.

I agree with the national emetery idea, and the change fo attitude stuff too.

[93143]

Many unmanned vehicles have much better reliability records than the Shuttle

Name one.

Vehicles that haven't flown often enough to be statistically comparable don't count.

[DarkenedOne]

Many unmanned vehicles have much better reliability records than the Shuttle

Name one.

Vehicles that haven't flown often enough to be statistically comparable don't count.

The Delta II, Atlas II, and Tsyklon-2.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2009.html

[deltaV]

Many unmanned vehicles have much better reliability records than the Shuttle

Name one.

Vehicles that haven't flown often enough to be statistically comparable don't count.

The Delta II, Atlas II, and Tsyklon-2.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2009.html

I'd say those reliability numbers are a bit better than shuttle, not "much better" as you stated.

The shuttle has historically had a pretty low LOM rate. Its fatal flaw as a manned launch system was how 2 out of 3 loss of mission events also caused loss of crew. Shuttle had one partial failure with no injuries (abort to orbit) and two loss of crew events.

[93143]

The Delta II, Atlas II, and Tsyklon-2.

That's your idea of "much better"?

Keep in mind that Shuttle's failure rate of slightly less than 1.5% is on the margin of statistical significance as it is.  You cannot reasonably maintain that Tsyklon-2's 1% is "much better" when you're talking about one failure versus two - if the Shuttle program had been ended after the same number of flights it would have had the same failure rate.  Certainly the Delta II's 1.3% failure rate is indistinguishable from Shuttle's.  The successful run between STS-51L and STS-107 was 40% longer than the Atlas II's entire career.

And STS-107 was not strictly a launch failure.  I find the Shuttle's performance quite impressive considering the unusual number of failure modes...

Your statement was wrong.

[strangequark]

Many unmanned vehicles have much better reliability records than the Shuttle

Name one.

Vehicles that haven't flown often enough to be statistically comparable don't count.

The Delta II, Atlas II, and Tsyklon-2.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2009.html

Old data, so missing the last STS missions, and includes an STS mission with a low orbit. If you only include LOC/LOM cases (or ones that would be), then STS does not vary from the Delta II and Tsyklon-2. Atlas II only had about 60 launches, so not enough to compare.

[deltaV]

And STS-107 was not strictly a launch failure.

I disagree. The orbiter thermal protection system was not designed to withstand debris strikes because the external tank was required to not shed debris. The only failure to meet specifications that contributed to the STS-107 accident was the external tank foam shedding. The external tank was used only during launch and discarded afterward, so it's hard to call STS-107 anything but a launch failure.

It is true that the STS had stricter payload protection requirements than most launchers do, and the foam shedding event would have been a non-event if the payload were located at the top of the rocket. However the unusual strictness of the requirements doesn't excuse the launch system from failure to meet those known requirements.

Edit: maybe I exagerated a bit in STS-107 could also be seen as a failure to set reasonable requirements.

Edit: this is getting a bit off-topic.

[mars.is.wet]

I thought NASA missed a golden opportunity to re-brand "astronauts" as "explorers" and enter into a meaningful discussion of risk with the American people. 

I also think Mike Griffin missed an opportunity to innoculate NASA to an exploration failure by ending his tenure with a variant of the speech "people will die, and it will be worth it".

Pretty much no matter how you slice it, a trip to the surface of the moon and back will be about as risky as recent Shuttle flights (by similar analysis).

For once, Zubrin is right on the mark.

[DarkenedOne]

Many unmanned vehicles have much better reliability records than the Shuttle

Name one.

Vehicles that haven't flown often enough to be statistically comparable don't count.

The Delta II, Atlas II, and Tsyklon-2.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2009.html

I'd say those reliability numbers are a bit better than shuttle, not "much better" as you stated.

The shuttle has historically had a pretty low LOM rate. Its fatal flaw as a manned launch system was how 2 out of 3 loss of mission events also caused loss of crew. Shuttle had one partial failure with no injuries (abort to orbit) and two loss of crew events.

The Shuttle's fatal flaw was that there were only 5 of them. 

If an expendable rocket blows up the only real loss is the payload since the rocket was going to be lost anyway. 

When a Shuttle is lost you lose the payload, a 7 man crew, and an irreplaceable $1+ billion launch vehicle.  Even if you did not care for the astronauts.  For such a vehicle worth that much and is not replaceable a LOC of .03 was unacceptable.  Imagine if you car had a similar rate of failure. 

[Robotbeat]

I thought NASA missed a golden opportunity to re-brand "astronauts" as "explorers" and enter into a meaningful discussion of risk with the American people. 

I also think Mike Griffin missed an opportunity to innoculate NASA to an exploration failure by ending his tenure with a variant of the speech "people will die, and it will be worth it".

Pretty much no matter how you slice it, a trip to the surface of the moon and back will be about as risky as recent Shuttle flights (by similar analysis).

For once, Zubrin is right on the mark.

I'm pretty sure that going to the Moon's surface and back will be significantly riskier than one of the latest Shuttle flights (with enough testing, a flight to the surface of the Moon and back may be only as risky as one of the first Shuttle flights... 1/15-1/20 LOC chance). But I agree in general that we need to accept this risk.

[mars.is.wet]

I'm pretty sure that going to the Moon's surface and back will be significantly riskier than one of the latest Shuttle flights (with enough testing, a flight to the surface of the Moon and back may be only as risky as one of the first Shuttle flights... 1/15-1/20 LOC chance). But I agree in general that we need to accept this risk.
[/quote]

I saw a 1960's analysis once that showed LOC for the end-to-end Apollo missions calculated at 1/18.

I agree that a factor of 6 improvement (if we went back today) would be phenomenal. That is what Cx was shooting for.

But realism doesn't sell.

[Warren Platts]

@ Darkened One: That's a good point about RLV's in general.

I'm pretty sure that going to the Moon's surface and back will be significantly riskier than one of the latest Shuttle flights (with enough testing, a flight to the surface of the Moon and back may be only as risky as one of the first Shuttle flights... 1/15-1/20 LOC chance). But I agree in general that we need to accept this risk.

Not necessarily. Atlas has a good track record. Put a capsule on that to get them to orbit, that's half the battle right there. Getting back to Earth is also pretty safe; there were only a couple of Russian mishaps a long time ago. As someone said, the Columbia accident should really be considered a launch failure. And it could have been avoided if they had a LON capability and inspected the tiles before coming back.

Similarly for the Moon: hopefully, they will use the ULA DTAL landers. These are an inherently safe design: with 4 RL-10's they can have 3 engine-outs and still land safely. Since these would be evolutionary descendents of ACES, then there will already be a long track record before the first landing, thus upping the reliability, reducing risk. Set up a separate lander at the EML Gateway that would always be ready to mount a rescue mission if necessary.

[Robotbeat]

There's no abort option except for a long trip to Earth, ala Apollo 13. If the problem happens at the Moon's surface, you're out of luck.

Shuttle's last missions were pretty reliable and low risk (even without LAS). It's pretty unlikely for a Moon trip to get that low risk anytime soon. Shuttle made over 100 flights and had the real possibility of abort-to-orbit (and abort to Station) and rescue missions which wouldn't be an option for a lunar mission once it leaves LEO.

[deltaV]

The Shuttle's fatal flaw was that there were only 5 of them. 

If an expendable rocket blows up the only real loss is the payload since the rocket was going to be lost anyway. 

When a Shuttle is lost you lose the payload, a 7 man crew, and an irreplaceable $1+ billion launch vehicle.  Even if you did not care for the astronauts.  For such a vehicle worth that much and is not replaceable a LOC of .03 was unacceptable.  Imagine if you car had a similar rate of failure.

The amortized cost of loss of shuttles was around 0.02 * $3 billion = $60 million per flight. That's annoying but a small part of the overall launch costs.

[DarkenedOne]

The Delta II, Atlas II, and Tsyklon-2.

That's your idea of "much better"?

Keep in mind that Shuttle's failure rate of slightly less than 1.5% is on the margin of statistical significance as it is.  You cannot reasonably maintain that Tsyklon-2's 1% is "much better" when you're talking about one failure versus two - if the Shuttle program had been ended after the same number of flights it would have had the same failure rate.  Certainly the Delta II's 1.3% failure rate is indistinguishable from Shuttle's.  The successful run between STS-51L and STS-107 was 40% longer than the Atlas II's entire career.

And STS-107 was not strictly a launch failure.  I find the Shuttle's performance quite impressive considering the unusual number of failure modes...

Your statement was wrong.

First of all there is a 30% chance of the Shuttles actual success rate is equal to or greater than the Tsyklon-2 based on the experimental data.  Therefore it is not statistically insignificant. 

Secondly I would like to point of the flaw in this method.  Judging the launch vehicles reliability by this data is not accurate.  The Shuttle has been modified many times since its beginning, so there is no doubt that it is significantly more reliable than these launch figures depict.  Then again the same if true for the other vehicles as well.

In any case I did not make that point in say that the Shuttle is inferior in any way with data that for the reasons I stated above are irrelevant anyway. 

The point I am trying to make is that there is a learning curve, and that the best way to improve reliability and reduce risk is through experience. 

[mars.is.wet]

The amortized cost of loss of shuttles was around 0.02 * $3 billion = $60 million per flight. That's annoying but a small part of the overall launch costs.

Not when marginal launch costs were < $300M (up to the flight rate limit)

That is a real hit.

[Warren Platts]

There's no abort option except for a long trip to Earth, ala Apollo 13. If the problem happens at the Moon's surface, you're out of luck.

Shuttle's last missions were pretty reliable and low risk (even without LAS). It's pretty unlikely for a Moon trip to get that low risk anytime soon. Shuttle made over 100 flights and had the real possibility of abort-to-orbit (and abort to Station) and rescue missions which wouldn't be an option for a lunar mission once it leaves LEO.

Did you read what I just wrote? If you had an EML space station (it wouldn't have to be nearly as elaborate as ISS, a Bigelow module and a single launch would do) then you could have an abort-to-station option in the vicinity of the Moon. Also trajectories to EL1 don't typically require a big injection burn, so even though a free-return trajectory wouldn't be an option, there would still be a safe place to go that wouldn't require a lot of delta v to get to. And if you had a separate lander at the EML station, then rescue from the Moon's surface would be an option as well.

The place where you would be really SOL without a paddle would be the surface of Mars!

[Archibald]

If you only include LOC/LOM cases (or ones that would be), then STS does not vary from the Delta II and Tsyklon-2. Atlas II only had about 60 launches, so not enough to compare.

The plain old Ariane 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 flew 144 times, of which 116 were Ariane 4.
Of the 144, seven failed, but five of these failures were traced to the third, cryogenic stage (ESA had hard times with the HM-7).
So the lower composite only failed two times over 144 flights.
Of the two failures, one in 1980 was pogo during a test flight, it was solved, and never happened again.
The other was a human mistake: Flight 36, February 24, 1990. A worker forgot a piece of cloth in a Viking coolant tube.   
So the failure rate sounds very much like the shuttle. The bitter irony is that the old Arianes were never considered man-rated, and neither was the Viking.
Ariane 5 and the Vulcain were supposed to be man-rated, but when one looks at Ariane 5 early history (1996 - 2004) it is not exactly re-assuring. Ariane 5 beginnings were rather catastrophic.

Looking at Ariane history makes me think that man-rating is a rather subjective notion.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Zubrin is getting older and Mars does not seem any closer. Unfulfilled dreams can make a person bitter.

[aquanaut99]

Looking at Ariane history makes me think that man-rating is a rather subjective notion.

Man-rating is entirely subjective. The old Mercury-Atlas and Gemini-Titan would never pass current man-rating requirements, and I suspect Saturn IB and Saturn V wouldn't, either.

And STS-1 would be a total no-go, putting astronauts on an untested rocket with new and untested engines on the very first flight, for Pete's sake!

[spectre9]

SLS-1 should be manned.

I mean it's not like it's going to be the first flight of Orion, just the first flight of a booster that can take it to the moon.

[Robotbeat]

SLS-1 should be manned.

I mean it's not like it's going to be the first flight of Orion, just the first flight of a booster that can take it to the moon.

It may well be the first flight of Orion with a service module.
There were 2 unmanned flights of Saturn V before Apollo 8 (not counting 12 unmanned Saturn I/IB flights upon which the third stage of Saturn V was based).

[Jim]

SLS-1 should be manned.

I mean it's not like it's going to be the first flight of Orion,

How do you know that?

[spectre9]

Isn't this the first Orion?

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/11/eft-1-orion-hatch-door-orion-modal-testing/

Robotbeat might have a good point about SM.

You've proven me wrong many times before Jim and I don't mind that, it's all part of the discussion. I'm sorry if I bit your head off once, it wont happen again. 

[Jim]

Isn't this the first Orion?

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/11/eft-1-orion-hatch-door-orion-modal-testing/

Robotbeat might have a good point about SM.

You've proven me wrong many times before Jim and I don't mind that, it's all part of the discussion. I'm sorry if I bit your head off once, it wont happen again. 

First Crew Module

[spectre9]

So what's the difference between EFT-1 and a crew module? 

Sorry for the late reply.

[Jim]

So what's the difference between EFT-1 and a crew module? 

Sorry for the late reply.

Structurally nothing.   No crew systems.