[noonespecial]

Space is dangerous. We should stop pretending it can be made "safe". It just gives politicians something to wag their tongues at when something inevitably goes wrong.

If you go to space you might not come back. That's why explorers rock and everyone else watches TV.

The article also misses an important variable. How much is discovery worth? Once that's added to the plus column, all of the other costs seem insignificant.

[lutorm]

I think this is a reasonable outlook. Unlike those that die of cancer or asthma or car accidents or whatever, astronauts get a choice. First, estimating the astronaut risk is done a priori and is much more uncertain than the observed risks. Second, it seems the same value should not be applied to those that choose to accept the risk compared to those that are at mercy of things beyond their control.

Does anyone know if the military applies the same kind of calculations? Seems hard to believe.

[heliodor]

I'd disagree there. Once upon a time, the sea was seen as dangerous. Everything can be made "safe" at some point.

[oconnore]

Every year there are between 600 and 700 recorded deaths from recreational boating alone (not counting industrial or military accidents) [1]. No matter how safe we make it, there will always be accidents, and those accidents will kill people.

[1] http://www.uscgboating.org/statistics/accident_statistics.as...

[tlrobinson]

Nothing is perfectly safe, but if you could make space travel as safe as boating then I'd say heliodor was correct.

[jcrites]

Exactly. The air was once dangerous as well. Now there is negligible risk to travel almost anywhere in the world within 24 hours.

[usaar333]

The most dangerous occupation in America, by fatalities, is fisherman. Yah, it's safer than it was in the past, but I wouldn't call it "safe", when compared to sitting in front of your computer.

[philjohn]

I think the families of the tens of thousands of people killed in the Japanese Tsunami last year would disagree.

[heliodor]

Yes, one day space will hurl us an asteroid and we'll be doomed.

My point was regarding transportation through a given medium.

[moonchrome]

Still it's undeniable that progress has been made. It's incremental and there are trade-offs, in the future we could have protective domes spanning entire cities that would withstand that amount of pressure for eg.

[ctdonath]

If you go to space you might not come back. That's why explorers rock and everyone else watches TV.

http://www.wondermark.com/comics/326.gif

[eigenvector]

Every year hundreds of people do literally walk across the country on trails such as the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.

[kscaldef]

It also misses things like: What's the cost of a million schoolchildren watching a space shuttle explode?

[maratd]

I reject the notion that we should coddle our children. The teacher is there for a reason. To provide context to what the child is being exposed to. And that can make all the difference.

Yes, you can die. Yes, it is dangerous. Yes, these brave men risked their lives and they lost. And if they had to do it all over again, they would risk their lives again.

Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitting in a cave poking a fire with a stick.

[jaredhansen]

>brave men risked their lives

>men like them

It wasn't just men:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Resnik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_McAuliffe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpana_Chawla

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Clark

Language has power, and using "men" in this context makes invisible the contributions and bravery of these women and others like them. Sorry to seem PC, but it's important to get this stuff right if we want our kids to grow up in a better world.

[verroq]

That's ridiculous. When people use men in this context, they refer to humanity as a whole. Don't confuse your lack of English understanding as being PC.

[jleader]

So "women" is a collective noun for a group of humans all of whom are female, and "men" is a collective noun for a group of humans who are some mixture of males and females. There's no collective noun for a group of humans all of whom are male? Doesn't that strike you as a bit asymmetric?

I understand that "men" is sometimes used in the way you describe, but I believe that people who do so consider male the default gender of humans.

[maratd]

Brevity is the soul of wit. You certainly lose accuracy, but honestly, nobody wants to read a wall of text.

If you want to presume some sort of conspiracy sexist default supremacist undertone in what I wrote, fine, but I think that says more about you than about me.

[sprog]

Stop trolling this feminist garbage.

[timwiseman]

I couldn't agree with this more. Life is filled with risks, pretending otherwise is not good for anyone. But pushing the frontiers, exploring the boundaries comes with much greater risks.

Yet those risks can come with great rewards when they pay off and it is only by accepting those higher risks that society can advance and improve.

[ew6082]

Yeah, I still remember watching it happen in class. Those men and women were all heroes, and inspired many of us to go into STEM careers.

[ThaddeusQuay2]

"Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitting in a cave poking a fire with a stick."

Because of them, we now have large sticks which take us to space by poking the Earth with fire. :)

I agree with your entire comment. Think about the explorers of old, crossing oceans and continents, in hazardous conditions, with little technology to aid them, and with even less knowledge of where their journeys would lead. We stand on the brave shoulders of the countless who have come before, and it would be an insult to their accomplishments if we, as humans, suddenly abandoned, in the name of ultimate safety, the wonder of exploration, and the courage required to see it through.

[Splines]

Because if it wasn't for men like them, we would still be sitting in a cave poking a fire with a stick.

That's a false dichotomy. Children don't need to watch a shuttle burst into flames in order for science to progress.

[nkoren]

Children don't need to watch a shuttle burst into flames in order for science to progress.

Yes, they do. Progress with zero risk of failure is no progress at all. To even attempt progress with zero risk of failure is to ensure that:

1.) You will minimize your progress

2.) You will fail anyway

...As the Shuttle all too ably demonstrated.

[Splines]

I think we misunderstand. I'm arguing that children don't need to watch potentially disturbing imagery to ensure that they contribute to furthering science in the future.

The argument "we should not coddle children because science" rings false to me. "Coddling children" is a bit of a strawman; there are things we don't tell children because of their innate immaturity. As are most things, it's a spectrum.

[kbolino]

But in order for children to mature, they must be exposed to circumstances that challenge their naive understanding. Maturity is only correlated with age, not caused by it.

Watching a shuttle explode on TV is not the same as, say, witnessing first-hand the gruesome death of one's own parents at the hands of a psychopath.

I agree that a balance has to be struck, but I think you've lost sight of where that balance is.

[mikeash]

I would argue that hiding things from children the way we do only works because we aren't always successful at it. If we were able to hide things from children with 100% reliability, we'd end up with young adults incapable of functioning in society.

[jeremya]

The cost of a million school children watching a space shuttle explode is the cost of the million conversations with parents and other adults that occur afterwards. These should be conversations that help develop each child's understanding of the world and the risks, challenges, and rewards of great human endeavors.

[losvedir]

I've thought about this for a few minutes and I really don't know. What are you getting at? I'm not even sure if the dollar value of the cost is negative or positive. It was a tragedy, sure, but what's the lesson the kids take? Not to go into the sciences? Or to think about heroes who take on great risks to earn the knowledge that they're now learning in school?

I honestly don't know how to incorporate that aspect into the dollar cost/benefit the article proposes.

[pnathan]

Invaluable. That's a wonderful opportunity for the million schoolchildren to develop a more nuanced and deeper understanding of the real world and the existence of failure.

[gnaritas]

Children should be exposed to the world, not sheltered from it. A parent's job is to prepare the child for the world, not hide the world from them with some naive and damaging attempt to keep them innocent. Sheltered children wind up unprepared for reality when it hits them smack in the face when they get on their own.

[jrockway]

Less than the cost of them watching their parents die of obesity and heart disease. But we don't get all panicy about that...

[bwarp]

In my case it was a desire to be an engineer!

[hyperbovine]

No, that's exactly what it's not missing. Our fear of catastrophe is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. Probably no single event in the history of space exploration contributed more to that fear than Challenger (and to a lesser extent, Columbia).

[sliverstorm]

I can't speak for everyone, but I feel like something like that would have guaranteed I become either an astronaut or aerospace engineer.

[waterlesscloud]

What you really mean is what's the cost of a million schoolchildren watching a nation give up after a space shuttle explodes.

The damage is in the response, not the event.