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Posted by molk213 on November 21, 2006, 5:52 am
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Hello everybody.
I would like to open a thread on Space Safety and start with an
extract:
<< The risk level currently specified (and achieved) in human
spaceflights much differs from what is perceived as acceptable by the
general public and by political representatives. Such discrepancy is a
major threat to the continuation of human space programs, including
upcoming private enterprises (e.g. space tourism). General public
tolerance to accidents varies from system to system (and changes with
time). In the US, one million people were killed in car accidents in
the period 1975-2000. In 2001 alone, 11 millions vehicles were involved
in crashes, resulting in more than 42,000 people killed and 3.0 million
injured. The risk of car accidents is about 1 in 5000 departures. The
risk in civil aviation is 1 in 2-3 millions departures. Although the
aviation safety record is quite impressive compared to other
transportation means, the aviation regulatory bodies launched in 2001
an initiative to achieve an accident rate of 1 in 10 million or better.
The reason was that the projected traffic increase in the next decades
would lead to an (absolute) number of accidents per year which could
negatively influence the general public perception of air safety, and
in turn impact further industry growth. The level of risk of very
complex space systems as the Shuttle is embedded in the architecture
and operations concept originally selected, as well as in the available
technologies. One accident in 100 flights is somehow "built-in" and
may possibly be improved only marginally. Would the Shuttle have flown
at a rate comparable to the initially foreseen one, the entire fleet
would have been long since wiped-out. Pioneers of space tourism
publicly state that their craft must be "100 times safer" of
current space systems but while they concede that orbital flights are
order of magnitude more complex, they seem eventually to count on
public risk acceptance comparable to early times of aviation.
Unfortunately for them, time and (safety) culture is much different
nowadays. Regardless of the extent to which legal liability laws may
protect space tourism operators, the industry may not be able to
survive the public's response to its first few accidents. In any
case, there is very little or no public tolera nce to failures which
are within the reach of current knowledge and technologies, but caused
by economic pressure or by lack of suitable management/regulatory
show/hide quoted text
attention >>
This is taken from www.iaass.org which is the website of an
association for the advancement of space safety.
Any comments and contribution to this thread would be very appreciated.
Thanks.
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