It is no more dangerous now to fly a shutle than it was before Columbia. What has changed is our (and NASA's) *understanding* of the danger.
New failure modes were demonstrated which had been ignored, and a full risk analysis showed that there was considerably more risk than NASA had wanted to believe, or wanted to tell others about.
Personally, I reckon that the first human mission to Mars will be a one-way mission by a volunteer crew. For the weight of a return rocket, you can carry a lot of supplies- maybe enough for 5 or 10 years on th the surface. In that time, a "rescue" rocket may arrive, or the volunteers may die through accidents or radiation exposure. Either way, they'll get a lot of absolutely groundbreaking science done and become heroes of the 21st century in the same way that polar pioneers like Scott and Shackleton did.
Just my $0.02 worth...
Space/Science » in reply to True, NASA gets its funding from the people...
Why is it more dangerous?
The whole thread (25 posts)
- A robot to the HST, not simple...
- It shows a troubling mindset at NASA
- We need to fix this!
- It has been developing for a long time
- re: Liftoff-Landing
- Human beings are capable of enormous courage
- It has been developing for a long time
- We need to fix this!
- re: For $2.2 Billion you could go a long way toward designing a new space based telescope
- A poor idea
- It shows a troubling mindset at NASA