You are guilty of gross oversimplification. The point of virtually meaningless is that it has little bearing not no bearing. You look at a near miss and ignore where the actual fatalities occurred. There are good reasons for this due to the stresses and extremes of launch and reentry. The cruise phase is far easier especially with well designed and tested equipment. The greatest risk is solar flares and unexpected life support problems which will kill you almost as surely on the Moon as Mars or in transit despite relative distances to Earth. You take a very large portion of the risk going to the Moon despite a far shorter trip. There is no point in taking that risk if you can accomplish the testing and design on Earth. It is also hard to justify the added cost for the Moon over LEO which has slightly less risk. You also ignore how close Apollo 13 and the incidents on Mir were to being fatal. Luck and human reaction had more to due with survival than nearness to Earth. See above about testing.
Regards,
Mark
Space/Science » in reply to " 3 days distance is virtually MEANINGLESS."
Poor Risk Analysis
The whole thread (75 posts)
- The Moon as a test bed.
- Guess you haven't hear the news yet: the cometary impact hazard is far greater than was believed earlier
- The Earth & LEO As Test Bed.
- re: The Earth & LEO As Test Bed.
- And as Yet Nobody Has Addressed The Oversights In The Original Article
- re: The Earth & LEO As Test Bed.
- Ok
- re: The Earth & LEO As Test Bed.
- re: The Earth & LEO As Test Bed.
- PS
- Case In Point - Funny You Don't See It