Re:NASA not ready for dangers of deep space, auditors say
by jessriedel on Monday November 23, 2015 @08:03PM
(#10618497)
It's not possible to justify the very high price we pay for human safety within the space program based on value to the mission. If it were only a matter of the mission, we would accept tremendously more risk. Human lives are only valued at a but under $10 million, so even for a 10-person mission to Mars the value of the humans is < 1% of the cost of the mission.
Because of the diminishing returns to safety spending, it's generally better from an economics perspective to accept an order-unity chance of failure and just send multiple missions. But obviously, this is not how we design human space travel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...
Because of the diminishing returns to safety spending, it's generally better from an economics perspective to accept an order-unity chance of failure and just send multiple missions. But obviously, this is not how we design human space travel.