Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa...
by pfdietz on Sunday November 06, 2022 @06:43PM
(#33498931)
NASA's policy is to avoid uncontrolled reentry when the chance of killing someone is greater than 10^-4.
How valuable is that? We can determine that using the concept of the "statistical value of a human life". For example, the NRC assigns a human life a statistical value of $9M when determining of the cost of some nuclear safety improvement is justified. This is similar to the value used for determining if traffic safety improvements are worthwhile or if medical procedures are justified.
Multiplying, this is saying that it's unacceptable that the cost of a reentry be as a little as $900. This seems quite unreasonable: the cost of avoiding uncontrolled entry should often be much higher than this. And indeed, if you look at what NASA actually does, it often gives wavers of this requirement. This tells me the requirement is of dubious legitimacy, existing more for PR purposes than because it's good policy.
I doubt the Chinese care about the political optics enough to waste their time avoiding such a low expected cost outcome. Nor should airlines cancel flights to avoid something like that either -- the cost far exceeds the expected benefit.
How valuable is that? We can determine that using the concept of the "statistical value of a human life". For example, the NRC assigns a human life a statistical value of $9M when determining of the cost of some nuclear safety improvement is justified. This is similar to the value used for determining if traffic safety improvements are worthwhile or if medical procedures are justified.
Multiplying, this is saying that it's unacceptable that the cost of a reentry be as a little as $900. This seems quite unreasonable: the cost of avoiding uncontrolled entry should often be much higher than this. And indeed, if you look at what NASA actually does, it often gives wavers of this requirement. This tells me the requirement is of dubious legitimacy, existing more for PR purposes than because it's good policy.
I doubt the Chinese care about the political optics enough to waste their time avoiding such a low expected cost outcome. Nor should airlines cancel flights to avoid something like that either -- the cost far exceeds the expected benefit.