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From: kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: What price safety? (was: Escape tower for shuttle orbiter?)
Message-ID: <635@bentley.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Mar-86 18:08:24 EST
Article-I.D.: bentley.635
Posted: Thu Mar 13 18:08:24 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 02:20:20 EST
References: <418@watcgl.UUCP> <627@bentley.UUCP>, <2024@peora.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner
Lines: 36

desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins) in <12286@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>:
>   I hate to sound callous, but I don't see the point of all of this just
>to save the crew.  If you could save the orbiter, that would be great, but
>you are talking about something that has got to cost hundreds of millions
>of dollars just to save the crew.  Doesn't this seem a trifle excessive?

vgfranceschi@watcgl.UUCP (Valerio Franceschin) in <418@watcgl.UUCP>:
>You don't sound callous, you sound like a neanderthal SAVAGE!

kwh@bentley.UUCP (Karl Heuer) in <627@bentley.UUCP>:
>Do you have airbags in your car?  If not, would you pay a million dollars
>to have them installed?  They do save lives.

jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) in <2024@peora.UUCP>:
>I think this analogy is fallacious.  It would make more sense to take the
>ratio    (cost of shuttle safety mechanism) / (cost of shuttle) = r
>and then multiply r * (cost of car)... you could then ask if the person is
>willing to pay that much.  The reason is that a person's individual budget
>is much smaller than NASA's ...

Actually, the point I was trying to make is that we must place a finite
value on safety; just because something will save lives does not mean it
should be done.  David asked a perfectly valid question, and I thought
Valerio's attack was unjustified.  Cost-vs.-Safety decisions have to be
made.

Note that [a] I am not saying it's not worth the price, I'm just defending
the right to question it; [b] It's hard to disagree that it would be kind of
nice to save the orbiter and the crew both; [c] in the Challenger incident,
the crew had no warning, so there would have been no time to use any such
safety feature.  (Interesting thought experiment: suppose that before the
51L flight, the safety issue had come up and NASA had "solved" it with some
form of ejection seats.  Then Challenger blows up before the crew can escape.
NASA might have had even more of a PR problem!)

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint