Shuttle

Steve Chapman notes that if a comercial airline lost passengers at the same rate as the shuttle we would be losing 40 planes a day. He points out that such risk might be acceptable for a mission to Mars but not for the sort of routine missions the Shuttle is doing now.

The funny thing is that when it was going where no man had gone before the Shuttle compiled a safety record that commercial airlines of the time could envy. Now that they are going where anyone with a spare $20 million and a reason (though, given that we are now soliciting ideas for experiments from 3rd graders even those seem to be in short supply), they have a record that would ground a six seat Alaskan adventure tour operator. The Shuttle was originally going to make going into space as routine as commuting to work. If every 60th trip to the office everyone in your car got incinerated I think you would be asked to take your name off the office car pool list.

There is an obvious solution—the Russians. They have a vehicle that gets things into space far more cheaply than ours and doesn’t blow up. And we owe them one. Apparently, during the late 70 détente period we grew a little careless about our security. The Russians got a-hold of the plans for the Shuttle and built an exact replica. The Russian scientist complained to their political masters that they didn’t think the thing was sound and that they were better off using their old fashioned rockets. Their political betters brushed them off, “The Americans are spending billions on this thing, do you think they are stupid?” To their credit, the Russians never flew theirs. Still, I think we owe the Russians some compensation for allowing such a dangerous piece of technology escape into the world where it could do serious harm.