I have to dispute that doing it more safely is a worthwhile goal for SLS.
It's useful to think about safety issues in terms of the statistical value of a human life. This is how much one should be willing to spend to save one expected life. It's a vital number for planning purposes. For example, should we install a guard rail at this corner? Is controlling this release of this chemical justifiable? Compute if the cost is less than the expected value of lives saved. If so, spend the money, if not, don't.
The usual statistical value of a human life is around $10M. And you immediately see the problem: a rocket that costs $1B to launch is, in effect, killing 100 statistical people just by being launched. If the result of the launch is valuable enough to justify that mathematical carnage, wouldn't it also justify subjecting the astronauts to real risk? Conversely, if it's worth delaying a launch to reduce the risk to astronauts, is the launch really worth having spent all that money on at all?
The space program has been caught in an internal contradiction, where the purported benefits are claimed to justify large expenditures, but not claimed to justify risking astronauts. And this makes no sense.
To actually justify reducing astronaut risks, launch and mission costs must first be greatly reduced.
Except this math doesn't always work. 40k people die in the US in car crashes and nobody really cares. One idiot tried to smuggle something onto a plane in his shoe a couple of decades ago (didn't even kill anybody), and now for all these decades 1.5 million people _per day_ must spend countless hours in lines to take their shoes off.
I don't think the usual statistical value applies to an astronaut, especially an astronaut on a mission.
At least, the loss to NASA will be much more. For one, they're going to spend a ton of money on investigagions. For another, it could significantly impact their future budget, and their ability to hire. It would depend on the details of the deadly incident though.
Ah, so astronauts are inherently much more valuable than your average citizen?
Our course is clear! We must design launchers as cheaply as possible, to launch as many people into space as possible, to transmute them from relatively worthless disposable units into valuable astronaut heroes. Even if 10% of them die (say) the net increase in their overall value will make the effort totally worth it. They don't even have to do anything up there; just being an astronaut is inherently valuable, I am being told.
Would people want to drive cars built by people with this mindset, on roads designed by people with this mindset, to get to airports to fly in aircraft built and regulated by people with this mindset?
Trick question! Almost everyone does and doesn't see anything wrong with it.
I would not want to get into an expensive risky rocket, since I don't see the benefit that would be commensurate with the enormous cost. If the cost were radically reduced, I might try it, and in that very much cheaper rocket the safety level would be much higher (or else the actual cost, including risk x value of my life, would swamp the ticket price.)
It's useful to think about safety issues in terms of the statistical value of a human life. This is how much one should be willing to spend to save one expected life. It's a vital number for planning purposes. For example, should we install a guard rail at this corner? Is controlling this release of this chemical justifiable? Compute if the cost is less than the expected value of lives saved. If so, spend the money, if not, don't.
The usual statistical value of a human life is around $10M. And you immediately see the problem: a rocket that costs $1B to launch is, in effect, killing 100 statistical people just by being launched. If the result of the launch is valuable enough to justify that mathematical carnage, wouldn't it also justify subjecting the astronauts to real risk? Conversely, if it's worth delaying a launch to reduce the risk to astronauts, is the launch really worth having spent all that money on at all?
The space program has been caught in an internal contradiction, where the purported benefits are claimed to justify large expenditures, but not claimed to justify risking astronauts. And this makes no sense.
To actually justify reducing astronaut risks, launch and mission costs must first be greatly reduced.