kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) (03/14/86)
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
polish@garfield.columbia.edu (Nathaniel Polish) (03/15/86)
It should be pointed out that in all these systems where relatively fragile cargo is riding on top of several million pounds of thrust that we are dependant on EVERYTHING working. All the senerios involve everyone of thousands of components working perfecting with one or two non-critical systems failing. Virtually nothing will save you from a crit 1 failure because of the forces involved and the speed. This is why they are crit 1. Ejection systems are only useful if they can realistically be used and rehersed with well defined parameters for their use. One of the IEEE rags mentioned recently that ditching is possable (release of the orbiter during SRB thrust). Ditching is considered so dangerous that it is not a practiced abort mode. It is a simple fact that there are a class of failures from which there is no reasonable escape. An escape rocket might save you from a few failures but it hardly is obvious which ones.
desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins) (03/15/86)
>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? 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. Wonderful analogy. This is exactly my point. 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 ... No! This does *not* make more sense. This is equivalent to the assumption that the life of an astronaut is worth more than the life of any other citizen. How can you justify this (except to the extent that a lot of expensive training has been invested, which is still orders of magnitude short of what we are talking about)? In fact there is a good argument that it is worth less, since the astronaut has made a conscious and voluntary decision to risk his life. In other words, he is agreeing to take the risk in exchange for the benefits to himself. Is each person not free to choose the value he attaches to his own life? Also note that any intelligent decision on a safety feature must necessarily take into account the probability of the event it is designed to prevent, which your proposal does not even do. In article <635@bentley.UUCP> kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) writes: >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. Yes. Thank you. -- David desJardins
vgfranceschi@watcgl.UUCP (Valerio Franceschin) (03/15/86)
> 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 So why didn't you say that instead of providing that blatantly fallacious analogy? I'm glad it was someone else and not I that pointed it out. > 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. Of course cost-vs-safety factors have to be considered, NASA has a limited budget. What ticked me off about David's posting is his suggestion that the orbiter is more precious than "just the crew." This is the same kind of criminal mentality employed by nuclear strategists when they talk of 10 million casualties during a nuclear exchange to be "acceptable." I'm sorry but I value human life and I find this reasoning to be repulsive. I stand by my original comment! > 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!) Imagine the PR problem that NASA would have if it was primarily concerned with it's hardware first and foremost, and then the lives of the crew. "Well, yes, we could've got them out, but either way, the orbiter would've been lost. So we figured it wasn't worth it. After all, we can always train more astronauts". Valerio Franceschin
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (03/19/86)
David DesJardins, commenting on my suggestion that it's more reasonable to weigh the costs of a safety system in proportion of an individual or agency's ability (or willingness) to pay for it, writes: > No! This does *not* make more sense. This is equivalent to the > assumption that the life of an astronaut is worth more than the life of > any other citizen. How can you justify this (except to the extent that > a lot of expensive training has been invested, which is still orders of > magnitude short of what we are talking about)? No, I disagree with that. It makes the assumption that you can put a dollar value on a person's life, and further that such a value is defined in terms of the amount being paid to protect it. This definition of a "value of life" is one that was proposed earlier, but it is not one that I accept in making my assertion. I maintain that no dollar value can be placed on anybody's life; by demonstration I would point out that murder is a capital offense, not one that a person can pay a fine as punishment for. Instead, my argument was based on "willingness to mitigate risks" in a risky endeavor. Using the example that you accept as demonstrating your claim, that of airbags in a car: If I drive my car, I must acknowledge that it is a dangerous proposition. I deal with this in several ways: I don't drive as often as I would if it was not dangerous; I drive defensively; and I use safety features (and choose a car with good safety attributes). All of these are efforts to reduce the risk in proportion to the alternatives (e.g., driving a motorcycle, constantly, in a reckless manner). I choose to do each of these things, eventhough the alternative might be desirable for various reasons, because I feel that the reduction in the probability of personal injury offsets the tradeoffs of convenience. However, I in fact don't have airbags in my car, despite the fact that I believe in them. The sole reason I don't is that they are so expensive. Now, I realize that having them would be safer; however, I don't feel that it would be safer in proportion to the cost. (On the other hand, air bags that protected one's head from colliding into the left door window I would consider worth the cost.) On the other hand, if I were flying in the shuttle, and assuming I had control over the budget decisions, I would make a linearly proportional comparison of costs vs. risks. Since the shuttle is by nature a more expensive vehicle, to get a proportionately greater amount of protection (proportionate WRT the increase in protection from car airbags) I would expect to pay a proportionately greater price (proportionate WRT the cost of the two vehicles). So I might be willing to pay, say, $200,000 for shuttle airbags whereas I wouldn't be willing to pay more than $1000 for car airbags; I would expect the airbags in the shuttle to cost more due to their being bigger, having to meet military specs, etc. (Assuming here that the shuttle:car cost is 200,000:1000, which I am sure is not correct in reality). The same reasoning would hold for some other safety feature of the shuttle that gave an equivalent reduction in risk. But note that this reasoning has nothing to do with "value of life", on which I maintain no dollar value can be placed. It has solely to do with how much I am willing to pay to gain a given reduction in the risk (which I already know exists) in using the vehicle. If I (somewhat subjectively) feel that paying $x more is "not worth it" in terms of the extra safety gained, then I won't do it. However, on a vehicle costing millions of dollars I would not to expect to get a safety increase equivalent to that of adding car airbags, and expect to only pay the price of the car airbags. The shuttle does more, under more difficult circumstances, and I would expect to have to pay more for systems associated with it. [Note that implicit in the above is the assumption that the systems involved actually would cost proportionately more. I think this would be the case for the system the original question centered on. The issue was how to protect astronauts from catastrophic failures of the shuttle vehicle. Clearly a system to do this would be considerably more complex, thus more costly, than one to protect a driver of an automobile, even if both used a personnel ejection facility of some sort. E.g., in the case of a car, you could just eject the person out the top of the vehicle and have him come down on a parachute. A much more complex system would be required to pull the shuttle personnel away from the vehicle at a high altitude and get them to the ground safely.] -- E. Roskos
rupp@noscvax.UUCP (William L. Rupp) (03/21/86)
In article <2035@peora.UUCP>, jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) writes: > > However, I in fact don't have airbags in my car, despite the fact that > I believe in them. The sole reason I don't is that they are so expensive. > Now, I realize that having them would be safer; however, I don't feel that > it would be safer in proportion to the cost. (On the other hand, air > bags that protected one's head from colliding into the left door window > I would consider worth the cost.) That's it exactly. A decision to buy this or that safety device (for the home, car, shuttle, whatever) has nothing to do with the value of life. The value of life is assumed, or one would not be pondering the purchase of safety devices in the first place. The question always must be, "What is the most prudent expenditure of the limited resources at my disposal?" In the case of shuttle, it appears that there may be no way of providing the crew with an exacpe during the first few minutes of the flight. All the more reason to take extra care to see that the launch goes off safely. All the more reason NOT to take chances!!!!!! Yes, it's hindsight, but more and more it is looking to me as if there was a terrible failure of vision on the part of those who made the decision to launch under untried conditions. They are trying to rationalize now, but why couldn't someone have said, "Do we really HAVE to launch now?"
desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins) (03/22/86)
In article <2035@peora.UUCP> jer@peora.UUCP (E. Roskos) writes: >No, I disagree with that. It makes the assumption that you can put a dollar >value on a person's life, and further that such a value is defined in >terms of the amount being paid to protect it. >This definition of a "value of life" is one that was proposed earlier, but >it is not one that I accept in making my assertion. I maintain that no >dollar value can be placed on anybody's life; by demonstration I would point >out that murder is a capital offense, not one that a person can pay a fine >as punishment for. >Instead, my argument was based on "willingness to mitigate risks" in a >risky endeavor. Let me clarify my point by making the following *definition*: "value of life" ::= "amount to be paid to protect said life." This is what I mean when I use these words; if you object we can use "mortality cost" or some other euphonism instead. Certainly I do not mean that lives can be bought and sold! >Using the example that you accept as demonstrating your claim, that of >airbags in a car: If I drive my car, I must acknowledge that it is a >dangerous proposition. I deal with this in several ways: I don't drive >as often as I would if it was not dangerous; I drive defensively; and I >use safety features (and choose a car with good safety attributes). All >of these are efforts to reduce the risk in proportion to the alternatives >(e.g., driving a motorcycle, constantly, in a reckless manner). I choose >to do each of these things, even though the alternative might be desirable >for various reasons, because I feel that the reduction in the probability >of personal injury offsets the tradeoffs of convenience. >[and now the point!] >However, I in fact don't have airbags in my car, despite the fact that >I believe in them. The sole reason I don't is that they are so expensive. >Now, I realize that having them would be safer; however, I don't feel that >it would be safer in proportion to the cost. (On the other hand, air >bags that protected one's head from colliding into the left door window >I would consider worth the cost.) Exactly!! Let us estimate that airbags for your car would cost $1000 and would have a 1/1000 chance of saving your life. Clearly the ratio is the relevant quantity; if it cost $2000 and had a 1/500 chance of saving your life the decision would be essentially the same. You have made the decision that this is not worth the cost. Let us further suppose that each astronaut has made the same decision (this seems likely, right?). >On the other hand, if I were flying in the shuttle, and assuming I had >control over the budget decisions, I would make a linearly proportional >comparison of costs vs. risks. Since the shuttle is by nature a more >expensive vehicle, to get a proportionately greater amount of protection >(proportionate WRT the increase in protection from car airbags) I would >expect to pay a proportionately greater price (proportionate WRT the cost >of the two vehicles). So I might be willing to pay, say, $200,000 for >shuttle airbags whereas I wouldn't be willing to pay more than $1000 for >car airbags; I would expect the airbags in the shuttle to cost more due to >their being bigger, having to meet military specs, etc. (Assuming here >that the shuttle:car cost is 200,000:1000, which I am sure is not correct >in reality). The same reasoning would hold for some other safety feature >of the shuttle that gave an equivalent reduction in risk. But now the point becomes clear. Suppose you are an astronaut. Would it make sense for the government to spend $200,000 to save your life 1/1000 of the time (by putting airbags in the shuttle) when they could spend $1000 to achieve the same effect (by putting airbags in your car!)? After all, your life is your life! Why should the government waste $199,000 saving your life in a very inefficient way (actually $199,999,000 using the true figures!!!)? -- David desJardins
dick@ucsfcca.UUCP (Dick Karpinski) (03/24/86)
In article <2035@peora.UUCP> jer@peora.UUCP writes: > >This definition of a "value of life" is one that was proposed earlier, but >it is not one that I accept in making my assertion. I maintain that no >dollar value can be placed on anybody's life; by demonstration I would point >out that murder is a capital offense, not one that a person can pay a fine >as punishment for. > ... >However, I in fact don't have airbags in my car, despite the fact that >I believe in them. The sole reason I don't is that they are so expensive. I believe that you are misled by feeling that money is dirty or some such. There is no need to make murder an infraction punishable by fine, just because there is a value for human life. We need to have and use such a financial value in order to compare apples and apples. The true beauty of the invention of money is in making such comparison easy. Karl Marx showed some of the remaining problems, but we need not avoid the useful aspects of the abbreviation. Just convert it all to generic "value units" if dollar values on human life give you creeps. >Now, I realize that having them would be safer; however, I don't feel that >it would be safer in proportion to the cost. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Exactly; if you use dollars, it works out cleanly. >But note that this reasoning has nothing to do with "value of life", on >which I maintain no dollar value can be placed. Huh? >If I (somewhat subjectively) >feel that paying $x more is "not worth it" in terms of the extra safety >gained, then I won't do it. Why not use dollars? If you like, I can help you make your "feelings" consistent with each other. The literature on decision analysis makes many references to such devices to help folks who otherwise have no rational way to compare their alternatives. Dick -- Dick Karpinski Manager of Unix Services, UCSF Computer Center UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf!dick (415) 476-4529 (12-7) BITNET: dick@ucsfcca Compuserve: 70215,1277 Telemail: RKarpinski USPS: U-76 UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143
hogg@utcsri.UUCP (John Hogg) (03/24/86)
Thoughts from another savage: I can certainly put a dollar value on human life, given appropriate data to work from. Challenger was MUCH more valuable than her crew. And any major additional escape mechanism is unlikely to be worth the weight, cost, and time. Why? Because a shuttle costs ~$1,500,000,000US. That is money collected from Americans that could have been used for something else. I happen to believe that no better cause could be found for these funds, but other options (ignoring simply not collecting them) do exist. How many lives would be saved by another BILLION dollars spent on cancer research? How about reduction of air pollution? Or, to be distressingly plebian, what would a billion dollars of highway improvements do to the death tolls on American roads? I have no supporting data, but an expenditure of this size would probably save orders of magnitudes more lives in the long run. American roads are poor! Life is dangerous. Space travel seems to be somewhat more dangerous than remaining on the ground. But, like computer security, at some point the risks must be traded off against the costs. An escape capsule or tower would reduce payload, delay resumption of flights by a substantial amount, add numerous potential failure points - and save fewer lives than mundane highway guardrails. If you truly believe that life is precious, approach the saving of it with rationality. -- John Hogg Computer Systems Research Institute, UofT ...utzoo!utcsri!hogg Standard disclaimer: the above may or may not contain sarcasm, satire, irony or facetiousness. It does not contain smiley-faces.