From: zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk   
      
   Rick Jones wrote:   
      
   > Peter Fairbrother wrote:   
      
   >> Why should spaceflight be significantly less safe than air travel? It   
   doesn't   
   >> have to be.   
   >   
   > While I suppose some of the lessons learned in the 100 year history of   
   > powered aviation might be applied to spaceflight, given that   
   > spaceflight is only 40 years old or so - one might consider it even   
   > younger I suppose if you want to say "commercial spaceflight" would it   
   > perhaps be better to hold it to a standard closer to that of aviation   
   > at age 40 or so?   
      
   Perhaps age 60 or so, what with future shock and the increasing pace of   
   development.   
      
   That would be about equivalent to 1960's aviation - which wasn't that much   
   less safe then today's. To put numbers on it, perhaps one fatality per   
   1,000,000 passenger-flights? I have no idea if that's right, but it sounds   
   like a ballpark minimum.   
      
   But people are talking about fatality rates for space travel of around one   
   per 10,000 or 1,000 passenger-flights, or even 1 per 100 (approx. Shuttle   
   rate), which is very significantly worse, and in my view completely   
   unacceptable, certainly for space tourism purposes.   
      
      
   I don't really think we could easily get parity with today's aviation fatal   
   accident rate (about 1 in 20,000,000) but we have to do a lot better than   
   that. That means lots of r+d, testing, design, quality building, flight   
   testing and experience, and that needs lots of capital. You need at least a   
   billion and a half, preferably more, a 100 million or two won't cut it.   
      
      
   [..]   
      
   > (I wonder if the safety of a bizjet is actually better than that of   
   > commercial aviation?)   
      
   I wondered that too, but if you can afford a bizjet you can presumably set   
   the level of maintenance, pilot training etc to suit your safety needs.   
      
      
   --   
   Peter Fairbrother   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)