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0 pointsedgyquant3y ago0 comments

Space flight is the one industry with a better track record I’d say.

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I wonder by what metric this is true. For instance, I’m sure the fatality per flight of manned space flight is an order of magnitude worse than commercial air flight in the US.

perihelions3y ago

Easily *six* orders of magnitude. STS saw two crashes in O(10^2) flights (and SpaceX has much smaller numbers still). The US handles O(10^7) commercial flights per year, none of which crashed in 10+ years (I think).

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers

edgyquantOP3y ago

Ridiculous. This is comparing the modern commercial private space flight industry with the still maturing mostly public industry. Compare how dangerous the first twenty years of air flight was. We haven’t achieved the same level of commercial space flight due to just how cautious we’ve been.

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wyldfire3y ago

Speculating - what if we only consider craft piloting errors? That would rule out many fatalities - Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia.

edgyquantOP3y ago

You sure? When air flight was pre-commercial it was a dangerous business indeed. Had we been as cautious as with space flight we wouldn’t have had commercial air flights until very recently.

mc323y ago

It’s important to account for the frequency difference for these events. One of them has thousands of flights per day, the other not as many.

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hilbertseries3y ago

I wonder by what metric this is true. For instance, I’m sure the fatality per flight of manned space flight is an order of magnitude worse than commercial air flight in the US.

perihelions3y ago

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers

edgyquantOP3y ago

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wyldfire3y ago

Speculating - what if we only consider craft piloting errors? That would rule out many fatalities - Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia.

edgyquantOP3y ago

You sure? When air flight was pre-commercial it was a dangerous business indeed. Had we been as cautious as with space flight we wouldn’t have had commercial air flights until very recently.

mc323y ago

It’s important to account for the frequency difference for these events. One of them has thousands of flights per day, the other not as many.

1 more reply

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