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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Its sad, sure. Sorry for their loss.

But people take far greater risks for far less reason. Monster Truck rallys. Motorcycle racing. Skiing. We don't change national priorities every time somebody dies at those activities.

SO lets keep it in perspective, and salute the brave folks who are trying to expand human boundaries.

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Those aren't really fair comparisons as they are several orders of magnitudes less dangerous than space flight. My quick estimates say that roughly 1-3% of people who try to get to space die during some point of the journey. Some quick Googling put the fatality rate for skiing at roughly .00002%. If 1% of people who tried skiing died, you could bet there would be national discussions about it.

About 0.4% of people working in the Alaska crab fishery die on the job, and people seem to be relatively okay with that. And it's much, much better than it was years ago. I know people who were crabbers in the 80s --- stories that would curl your hair (or straighten it, if it's already curly).

http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/13/pf/dangerousjobs/index.htm

I think you're kind of missing the point. The Alaska crab program doesn't come to a complete stop for a couple years while there's an investigation and an attempt to make it safer. It won't be on the cover of the NYT. You don't need to go to Congress and request an additional $1.7 billion for another ship.

We are moving into Space at a snail's pace because we keep insisting on spending lots of money to try and send humans there "safely", and that's not really working out so well for us.

"x The Alaska crab program doesn't come to a complete stop for a couple years while there's an investigation"

Neither will Virgin Galactic.

"You don't need to go to Congress and request an additional $1.7 billion for another ship."

Neither does Richard Branson.

Perhaps, you haven't noticed but I'm using this accident to discuss our national space program. Virgin Galactic has a plane that goes to 62 miles/100km. While this is great, in the short-term, it doesn't help our space program.

Btw, you don't think they need to revisit safety to assure their customers that it's not a one way trip? Do they even have a second plane? There's not a chance that there will be a commercial flight carrying paying customers within the next 2 years. Branson was saying this year just a month ago.

"Btw, you don't think they need to revisit safety to assure their customers that it's not a one way trip?"

Not from what I'm seeing. No one is planning to cancel their reservation. I wouldn't, if I had one.

Ok, let's revisit in 2 years to evaluate the setback this event turned out to be. Perhaps I'm overstating it.

By the way, the spacecraft cost $500 million.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/31/technology/virgin-galactic-s...

Summiting Everest, then? At some point, it was >10% mortality, yet people still did it, and it was considered acceptable, given that it was people doing it voluntarily. I believe that it's now in the ~1-3% mortality range.

I think you're overlooking the fact that Virgin Galactic isn't a national priority, it's a commercial venture. And it'll probably take years of testing to convince many people to take their flight, assuming they want to spend the money.

The ability of the United States to send people to space ended because of the last shuttle accident. So, yes, people dying did affect our national resolve. I think if you do the math, flying in the space shuttle was more dangerous. There were only 135 flights? We lost $3.5 billion of hardware and 14 lives in 2 accidents.

Virgin Galactic is American. We don't reserve that name for government employees. There are several such commercial ventures in America right now. And some of them are close to sending Americans into space.

Its a priority for these Americans to send people into space. I don't think I've overlooked anything. The importance of this adventure (to the people involved) has so far been worth the risk, partly because they regard it as far more important that motorcycle racing.

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