Right, the Pareto Principle. But is 80% good enough? If a rocket costs 100 gigadollars to construct, and 20% of launches fail, then your rocket really costs 120 gigadollars. That's a pretty big difference. Is the work to get it up to 99% really costing 20 gigadollars? If your craft is reusable, it's even worse. Because then you spent all that money on a craft that's only good for 5 launches, on average. What about manned craft? If the average rocket has a crew of 5, you now have a death toll of one human per launch. I agree NASA needs more efficiency and less bureaucracy. But I don't think sacrificing reliability is going to save costs. Marketable products will always result from science. NASA and Bell Labs are the best examples of this. Most private companies are just too short-sighted to realize it.What these systems do is push mission success from somewhere around 80% (now I'm low-balling, it would likely be a slightly higher success rate*) to >99%
a commercial entity has no incentive to fund science for the sake of science. When there's no reason (no conceivable product or service that will result from the science)
I would say most companies are not rich enough to realize it. Bell had a monopoly in its day, and it therefore didn't need to worry about competition. Nor did it have to worry about maximizing shareholder profit. Both have their relative virtues, but neither promotes research. It's another reason why basic science, in our day and age, has to be almost exclusively the purview of federal funding agencies.Marketable products will always result from science. NASA and Bell Labs are the best examples of this. Most private companies are just too short-sighted to realize it.
No, and I'm asserting that it's costing >1,000 gigadollars to get it up to 99%. I analyzed it like so: If 1 out of 5 attempts fail, and I launch 'x' number of rockets, my odds of every launch being failures are (1/5)^x, which is less than 1% after just 3 rocket launches. So introducing a quality assurance program that costs 10 times as much to guarantee a 99% success rate doesn't make sense when you could launch 10 rockets without the QA program to get an effective success rate of 99.99%+. I would say 4 launches, on average. So if it costs more than 4 times as much money to implement a reusable craft, it's not worth it. Nooo, you do not skimp on costs when human life is involved. Not arguing that one, you institute the best QA program possible.If a rocket costs 100 gigadollars to construct, and 20% of launches fail, then your rocket really costs 120 gigadollars. That's a pretty big difference. Is the work to get it up to 99% really costing 20 gigadollars?
If your craft is reusable, it's even worse. Because then you spent all that money on a craft that's only good for 5 launches, on average.
What about manned craft? If the average rocket has a crew of 5, you now have a death toll of one human per launch.
That is the easy answer. The best safety policy is to ground all vehicles and require all personnel to remain home at all times, preferably cowering under heavy furniture. Any useful work entails some amount of risk, and even if the value of human life is not expressly valued, it is effectively valued by the amount of resources dedicated to safety versus getting the job done.Nooo, you do not skimp on costs when human life is involved.