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Space Tourism II
Three years ago I wrote a controversial article, Is Space Tourism Ready for Takeoff?, in which I argued:
The vision is enticing but the facts suggest that space tourism is not ready for market. The problem is not the monetary expense, there are enough millionaires with a yearning for adventure to support an industry. The problem is safety. Simply put, rockets remain among the least safe means of transportation ever invented. Since 1980 the United States has launched some 440 orbital launch rockets (not including the Space Shuttle). Nearly five percent of those rockets have experienced total failure, either blowing up or wandering so far from course as to be useless. The space shuttle has a slightly better record of safety -- it was destroyed in two of 113 flights. There are lots of millionaires willing to spend one or two million dollars for a flight into space but how many will risk a two to five percent chance of death?
Predictably my article generated a lot of criticism, especially from people in the industry, e.g. here and from the CEO of Masten Space systems here. (I responded briefly at the time.) Some of the criticism was justified, I should have noted that space tourists don't want to go as fast or as high as the space shuttle or orbital launch rockets, but most of the criticism was a simple denial that the evidence from decades of space flight was relevant. "Everything changed with SpaceShip One," I was told.
Unfortunately everything has not changed. I am sad to report that rockets remain very dangerous.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on August 23, 2007 at 07:25 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
There are many fields of testing that can be categorized as dangerous, but still - in the end - provide us with (relatively) safe equipment for commercial use, do they not? How many crashes and lives did it take before technology could provide the world with a safe turbojet engine?
Posted by: Samuel T. Petursson at Aug 23, 2007 7:54:33 AM
We're way too timid about space travel. I think it might be more helpful for intellectuals like you to point that out, Alex. At the least, to hedge against existential risk, it seems to me that we should probably be agressively working towards colonizing Mars and creating Gerard K. O'Neill type self-sustainable space stations.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous at Aug 23, 2007 8:02:46 AM
The fundamental risk in rockets and space travel will never change. If any multi-millionaire that straps themselves into SpaceShipTwo/VirginGalactic doesn't know (or isn't told) that, something must be fixed. But I think there are enough people out there that are both rich and risk-seeking to keep the space tourism industry busy while they keep improving their safety record. (And I don't think the risk will ever be as high as 2-5%.)
This particular issue strikes home for me, as a very good friend of mine was one of the three critically injured in this accident. We were both Aero Engineering majors together back at university.
Posted by: Jed Christiansen at Aug 23, 2007 8:14:20 AM
Climbing Everest carries a one-in-four chance of death if you reach the top, and yet people pay lots of money to climb it.
Posted by: Russ Nelson at Aug 23, 2007 8:24:40 AM
Russ is correct about Everest. I wrote about that in my response from three years ago:
"David at Cronaca pointed to the continuing demand to climb Mount Everest despite a fatality rate on the order of 4 percent. Quite right, but that is precisely my point. At best and for the foreseeable future space travel will remain akin to climbing Everest, dangerous and uncommon. Yes, we might see 100 flights a year but that's not space tourism - tourism is fat guys with cameras. Branson and Rutan, for example, have predicted that in 10-12 years, 100,000 or more "ordinary people" will fly into space. No way."
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Aug 23, 2007 8:47:31 AM
It's also much cheaper to climb Mt. Everest than fly into outer space (at least presently). Prices need to drop dramatically before space tourism means much, and even then, it'll select risk-loving individuals primarily.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Aug 23, 2007 10:07:10 AM
If the NYT can be trusted, the 4% fatality rate for Everest is out of date:
Their study, published in Biology Letters, showed that there was no significant difference in the success or death rate for men or for women, who since 2000 have made up about 10 percent of all climbers. Over all, climbers had a 31 percent chance of making it to the summit and a 1.5 percent chance of dying
From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/science/21obclim.html?_r=1&ref=fitnessandnutrition&oref=slogin:
Posted by: Eric G at Aug 23, 2007 10:56:48 AM
Samuel T. Peturson is right that with enough experience space flight could be made safe. But we are also a long way from that point. the total sum of space travel is still probably less than the testing a new Boeing jet liner goes through before paying passengers board it.
Posted by: spencer at Aug 23, 2007 11:09:23 AM
Getting to the summit of Mt. Everest could be much cheaper than it is today...in a helicopter.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0509/whats_new/helicopter_everest.html
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at Aug 23, 2007 12:08:18 PM
Everest helicopter link fixed.
Interesting. I always assumed the air was too thin up there for helicopters.
Posted by: anonymous at Aug 23, 2007 1:15:28 PM
Too bad the rocket-company guy doesn't read Wikipedia, or he'd have known that N2O is dangerous after all.
Posted by: Anderson at Aug 23, 2007 1:22:12 PM
I take your conclusion about safety at face value, but I am uncomfortable with the reasoning that lumps together disparate endeavors. Perhaps it is warranted or even unavoidable in this case; the probabilities are, after all, probably too low to accurately measure for any smaller classifications.
Too often, though, groups are judged by their “worst” (most salient) member. This happens with political groups and social circles. Thus, a 1st Amendment advocate becomes a “flag burning zealot.” Worse, consider the ridiculous amount of regulation that Enron spawned – probably its greatest "crime," if one blames the company for the red tape. Airline regulators apply the same logic when they respond to the latest half-baked terror threats. This “lumping” line of reasoning provides cover for too many restrictions already.
I crave more individual assessment, whenever possible.
Posted by: blink at Aug 23, 2007 6:11:12 PM
Alex, what's the conclusion of the argument from the premise that rocket travel is too dangerous? Is it:
(1) Therefore, space tourism should be banned.
or
(2) Therefore, space tourism won't succeed in a free market.
If it's #1, then that seems unduly paternalistic.
If it's #2, then, with all the thrill-seeking (read: imprudent) millionaires around, it seems irrelevant to cite statistics about danger. More relevant would be (a) potential buyers' *perception* of risk and (b) potential buyers' perception of gain.
Posted by: zlguocius at Aug 23, 2007 7:27:02 PM
Two things, the helicopter was stripped of any excess weight, it's not yet possible to fly to the everest with any meaning full payload. Also the risk comparison between climbing the Everst and spaceflight might be a stretch. Space tourism is also envisioned to have much lower opportunity costs, preparing for an Everst ascent takes years, while a SpaceShip Two flight will take much less time, although a higher capitcal expenditure.
About spacetourism, I would say that it's an industry with teething problems, dangerous ones. The figure used of 5% failure rate over 440 orbital launches doesn't reflect safety issues properly. In spaceflight safety depends on two things, your concept and your procedures. If you got the concept right and you fly frequent enough to standardize procedures you can end up with a very safe business. For example the Delta 2 has 74 consecutive successes, last failure in '97.
Posted by: Sam at Aug 24, 2007 10:24:37 AM
Rockets are dangerous but this isn't a good example - the accident at Scaled was a simple industrial accident. Only the connection to NewSpace and Bert Rutan made it newsworthy at all.
Posted by: Ian G at Aug 24, 2007 8:41:17 PM
BTW, my one-in-four figure came from Krakauer's _Into Thin Air_, which I now conclude was just for one season.
Posted by: Russell Nelson at Aug 25, 2007 1:59:38 AM
We need to build and fly more rockets.Find a big enough market to drive us up the learning curve.
See this link for some graphs and figures: http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html
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