To some extent I think since the challenger disaster trying to blow the whistle on safety issues at NASA has been romantacized.

For me, so long as the information is transparently discussed with the astronauts they can agree or disagree. But the task is intrinsically extremely risky.

It makes it very challenging for anyone to really know how to balance those risks.

The peak outcome (modal, mean at least) is a good outcome. But the tail is very very long with all the little ways a catastrophe can occur. I think the median outcome is also deeply in the "good" category.

And we sample this curve a few times a decade!

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pavlov 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The Artemis program has cost over $100 billion so far.

It doesn’t make any sense to spend that much money on something that’s still Russian roulette for the astronauts.

If the purpose of the human risk is to let the agency accomplish more, then it needs to be reflected in the cost as a drastic reduction (so you can actually spend the money on doing more). Now Artemis is the worst of both worlds.

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rustyhancock 8 hours ago | parent [-]

If you need expect perfection then we will never have a space mission.

Let the astronauts give informed consent. If they mission is to dangerous for NASA then we can only hope, ISRO, CNSA or ROSCOSMOS will go.

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pavlov 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The point is that a $100B mission that’s still dangerous and only replicates 1960s achievements is completely pointless.

If they had set out to replicate the Moon landing at much lower cost and a controlled risk, that could have been different. Now they ended up with a very expensive, unsafe, and uninteresting mission - the worst possible combination.

	▲	rustyhancock 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So what's your point? Spend more on a project that is complete but not up to your standard? Or Extend the mission to something novel? Some how without ballooning the project? Neither is possible in the slightest. For what it's worth the Apollo program adjusted for inflation is pushing 200bn USD compared to Artemis 100bn. The Artemis programme is far safer than the Apollo program in terms of risk, Apollo sampled a much flatter high risk curve just 7 times. Bottom line let the Astronauts decide what they consider safe enough they're very smart people and deserve to be allowed to give informed consent.