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Posted 2 March 2010: According to Space News, Senator Mikulski recently said that “Chief among the principles I will rely on [in drafting the 2011 funding bill for NASA] is astronaut safety... Safety must be assured by the system NASA chooses.” No one would suggest that anyone, government astronaut of private citizen, should fly on an unsafe vehicle. But what have we come to when assuring astronaut safety is the #1 priority? Would we have broken the sound barrier? Flown the X-15? Put Alan Shepherd in space, John Glenn in orbit or Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon? John Young and Bob Crippen flew the first Shuttle mission in 1981 without a single test flight to orbit. Perhaps the American public is so convinced that space operations must be “safe” that a politician must take that position, but if NASA believes it we should stop pretending we want a human exploration program. No launch vehicle that has ever carried a human to orbit would be qualified as “safe” under NASA’s draft standards. Does that make sense? A human space program is a careful balance of safety and reward. If assuring safety is the overriding criteria, we’ll never get off the pad.
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