Astronauts are brave or is it just Science?

1 points by sunjester 3 years ago | 1 comment

I was once adicted to watching the NASA youtube channels and feeds and stuff, I love space. I was watching a spacewalk and was loving it. I loved the adventure and adrenaline and sense of wonder I could have doing that myself. I then realized I could never achieve something that great being who I am. I know I could float off on a wire into space and keep my cool while repairing sections of a space station. Why? Because I have faith in the science that put me there. If you say that you are brave for going into space are you also saying that you were skeptical about the science that put you there? Why send a father of a fmaily into space? Send a grunt software space nerd thrash guy like me? Bu then again I am not brave, I just make pizzas.

gus_massa 3 years ago |

> Because I have faith in the science that put me there.

I like a quote by W. Edwards Deming:

> In God we trust. All others must bring data.

Science is not about faith. Let's see the data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

The Space Shuttle has a 2% chance of exploding. Soyuz has a 1% chance, but all fatal accidents have been a long time ago, so the modern versions are probably safer.

A 1% chance of dying is a lot. For a normal job that you do every day it's a 92% chance of being dead at the end of a (complete) year. You can compare the numbers with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort They get launched to space only one or twice in their career, so the total risk is not so high, but still higher than usual professions.

They are very brave.