What I find most interesting is the contrast this article's discussion paints with the one we saw only 2 weeks ago, How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?[1]. Some of the highly-rated HN comments included:
Space is dangerous. We should stop pretending it can be made "safe". It just gives politicians something to wag their tongues at when something inevitably goes wrong.
The problem here is that NASA is a political agency, not a scientific one. Each year, elected politicians sit down and decide how much they're going to get.
This provides thoughtful perspective on policy trade-offs. As Thomas Sowell has written, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
Space is dangerous. We should stop pretending it can be made "safe". It just gives politicians something to wag their tongues at when something inevitably goes wrong.
The problem here is that NASA is a political agency, not a scientific one. Each year, elected politicians sit down and decide how much they're going to get.
This provides thoughtful perspective on policy trade-offs. As Thomas Sowell has written, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518559