I'm unsure of the specifics of the Dragon capsule, but I know that on the Soyuz even the seats themselves are custom molded to each astronaut. You've gotta keep in mind that the capsules are designed for failure scenarios. That includes things like extremely high g force ejections (pushing close to 20g) from a failing rocket, depressurization scenarios, and so on.
It all seems a bit over the top when things go well, but especially as we start to up the rate of sending people into space - things don't go well quite often. The Space Shuttle only sent people to space 135 times, and there was a complete loss of life on two of those missions. If aircraft had that sort of failure rate then you'd see a plane dropping out of the sky about once a minute, literally.
[EDIT]: apologies, my reading comprehension needs work. I thought you were referring to the 737 MAX, not the 777
What? Do you have a source for the last one? That sounds like corporate propaganda.
It’s well understood AND PROVEN that the MCAS system (which was a system borrowed from decades old military code) was at fault for this incident. Saying it was suicide seems incredibly disrespectful to both pilots…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610
In the article it even states they found the wreckage…
I guess I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. The parent comment mentions the 737 MAX so I assumed that’s what the commenter was referencing.
I have read up on the 777 and yes, I agree it’s incredibly safe statistically (as is the 787). I didn’t realize the commenter was talking about the Malaysia flight either. Apologies to them
Personally I am amazed just what the focus on safety has achieved.
The 737 Max was objectively surprisingly safe to fly at the time of the groundings. As in for the average flying passenger their odds were significantly higher to die of something else on the day of their flight than from a crash. But still we know how to do better and things improved.
Imagine if we treated each individual car accident as a failure and millions of like could have been saved. It may have involved making breathalyzers a mandatory feature etc, but I suspect there’s a lot more we could do even without that.
Perhaps be generous with your reading of the post and consider the 737 MAX's flight record and fatality rate on a per-mile or per-passenger rate to, say, cars in the United States. Because, by the standards of other transportation methods, even the 737 MAX was very, very safe.
It is a testament to the not-yet-entirely-captured regulatory regime of international flight that the 737 MAX was not considered safe enough.
2 nose dives in 6 months apart within 2 years of first operational flights. This is not safe. This was anything but a testament to the aviation regulatory regime at the time. There was glaringly obvious engineering and procedural issues the FAA and Boeing management waived through.
Is the MAX safe now? After killing over 300 people needlessly, being grounded for 1.5y, and an extensive investigation? Yeah sure, probably.
To be saying what your saying, I think you mustn't of followed Max 8 MCAS debacle very closely, or at all.
First being X months apart isn’t how you calculate risk. What matters is total failure over total flights and there’s a gap between the last crash and the fleet being grounded where that risk kept on going.
~2 years * 2 flights per day * 365 days per year * ~350 aircraft would be 511,000 flights but it’s / 2 because aircraft where being delivered over time that’s 2 crashes per ~255,000 flights or 1 per ~127,000. (Edit: Actual numbers were less than half that at 3 crashes per 1 million flights.)
By comparison someone living to 80 is 80 * 365 days = 29,200 days. Meaning the average day would be more than 3x as risky as taking a flight on a 737 Max. It’s not actually that simple as hospitalized patients are unlikely to fly, but you get plenty of elderly people dying from hart attacks etc on aircraft.
I don’t mean to suggest the aircraft was safe compared to other commercial aircraft, (edit: it beat the DC-8 and 707 which was still in use at the time) but general aviation in the US for example is 5.3 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours not flights. https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/GeneralAviationDashbo...
I don't think that's an apples to apples comparison at all. An elderly person dying of natural causes is a relatively unavoidable, normal death that just happens.
People dying because a plane crashes because of the negligence and penny-pinching of the airline manufacturer is no comparable at all.
What we want to compare is the crash/fatality rate of the 737 MAX during that period with rates for other aircraft types. And I suspect we'll find the 737 MAX falling far short of the standard if we do that.
> I don’t mean to suggest the aircraft was safe compared to other commercial aircraft
Right, but that's the only kind of comparison that really matters.
> general aviation in the US for example is 5.3 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours
We're talking about commercial airline safety. It's pretty well-known that general aviation is less safe, but that's not really relevant to the discussion.
I agree that I'm safer getting into a 737 MAX than I am into a buddy's Cessna or a car or train(?) or boat or whatever, but I don't care about that. If I've chosen to fly somewhere, I would prefer to fly on a plane with a better safety record than the 737 MAX.
> I would prefer to fly on a plane with a better safety record than the 737 MAX.
So, I’ll ask you which commercial aircraft have still in use have worse safety histories. If you’re being rational clearly you should be concerned with actual risks not just media reporting.
Not that I actually mean this as personal attack on you, it’s just the kind of irrationality I am referring to here.
Right, exactly. The 737 MAX mess is bad. But the numbers remain on the side of any cleared-to-fly jetliner, even including that situation, compared to almost any other form of transportation except maybe walking.
Current research shows ~850 people die in the US each year from mechanical failures in cars, but underperforming tires breaks etc contribute to far more.
The difference is we don’t do NTSB style investigations after a traffic accident.
Much worse than other modern aircraft, but there’s many with worse track records globally. The DC-8 and 707 where still in use at the time (https://simpleflying.com/douglas-dc-8-active-2022/) and had worse track records, as did the 720 which just retired. Going back to Concord which retired in the early 2000’s and was far worse. Go back further and the prop aircraft were crazy dangerous.
Again it should be compared to modern aircraft, but this just shows how far we’ve come that the bar has moved this far.
Right, exactly, and this is why this sub-thread is so maddeningly weird. I'm going to compare the 737 MAX's safety record to that of the 737 NG, 777, 787, 757, as well as to Airbus' current-gen 3xx planes. I don't care how it compares to the DC-8 or 707 or 720 because it's exceedingly unlikely I'll ever fly on one of those.
And I'm certainly not comparing to the kinds of small planes general aviation pilots fly, and I'm not comparing against other modes of transportation. I already know that I'm safer in a plane (even in a 737 MAX) than in a car, but if I'm choosing to drive, I'm choosing to drive. If I'm choosing to fly, then then the 737 MAX's record, coupled with how poorly Boeing has handled the situation, is a big concern to me.
And I get that, it’s obvious given the choice you pick the safer aircraft. But in a broader context the numbers are so low it’s hard to contemplate.
Currently it’s 2 per 6 million flights. Spend the cost of a flight on Powerball tickets and you’re more likely to with the jackpot than have been on one of those fatal crashes. But people still think of those risks and chances as worth thinking about, which is also why lotteries stick around.
All while the expected value as given by the competition through the A320 Neo series is zero deaths per passenger mile with more than double the fleet size.
Without diving into your bizarre claim about 737 MAX being safe...
> It may have involved making breathalyzers a mandatory feature [for cars] etc, but I suspect there’s a lot more we could do even without that.
My understanding is that drunk driving is a small minority of car crashes/fatalities. In most crashes, the driver(s) involved are completely sober. Making breathalyzers mandatory in cars would be awful.
> My understanding is that drunk driving is a small minority of car crashes/fatalities
Your understanding is wrong, “About 32% of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with BACs of .08 g/dL or higher).”
> 737 MAX being safe
At the time it was under 1 accident per 300,000+ flights which is objectively lower than 2 other jets flying at the time. Today with 346 died in 2 crashes but another 200+ people died of medical emergencies on 737 Max flights. That’s the kind of risk people are taking, flying it’s slightly more dangerous than spending that much time sitting at home watching TV.
I agree it’s bad for modern aircraft, but the Concord would be over 33 crashes per 3 million trips not 1. These numbers are just really low by any objective measurement except modern airline safety standards.
Driving 25 miles in the US is in 2022 was as dangerous on average vs a random 737 Max flight over its history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... In 2022 the average car was driven 14,500 miles or ~600 flights worth of risk, but people still really worry about it.
I don't really get why you insist on continuing to compare the 737 MAX deaths to unrelated, irrelevant other statistics.
The Concorde was a niche aircraft that hasn't flown for over 20 years. Even if it were flying today, I would still consider its safety record as in a completely separate bucket than subsonic commercial airliners.
And I don't care how the 737 MAX compares to driving. I care how it compares to other, similar, commercial aircraft in use today. If I'm going to drive, I drive. If I'm going to fly, I'm going to care about how the plane on my itinerary compares to other planes I could be sitting on with a similar itinerary.
Risk I regularly take are hardly irrelevant to me. I consider this kind of comparison to be foundational to rational behavior.
> completely separate bucket than other subsonic commercial airliners
It didn’t have the worst history compared to other subsonic commercial airliners flying at the time when they grounded it. What it had was the potential for improvement.
If you actually care about safety knowing what the actual most dangerous aircraft are would be the rational decision. And today the 737 Max has had 20x the flights and still the same number of accidents. So if you’re concerned about safety how does it stack up?
The groundings happened after the 2 crashes. When the groundings happened it had the 3rd worst record of then flying large commercial jet aircraft and far from the most dangerous of commercial aircraft of all time.
Tossing that many caveats and still not being the worst aircraft is shocking to many people.
It actively harmed the environment. Once the thing has been manufactured doing anything less than driving it into the ground is wasting the upfront environmental cost.
Not always. The average car in Wyoming gets driven 24,000 miles a year something getting 12 MPG is burning 2,000 gallons a year directly and another 30% indirectly from manufacture transportation and extraction of oil. That’s a lot for a 5 year old car you could easily be saving 30,000+ gallons of oil.
Obviously, that’s average many cars are significantly worse. Run the numbers and swapping a high mileage but poor fuel economy car for a hybrid/EV and the payback can be a net positive.
Starter gives you enough juice to enter the intersection, but engine sputters and you get tboned. Same for not providing enough acceleration/ hp.
Also 1 pedal driving.
Electric cars that outweigh the 'old' 'inefficient' light trucks because batteries are heavy. Harder to stop, more wear on roads. Tires that are designed to extract breaking energy over stopping.
Lithium fires (not cause but much more dangerous result).
Aluminum crush zones in cars not big enough to have crush zones.
Or don't try to regulate 'class 1' into something people don't want to buy.
And FYI those trucks are bigger because you need more volume and moment-arm when building them out of lighter aluminum instead of heavier steel- a direct consequence of CAFE standards.
It says a lot about the insane dangers of the Space Shuttle in particular. There were several issues with its design that made it an accident waiting to happen, notably its spotty abort coverage on ascent (even worse pre-Challenger) and the exposure of its fragile thermal tiles to debris falling off the external tank. Both issues stem from basic architectural choices and could not easily have been solved without a radical redesign.
I think Dragon 2 could easily be roughly an order of magnitude more reliable than the shuttle, if not more. It has full abort coverage and a TPS that doesn't habitually receive damage from falling debris, and is more robust to impacts besides; and its record so far is exemplary.
Both I reckon. Still, I wonder what the safety record for airplanes was back when the total number of airplane flights ever taken was the same number as today’s total number of space flights ever taken.
Don't spacesuits typically have some umbilical connection to the capsule life support systems? It's easy to imagine that these connectors might not be standardized between different capsules, and that sending up a new space suit might be easier than designing an adapter.
Easy to imagine but there are so many details to nail down that it's hard to do in practice.
In the words of someone in the industry who tends to be on the laconic side:
"It is not as simple as a 'common connector'. There are different pressures, mixture ratios, comm gear, seat interfaces, etc. A requirement for commonality flows requirements upstream to the suit, seat and spacecraft. "
I meant it the other way around - incompatibility is the easy-to-imagine default! In absence of some heavily-funded, top-down, NASA-driven standards-development process, no such thing as a standard spacesuit connection should be expected to exist.
Some where recently, I read something about this being an accepted thing. If you have 2 separate capsules that both use the same connector where there is a fault found with the connector, then both capsules are grounded because of the one connector.
927 is a noun at this point to me. Hell so many xkcd could be: 1319, 936, 2347. It's crazy how often referencing a xkcd is the highest signal to noise way of communicating a concept.
A group of professors liked jokes, but got tired of hearing the same ones, so they started numbering them. So instead of telling a joke or funny observation when something happened, they'd say "112" and the others would laugh. or "64", more laughter.
One day they get a new prof on their team and after a few weeks of this number, laugh, number, laugh, during a meeting, the new guy says "-149". There's dead silence for a while. The eldest prof starts laughing, "i've never heard that one!"
I believe that's still the contingency plan in the unlikely event that they have to evacuate the ISS in the period between Starliner undocking and Crew-9 docking.
Yes it is and it is not the first time having such contigency plan.
Quite recently there was a Soyuz with crippled cooling and the contingency plan for the American astronaut that came with it was to evacuate via Dragon if there was an emergency before new Soyuz arrived.
From the press conference today, they stated that there is already an extra SpaceX suit on the ISS. Both astronauts have tried it on, and it fits. They will be bringing an additional empty suit up when Crew launches.
I think you underestimate space travel to space station.
Well it seems like it is routine thing now and spacex seems like routinely launches without a flaw.
But going up there and making it back is still huge feat that is possible only by collaboration of huge numbers of super experienced and highly trained professionals.
I am going a bit over the top - but still travel even to low earth orbit is something far outside of any human being reach - on his own or his group of buddies.
For years I would fly with Sponge Bob Squarepants themed underwear so in the infinitesimal chance of a catastrophe someone cleaning up the wreck might get a chuckle.
Acceptable loss of crew event is like 1 in 250 (can't remember the exact number). They can't quantify the probability of failure, so not putting them in Starliner is the right call.
1-in-270 is overall probability threshold for a 210 day notional ISS stay.
For the journey home from ISS to Earth, the probability threshold is 1-in-1000. Likewise, it is 1-in-1000 for the journey from Earth to ISS.
The riskiest part, which increases the probability from 1-in-500 to 1-in-270, is the ISS stay – the extended stay in space is faced with a continuous risk of micrometeoroid damage.
This was news to me tho, "and Dragon-specific spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams." The spacesuits are specific to the vehicle?
Changing my underwear so I can drive to hardware store.