Despite the public being generally in favor of going to the Moon, Apollo was cancelled early partly due to the near death experience of Apollo 13. The Space Shuttle was viewed very favorably, but that program was unable to survive a second fatal crew accident. The X-15 program was cancelled soon after its first fatal crew accident. Only Mercury and Gemini went their full planned lifespans, but neither had fatal crew accidents.

Right now, I fear that suborbital space tourism would be greatly hampered by a fatal passenger accident.

What do you propose as a space pursuit that the public could view as worthy of loss of more lives, and how would you convince the public that it is worthy?

On the other hand, if Congress can keep from overregulating the space industry, then it would remain a choice by the company and the employee astronauts whether they view a mission as worthy of the risks — as is usually done in other industries now.

Interesting. Maybe the problem is fixable. Consider the point you made about how after losing a family member to an automobile accident nobody switches to bikes and horses. That’s because we all know the value of cars. The way to fix the problem is choosing a mission worthy of potential loss of human life and educating the public on why it’s worthy and why the astronauts *choose* to go. Since war has been broadcast into our homes the public has less tolerance for it, but we tolerate it more than a Space Transportation System accident.

I blame the Titanic. Although safety was becoming a concern before then, the book “A Night To Remember” points out that after the Titanic safety became a major concern, “lifeboats for everyone,” as well as before her the third class passengers always felt themselves beneath first class and after her everyone started feeling more equal.

Eventually, trolleys, cars, and airplane safety became a big deal. OSHA was created to assure safety on the job. People became aware of the large number of injuries received in bathroom accidents. Wet floor signs came into style. And cetera.

This problem cannot be “fixed,” but we can try to come to grips that even though we try our best we still lose lives to accidents. We continue to drive cars despite their “terrible” safety record, thus even after losing a family member to an auto accident, so long as the benefits outweigh the losses, we continue to take what we consider as acceptable risks.

Drive safely, everyone.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=Uacv3bkt&id=D61AD2229AA5C2F7F7FC751A83B7B347B842BD56&thid=OIP.Uacv3bktdcqKOJMvOjjOrQHaF9&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fi177.photobucket.com%2falbums%2fw226%2fredleg12%2fnasam113.jpg&exph=514&expw=639&q=NASA+M113&simid=608030014259203585&selectedIndex=4&ajaxhist=0

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/M113flyout.html

I’m concerned just how risk averse NASA and our nation has become. Why have we become so scared of losing people and how do we fix this problem?

What really irritates me is our astronauts are accomplished brilliant people that know the risks better than anyone yet they aren’t allowed to choose to take the risk. It’s a lack of freedom.

There is — or was — an opinion that fueling operations are hazardous, and that people should not be around a rocket during fueling. SpaceX showed that to be true in September of 2016 when a Falcon 9 suddenly exploded during fueling operations.

There are three other pre-ignition pad explosions that are relevant. The Nedlin catastrophe in 1960, in which several technicians and engineers were working around a fueled (liquid fuel) rocket when the second stage unexpectedly ignited prematurely. My recollection is that the only survivors were on the other side of a bunker a few hundred meters away.

In the 1980s, Soyuz T-10 was only seconds away from launch when a turbopump started up and overspun, causing a catastrophic failure and fire. The cosmonauts onboard survived, because the escape system whisked them away from the burning rocket — just before it exploded.

In 2003, a solid rocket booster on a Brazilian rocket ignited prematurely while several technicians and engineers were working around the rocket. There were no survivors.

I found a reference to two other pad explosions, but I am less familiar with these. This list is only for explosions in which there were fatalities, so the SpaceX pad explosion is not listed, and there may be other non-fatal pad explosions that I am not familiar with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#Fatalities_caused_by_rocket_explosions
“1966-12-14 … Launch escape system fired 27 minutes after an aborted launch causing a fire and subsequent explosion when pad workers had already returned to the launch pad.”

“1980-03-18 … Explosion while fueling up a Vostok-2M rocket.”

With empirical evidence like that, I am a fan of crew escape systems and believe strongly in ground crews staying away from any fueled rocket. There just isn’t much time for a ground crew to get away from an exploding rocket.

And if that was the way they did it then they are essentially the same since fuel and oxidizer is still being moved almost up to the actual launch.

Anthony Domanico: Personally, I think you are right. With SpaceX’s system the crew boards the capsule before fueling, and is thus in a position to escape if something goes wrong. With NASA’s system, the boarding is done with an already fueled rocket, which to my mind is not very safe.

Still, my main point remains the same, and is confirmed by your point: NASA’s concerns about SpaceX’s fueling approach were bogus.