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Rand's post on Launch Escape is a quality work, and he continues to improve it (fascinating).

One of the important points is the struggle about the absolutization of the human life, rooted in The Right Stuff, Galactic Single Combat General and the associated mythos[1]. Here's a choice comment by a reader "Godzilla":

AFAIK there was only one Soyuz lost to depressurization, but they considered it important enough to add the Sokol suits for every flight ever since at considerable cost. From what I understand the suits are also useless for anything but emergencies, and use considerable space. I see no problem in adding these and the escape tower if it makes people more confident in the system.

The story of the Soyuz 11 flight and the reaction to the tragedy is considerably involved. I think that the same classification of cosmonauts as national assets as in America, and the resulting loss of prestige when one was lost, played a role in overreacting to the fault. Still, who is to say that Sokol is useless? Reading memoirs -- such as that of Prof. B. E. Chertok -- leave no room to doubt that cosmonauts themselves were a) eager to fly when it is not safe, and b) are quite unhappy when they percieve sloppy work on safety. Turning it arounud, they did not want mathematical safety, they wanted everyone in the design office and factory doing their part. In other words, they were irrational just like the public.

BTW, no commenter asked why we put ejection seats in military airplanes, even though they are quite obviously reusable.

[1] In the years since I read The Right Stuff, I learned a few facts about Neil Armstrong in particular, that throw a heavy schadow on his negative portrayal in the book as a kind of "computer man", unable to improvise with the best of Edwards. The book is clearly biased and not reliable. Nonetheless, it serves to depict the cult of the astronaut.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 09:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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