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Post by bughead on Jan 30, 2006 12:50:01 GMT -4
A username Kalchawla came up recently here, and in discussion it was asserted that the user knew Dr. Chawla. Some of us felt it poor taste to use the name while beating the Apollo Hoax drum, not honoring the memory of Dr. Chawla (as the user claimed) and said so. I decided to do a little research and find out a bit more about her. Did anyone know that Ames has a supercomputer named after her? Yep - big thing, for doing fluid dynamics calulations. Also turns out I might have met her. The more pictures of her I saw the more I had to say "where do I know her from?" I'm not running around in any circle she did, so I had to think about it hard. Finally I remembered a party in Boulder I went to back in '92 (or 93, hard to remember which). I had been invited to one of those university-town parties by a friend-of-a-friend of the host. Nobody else there I knew. Wandering around with my plastic cup of Fat Tire (beer) I overheard a conversation that caught my attention. Trying to get closer to hear what it was, I tripped on a rug and spilled beer all over her slacks. She called me a "clumsy dork." I'm pretty sure now that it was Kalpana's pants I spilled beer on. The conversation was very technical, she was the right age, and . . . I'll remember it forever.
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Post by Dead Hoosiers on Jan 30, 2006 23:24:21 GMT -4
There are quite a few Yahoo email addresses with "Kal Chawla" in them. She's pretty popular. I believe "our" Kalchawla's purpose is to honor her memory, just like my avatar is to honor Gus Grissom (and his death, and that of others, is why I'm against space exploration). I remember him from the old apollohoax board. His "thing" is the JFK assasination, not crapping on the moon landing or space flight.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Jan 31, 2006 0:52:06 GMT -4
my avatar is to honor Gus Grissom (and his death, and that of others, is why I'm against space exploration). If you truly want to honour Gus Grissom then you should take the following words spoken by him to heart: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
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Post by PeterB on Jan 31, 2006 1:04:50 GMT -4
Dead Hoosiers said:
Manned space exploration? Or any space exploration?
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Post by Dead Hoosiers on Jan 31, 2006 4:35:02 GMT -4
Lunar: Maybe. It's kinda hard on the wife and kids though. He believed it was worth it and was willing to die for his belief in what he was doing. I respect that, but I don't share that belief.
Peter: Manned for sure. If they ever think of a really good reason to blow billions of dollars on an unmanned I might get behind it.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Jan 31, 2006 12:32:00 GMT -4
"Knowledge" isn't a good enough reason?
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Post by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on Feb 1, 2006 0:38:25 GMT -4
... my avatar is to honor Gus Grissom (and his death, and that of others, is why I'm against space exploration). You're against space exploration because people die? Man, you must have a long list of things not to do.
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Feb 1, 2006 6:29:10 GMT -4
... my avatar is to honor Gus Grissom (and his death, and that of others, is why I'm against space exploration). You're against space exploration because people die? Man, you must have a long list of things not to do. Approximately how many manned space flights have there been? Out of this total there have been IIRC only 4 or 5 fatal accidents (3 for the US 1 or 2 for the Russians). Although statisticly more dangerous that mosy any Earthbound activity the chances of getting killed during a space flight are pretty small.
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Post by gwiz on Feb 1, 2006 8:42:34 GMT -4
Bob B maintains a list of manned space flights here. Based either on proportion of missions or proportion of person-flights, you have about a 98% chance of returning from a space mission.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Feb 1, 2006 9:34:52 GMT -4
Bob B maintains a list of manned space flights here. Based either on proportion of missions or proportion of person-flights, you have about a 98% chance of returning from a space mission. Well as it would be a pretty rare scenario that only killed a part of the crew...
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Feb 1, 2006 10:24:30 GMT -4
Bob B maintains a list of manned space flights here. Based either on proportion of missions or proportion of person-flights, you have about a 98% chance of returning from a space mission. Great job Bob! Indeed I saved the chart in Word and numbered the flights there were a total of 262. 4 or 5 fatal accidents out of 262 flights comes out to a 1.5% - 1.9% chance of getting killed. That's probably about as dangerous being a war correspondant or truck driver in Iraq. And I imagine it's safer than crossing the oceans was until about a century ago.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Feb 1, 2006 10:39:51 GMT -4
Out of this total there have been IIRC only 4 or 5 fatal accidents (3 for the US 1 or 2 for the Russians). This is correct. And one of the US accidents was in a ground test, so I don’t think you can even count that as a “flight” accident. Indeed I saved the chart in Word and numbered the flights there were a total of 262. 4 or 5 fatal accidents out of 262 flights comes out to a 1.5% - 1.9% chance of getting killed. That's probably about as dangerous being a war correspondant or truck driver in Iraq. And I imagine it's safer than crossing the oceans was until about a century ago. I also keep the list in Excel and I have a total of 254 manned flights. You’re coming up with 262 because my Web page list includes eight space station launches. The space stations were all launched unmanned and then occupied in orbit. Of the 254 launches, 7 were sub-orbital and 247 were orbital flights. One of the 254 is still on orbit at the ISS, 4 ended in tragedy, and 249 returned safely. That gives us a total success rate of 98.4%.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Feb 1, 2006 11:17:07 GMT -4
Here another way to look at it...
There have been 992 people* launched into space, of which 18 have perished. This gives a death rate of about 18 per 1,000. Here are the annual death rates of some countries (1990 data):
Japan...................10 United States........15 India.....................26 Nigeria..................43
* This is the total number of crew, not individuals. If one person flew twice, then this counts as two.
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Post by Retrograde on Feb 2, 2006 4:17:54 GMT -4
Bob B maintains a list of manned space flights here. Based either on proportion of missions or proportion of person-flights, you have about a 98% chance of returning from a space mission. Well as it would be a pretty rare scenario that only killed a part of the crew... Perhaps, but it is not inconceivable that missions with large crews might have a different mortality rate than missions with small crews, as different technologies support different crew sizes...
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Post by Retrograde on Feb 2, 2006 4:22:53 GMT -4
Here another way to look at it... There have been 992 people* launched into space, of which 18 have perished. This gives a death rate of about 18 per 1,000. Here are the annual death rates of some countries (1990 data): Japan...................10 United States........15 India.....................26 Nigeria..................43 * This is the total number of crew, not individuals. If one person flew twice, then this counts as two. This does support a claim that being a randomly selected astronaut for one mission entails less chance of dying than being a randomly selected person in India for one year. But, this is not the alternative fate of an astronaut who quits the space program... N
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