” ..’ve got a fire in the cockpit…. a bad fire… get out…”
The last 17 seconds of voice recordings of the astronauts in the Apollo 1 Fire, January 27, 1967
Sun Tzu says attack from a direction that is least expected. The corollary is that one must be vigilant in defense of areas where attack is unexpected to prevent or blunt such attack. Disaster does not always occur where risk is highest. And do not mistake known risk for all risk.
after 207 losses. I guess they were due for a win as Howard Cosell would say. The underdog sometimes can triumph. It was written up in the New York Times.
With major fanfare (front page of Financial Times and op-ed page of WSJ Europe), the top six accounting firms worldwide have released a paper outlining their recommendations for accounting overhaul. The most interesting is real-time accounting. I like it. For companies that are earning cash, we can see it pile up day after day.
FAA’s quarterly launch report this quarter (starting on p. 10) is a must read for all space service providers and all space travel agencies. It talks in detail about what can and cannot be waived in a contractual waiver.
It concludes:
Although the CSLAA does not protect launch providers explicitly from space flight participants’ claims of liability, the industry is not defenseless. Properly constructed waivers are now used successfully by other recreational activity industries and can also be used by the personal space flight industry. Further, the opportunity to lobby for state legislative protection is still available. Considering the strong public support enjoyed by the commercial space industry, creating a system of waivers seems to be quite an achievable task.
The industry should also take some steps to make such contracts self-enforcing.
On SpaceRef, I find an article from NASA Astrobiology Magazine on radiation hazards.
Standards do not yet exist for limiting radiation exposure during travel to the moon or beyond, so Rapp used the standard now applied to astronauts in low earth orbit (onboard the International Space Station), which allows for no more than a 3 percent increase in the likelihood of fatal cancer….
[Donald] Rapp’s key advance was to utilize the worst-case analysis developed by [Frank] Cucinotta rather than the more conventional “point estimate” of radiation danger. A point estimate is a single number that estimates tolerable radiation exposure. The worst-case approach takes a broader view, which more accurately reflects the uncertainty of radiation health effects. Because health and exposure data for space exposures are scarce, and some people are more susceptible than others, caution dictates protecting against a wider range of danger. The worst-case approach (also known as the confidence-interval approach) tries to avoid any exposure falling within what statisticians call the “95 percent confidence interval,” a range that should include 95 percent of all possible dangerous exposures.
This seems a bit extreme. If they are going to die with a probability around what the shuttle had (2%), why not have a 98% chance of not dying from all causes instead of a 95% chance of not being exposed to radiation that would increase the likelihood of fatal cancer by 3%?
I encourage them to do whatever will complete the mission with the highest probability. It may be better to have redundant personnel than extra shielding. I think there will be superbly qualified volunteers at 4/5 chance of surviving and even 3/4, 2/3 or a 1/2. And that’s a one-way mission.
There’s a big change in the margin requirements for hedged portfolios. E.g., if you are long in 2035 bonds, but short in 2036 bonds, you no longer will have to post a 50% margin. Or if you have a covered call. Or if you have a collar. The margin requirements for some trades will go down from 50% to as little as 15%. This headed today’s FT (subscription required). The implication is that brokerages will be able to create even more money and big houses or fund families with lots of funds that have offsetting positions will have lots of credit.
Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has advocated putting an automatic external difibrillator (AED) in every school in Texas. A couple of years ago, I had a dinner guest faint. We were not sure what was the matter so we called the paramedics. Our guest survived, but a strong case can be made for buying an AED for home. According to the Red Cross, heart attacks kill 200,000 per year 50,000 of which could be prevented by an AED. If we put a new defibrillator in a different home on every block every year forever for $10 billion/year, we might be able to stop 50,000 deaths and increase life expectancy 1 year and working life proportionally. That would increase the economy $150 billion/year–a decisive win.