Contact with Columbia Lost!

[Ben Kenobi]

Agathon, thanks for clarifying.

Well it isn't. Imagine that in a war you have the option of saving an injured infantryman or an injured medic. If you save the medic he will be more likely to save other lives than the infantryman will. So if you care about minimizing the number of deaths, the survival of the medic is more important. QED

This reminds me of dodgeball games, where you have a medic who can pick people up who are hit. Players will throw themselves in front of the medic to ensure that the medic doesn't get hit, and thus, removed from the game. The medic is more important because of his ability to revive downed players.

Real life isn't a dodgeball game, though. In the situation you describe, I would rescue whichever one I felt had the best chance of surviving, typically the one closest to me, or the one least injured. The problem with gauging 'utility' is that it requires us to assume what we do not know.

How do we know that more people will live if we rescue the medic? Perhaps the medic will be killed tomorrow.
Perhaps the soldier will save many lives by defending his country? We simply do not know.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by obiwan18

Real life isn't a dodgeball game, though. In the situation you describe, I would rescue whichever one I felt had the best chance of surviving, typically the one closest to me, or the one least injured. The problem with gauging 'utility' is that it requires us to assume what we do not know.

How do we know that more people will live if we rescue the medic? Perhaps the medic will be killed tomorrow.
Perhaps the soldier will save many lives by defending his country? We simply do not know.

My response is that we perhaps don't know for sure, but we can make an informed decision based on the most plausible outcome. It's also true that we make judgements like this all the time based on limited information and if we do this we can't be blamed if we get it wrong since we did the best we could.

Peace.

A

[HAND]

Its a damn waste of such fine people... these were the best.
I'm not religious, so i won't say "They're in my prayers"....I'll just quietly think about how their families thought they had them back in ther arms, but were cruelly thwarted.
Brave people like these should never be forgotten.

[Zero]

Originally posted by HAND
Brave people like these should never be forgotten.

Why do people assume that these people were brave? Maybe Im starting a bunch of flaming post for this one, but honestly, I can't see anything brave about this. Just because they died doesn't make them brave, hell I wouldnt have considered the possibility of my shuttle exploding if I was one of them. Did they really take big risks?

I can always nod in these situations when people say these people were fine people, its was too bad etc, but I get alil iffy about bravery part It feels like they are just trying to attach more glorification and idolize something... sorry

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Calc II
hell I wouldnt have considered the possibility of my shuttle exploding if I was one of them. Did they really take big risks?

We've now lost 14 astronauts in space, 3 on the launch pad, several in training, and only a miracle kept us from losing Apollo XIII. Earlier, Ned gave the odds of not returning from any one flight as 1 in 125. So yes, I'd say they're taking big risks and I'm sure since it is their necks they're putting on the line, they're well aware of it.

[Agathon]

Isn't having the capacity to engage coolly in activities that are likely to lead to your own death (for good reasons rather than foolhardiness) just about what "being brave" means?

Aren't race car drivers brave? And they are less at risk than astronauts.

I mean, how many people would sit on top of a giant firecracker, waiting to be blasted into a complete vacuum, when the slightest mishap could cause disaster?

Sounds brave to me. At least a lot braver than being a graduate student.

[HAND]

Originally posted by Calc II


Why do people assume that these people were brave? Maybe Im starting a bunch of flaming post for this one, but honestly, I can't see anything brave about this. Just because they died doesn't make them brave, hell I wouldnt have considered the possibility of my shuttle exploding if I was one of them. Did they really take big risks?

I can always nod in these situations when people say these people were fine people, its was too bad etc, but I get alil iffy about bravery part It feels like they are just trying to attach more glorification and idolize something... sorry

Well weren't they brave? Judging by what happened? The crew knew this could happen...You don't need me to say space travel is extremely dangerous. These people were indeed brave.

[Zero]

Meh. I got what I expected.

[HAND]

Originally posted by Calc II
Meh. I got what I expected.

You were simply wrong, thats all Don't dwell on it

[Imran Siddiqui]

Very sad

And shame on the people using this for the political views (such as Americans are anti-science and the Israel-Pal debate).

[Ned]

On the radio, a couple of hours ago, a guest expert (I don't know his name) said that NASA had asked the people who run the spy satellites to turn one of their space telescopes on the bottom of the shuttle to see if there was any damage caused by the fuel tank insulation. He said he had this information from a source inside the defense community. But, when asked at the news conference, apparently the NASA spokesman said that they had not asked for telescopes to look at the bottom of the shuttle.

There is a discrepancy here.

[Zero]

Originally posted by HAND


You were simply wrong, thats all Don't dwell on it

actually. I feel like I'm old and tired.. I dont have the strength in me to post anymore on forums arguing and debating. Notice my recent threads been less serious lately?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I guess we won't know for sure until they recover the pieces and reassemble what they can like in an airplane crash. So it will take months before we know what happened.

They're going to have a hell of a time reconstructing the thing like they do with aircraft crashes. By the sounds of it, there's a million pieces scattered over a very large area.

[Jack_www]

Some of the post people are making make me wonder. When something like this happens people still bash America and the people in it. Come on people died and is a huge set back for space exploration, yet people still have hate in them at this moment.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: Bravery. On reentry, you get rock and rolled in far stronger turbulence than the worst anyone's every felt on any airliner, and you for a good period of time, you do it in the middle of a bubble of sorts, of superheated gasses that are 2-3000 degrees.

There are a lot of possible scenarios and conditions which can occur to the spacecraft, from which there is simply no possibility of recovery. You try to avoid those by engineering, but know nothing is ever 100% certain. The problems you can recover from, you train your ass off.

Willie McCool was a friend of mine and neighbor years back before he got accepted by NASA for training. Flying in space is what he wanted to do more than anything, and he knew the risks. Knowing those risks, he wouldn't (and didn't) hesitate for a moment to pursue selection for astronaut training, and he worked his ass off and applied his great talents to do it.

He was funny, low-key but wound up at the same time, a great guy, not-so-great chess player, but super talented, smart as all hell, and he knew what he wanted in life and he went for it, and he made it.

Ned - no surprise, the guy briefing the press is may not likely be privy to NASA requests to intel agencies operating classified equipment. NASA and the shuttle program run a lot of military missions with classified payloads, so there's pretty definite partitioning between classified and non-classified activity and personnel. I wouldn't be surprised at all by any apparent discrepancy like that.