[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Imdad Ali: *
Big deal? When people die due to police torture, criminal violence, terrorism in Pakistan, how long do people mourn? People forget in one day. It's not that American life is so precious, but that we don't value the lives of Pakistanis.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah sure thats why when Indian govt. burns alive 2000 innocent muslims they are labled terrorist by western media..... What the hell Union Carbide killed 20,000 with another 80,000 disabled who cares.
Here are some more space disasters I bet you never heard of tham.
October 1960 -- Ninety-one people are killed when an R-16 rocket explodes at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union.
April 1967 -- Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov is first man to die in a space mission when a parachute on his spaceship fails on re-entry and the ship crashes to Earth.
June 1971 -- Three Soviet cosmonauts die during re-entry after 24 days in an orbiting space laboratory, a record endurance flight at that time.
March 18, 1980 -- Fifty technicians die at Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome when a Vostok booster explodes while being fueled. The incident is reported only in 1989.
February 22, 1990 -- Western Europe's 36th Ariane rocket, carrying two Japanese satellites, explodes less than two minutes after lift-off from Kourou, French Guiana.
December 1, 1994 -- Western Europe's 70th Ariane rocket crashes into the Atlantic with the $150 million PanAmsat-3 telecoms satellite after launch from Kourou, French Guiana.
January 26, 1995 -- The Chinese-designed Long March 2E rocket carrying a telecommunications satellite explodes after blast-off from Xichang in southwest Sichuan province.
February 15, 1996 -- A rocket carrying an Intelsat 708 communications satellite explodes soon after take-off from China's launch site in Xichang.
May 20, 1996 -- A Soyuz-U booster rocket carrying reconnaissance satellites explodes 49 seconds after lift-off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome.
June 4, 1996 -- Europe's Ariane-5 rocket explodes 40 seconds into its maiden flight after blasting off from the European Space Agency launch center in Kourou, French Guiana.
June 20, 1996 -- A Soyuz-U rocket carrying reconnaissance satellites explodes after lift-off at Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
May 20, 1997 -- A Russian Zenit-2 booster rocket carrying a Cosmos military satellite explodes 48 seconds after launch.
June 25, 1997 -- Russia's Mir space station (news - web sites) carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one American collides with a cargo ship. Crew narrowly escape death as oxygen rushes out of Mir.
September 10, 1998 -- A computer malfunction brings down a Ukrainian rocket carrying 12 commercial satellites, minutes after blast off from Baikonur.
July 5, 1999 -- A Russian Proton-K heavy booster rocket launched from Baikonur suffers a malfunction that detaches the engine and parts of the booster, causing them to crash onto the steppe. A 200-kg (440-lb) chunk falls into the courtyard of a private house. Kazakhstan briefly closes Baikonur in a row with Russia over clean-up costs and rent for the base.
October 28, 1999 -- A Russian Proton rocket carrying a communications satellite crashes shortly after take-off from Baikonur.
December 11, 2002 -- An upgraded European Space Agency Ariane-5 rocket explodes soon after blast-off from Kourou, French Guiana, sending two satellites worth about $600 million plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Abdali: *
Big deal, Soviet/Russia had many crashes and many more dead so did ESA.
[/QUOTE]
So is this another Soviet crash eh?
To equate lifes is a difficult task indeed. It is based on the dollar value of the person + the precieved/implict value of the person + their fame/noteriority + the medias power source.
I am sure everyone here realizes that already. To debate life on a religious level though is one to one relationship as each person is expected to pay and reap based on their own deeds.
Coming back to the space shuttle, of course you expect that sort of coverage since almost all the factors that i mentioned above are aligned together. Compare this with the 40K people who died in Turkey and the 35K that were wiped out in a earthqake/tsunami about half a year earlier on an island somewhere in the atlantic I think. In both of these cases the dollar value, the fame, the precieved value and the media power source were not in alignment at all hence the limited coverage.
Today there was the news on the 40+ people who died in Nigeria due to a bomb and it barely made the headlines with just a map of Nigeria showing.
The above may seem similistic in nature but if you can quantify each of the factors I am sure you would be able to develop a rather interesting model of what really matters.
Abdali and Thap made good comments regarding the media coverage and importance given to this accident. But I guess you guys dont realize how fatal it is to a growing space exploration program. Apart from that, scattered debris (hazardous to health) of the space shuttle raised a lot of attention within the public. Two states had to declare emergency. If you still compare this incident with a train accident, then you guys are wrong.
Aatif: You have to realize when an emergency is declared in a state what it really means. There are storm warnings everytime theres six inches of rain in my county. Yet I have lived in countries where torrential floods are not declared an emergency. Its all a matter of prespective.
Even if you can place a value on the life of a person, I still think 40K turks would weight a wee bit heavier then 7 dead astronuts. The reason the space exploration is dead is cause there is no space race and the US holds the aces. until other countries devise ways to get up in space like China is doing there will be very little to interfere with Americas monoploy. Once the process is comercialized it should kick the space traveling into high gear but at the moment the technology is not been made available. The crash of a shuttle or not is just a little bump in the process. Its like trying to create a hydorgen bomb when you are the only one who owns the atomic bomb. there is virtually no reason for it.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Aatif: *
Apart from that, scattered debris (hazardous* to health) of the space shuttle raised a lot of attention within the public.
[/QUOTE]
hazardous?....bulls***! :)
They just dont want americans to collect shuttle parts as souvenirs.
Who-me some of the coolants and fuels are chrossive. Of course even gas is a pollutant which is why you should not drain engine oils into garbage. So may be thats not saying a lot.
Whats this post doing at the career and academics section??
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by hmcq: *
Who-me some of the coolants and fuels are chrossive. Of course even gas is a pollutant which is why you should not drain engine oils into garbage. So may be thats not saying a lot.
[/QUOTE]
No coolant or fuel survives a burn up at re-entry :). Actually most of these compounds break down at few hundred degrees. Hydrazine itself evaporates at 120 something deg C.
Right now at $10 STS107 patch is selling for $180 on ebay, same will be true for Shuttle pieces some time from now. Americans are known for their souvenir collecting anyway.
But never mind.
Spock:
I wanted it to be an educated discussion free of politics, conspiracy theories, whining about dead astronauts/zimbabwians etc, which seems to be impossible here.
An interesting tidbit about the Indian astronaut: last time she had a space mission in 1996, she (supposedly) caused the spacecraft to tumble out of control before other astros corrected the fault.
Nasa later stated that it wasn't her fault, that explains why she ever got a chance to reach for the skies again...
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by who---me: *
Spock:
I wanted it to be an educated discussion free of politics, conspiracy theories, whining about dead astronauts/zimbabwians etc, which seems to be impossible here.
[/QUOTE]
But I still fail to understand why you chose Career and Academics???? Btw, you could have shifted it to the tech forum or something?
Spock
Lets just say the C&A forum requested the thread.
Gosh, this thread has more politics and media bashing going on here, than the one in General. That one looks more scientific to me. You guys wanna switch? :~P