On Tuesday 04 February 2003 1:50 am, Christian Lheureux wrote:
> Bill wrote :
> > (b) a shuttle has a 1 in 200 chance every liftoff of having something
> > catastrophic happen - that's pretty lousy odds if you ask me...
>
> I do not agree with the math. There's been 2 public mishaps, Challenger in
> '86 and now Columbia in 2003. That was, IIRC, STS-107. So that's a 1:53.5
> probablility something catastrophic happens, which is almost 4 times as
> hasardous as your (b) source claims.

<flame-in-jest> BXZZZZZT wrong answer -- but thank you for playing</sarcasm>

The /probability/ hasn't changed -- think coin flips where the first 99 trials
resulted in heads, the measured results don't change the /probability/ that
"heads for trial #100" remains at 1:2 -- All you're pointing out here is that
the "measured results" of shuttle flights w/catastrophic results are 1:50+
[also note: STS-107 isn't neccessarilly the 107th flight, but rather the
107th mission -- missions aren't necessarilly flown in order.  for instance,
the "next scheduled flight" was STS114 and was scheduled for march 1st --
somehow I doubt there were plans to cram 6 other flights into the month of
February...]

> Of course, this is base on a less that
> significant sample (2 occurrences),
> No other space vehicle has EVER experienced such a
> ratio in history.

therein lies the whole problem with trying to determine meaningful results --
there simply have not been enough "trials" to realistically determine the
"odds" -- perhaps we've been beating them all along, perhaps we're way behind
the curve -- until spaceflight becomes as commonplace as flying an airplane
coast-to-coast, we'll never really know for certain...

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