Via RLV News, the presentations from the most recent COMSTAC meeting are available. I haven't read any of them yet, but I figured I'd post a pointer. I'm a little snowed under trying to make sure I've read everything I ought to read in order to do a decent job for the SOI, but I think the paper by Terry Hardy on Ec[*] calculations is a good place to start. I'm beginning to think that the single best paradigm change for moving towards a sustainable and vigorous spaceflight industry is a public safety regime that doesn't use Ec as a figure of merit. Ec is a little bit like man rating in that it implicitly assumes that the norm for space vehicles is that they blow up with some regularity.

[*] for those not already familiar with it, Ec is the expected number of casualties from operations of a given launch vehicle. You need less than 30 casualties per million flights in order to get a launch license.

I know you know this, Andrew, but just to clarify for the readership, that's third-party casualties (uninvolved people on the ground), not crew or passengers.

Oops. Good catch, Rand. Should have been clearer.

What is the comparable number for cars? For attending car races? For attending football games? For listening to political speeches?

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