Reasonable risk

I'm a space nut; I'll freely admit it. To quote science visionary Carl Sagan "This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space." It's what we as human's do – we started out in caves and went to look over the next hill, then the next continent, then across the seas and mountains. Now it's time to go forward.

 

But space travel is risky. NASA used to approach design by making the safest mechanism possible and then redesigning it to make it safer. It was a good approach but didn't help a lot of dead astronauts, most recently the tragic deaths of the

Columbia

space shuttle. Leaving the atmosphere is risky.

 

So the news that Virgin Galactic has got a licence to build spaceships is deeply heartening – it shows an adult attitude to risk. Let people make the best bet they can on security and trust their judgment.

 

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/1752201&tid=160&tid=103&tid=187

 

What has this to do with computers I hear you ask? Well plenty. There's no such thing as safe computing any more – as more and more people get computer savvy we're going to see more problems. But the internet is possibly the most important invention since the printing press and to stop using it because of security fears would be as stupid as deciding to turn our backs on our future outside the gravity well.