From “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, “In Hitler’s utterances there runs the theme that the supreme leader is above the morals of ordinary man. Hegel and Nietzsche thought so too. … A genius with a mission was above the law; he could not be bound by “bourgeois” morals.”

It is not simply Astronauts accepting risk in the “junker” space shuttle; it is Americans performing a duty to this nation who may die, and for what cause (utilitarianism), and when compared say to a submariner, why is the Astronaut vessel so pitiful, and an ethical step backwards from the 1963 crash dummy test of the launch escape system of Apollo? If it sounds absurd to propose removing all seat belts and all air bags from “modern” automobiles, then does it not also sound equally absurd to design a “modern” space shuttle with no launch escape system when its primitive predecessor Apollo had one? NASA has stepped backwards, not forwards, regarding perhaps one of if not the only true purpose of the space program – (one of) the unlearned Apollo 13 lessons.