Redefining Safety

Abstract

NASA and the Aerospace community have traditionally included both risk to humans and hardware in the definition of "Safety". This leads to miscommunication with the public and can be an impediment to decision making. This paper offers two alternative aproaches: first, applying the term "safety" only to humans and referring to the risk of damage or loss of hardware as an element of "mission success" and second, using different notation for each type of "safety".