The safety of the US space program is difficult to determine, with fatalities occurring both in space and on the ground. Including accidents, the fatality rate is about 5%, rising to just over 6% when including the Apollo One disaster. The shuttle program has seen the most deaths, with 14 occurring from the Challenger and Columbia disasters. The odds of dying on a spaceflight are about 1 in 20. The US space program is still highly experimental and risky, but its participants are honored as brave.
The US space program is a source of pride for many. We’ve been to the moon, started exploring Mars, sent manned space shuttles around the world, and walked in space. But how secure is the program? This is often difficult to say as the parameters for deciding security can be different. Does it matter when people on the ground are injured or killed, for example? Statistics on the US space program can also be difficult to find as they are often lumped together with the Soviet space program. From this, we can tell that spaceflight or test conditions, such as in Apollo One and X-15-3, did not occur during actual launch attempts. The overall safety record of the US and Soviet space program, excluding accidents that occurred in the USSR that were never reported, is about 5% fatality.
Including the Apollo One disaster and in space flights or launches, 17 of the 277 people who participated as astronauts in the US Space Program died accidentally. Excluding Apollo One, 14 of the 277 people who have flown in space have died. Most include Apollo One, as it was an intended mission, and though the command module that claimed the lives of three men wasn’t set to launch on that horrific day, it would have gone up in a month.
When Apollo One is included in the US space program’s safety record, the fatality rate rises to just over 6%. But many people are concerned that most of the deaths in the US space program have occurred with the shuttle program. 14 deaths occurred from the shuttle Challenger, when it disintegrated seconds after launch in 1986, and the destruction of the shuttle Columbia upon reentry to earth in 2003. Part of the higher fatality rate corresponds to the higher number of passengers a board each shuttle, which was seven on each.
The safety of the US space program is further questionable when the deaths of ground crew members are taken into consideration. In 1964, three technicians were killed and eleven badly burned when a flare accidentally ignited. In 1981, five technicians lost consciousness and a sixth died from exposure to lethal gases. Death rates were even higher in programs outside the United States. A rocket explosion in 2003 in Brazil killed 21 people.
The concept of security is very variable. For example, is it safer to fly in an airplane than to be an astronaut for the US Space Program? Or to drive a car? That’s easy enough to answer. As of 2006, you have a one in 22.8 million chance of dying on an airplane. Your odds of dying from injuries related to an automobile accident are 1 in 84 or 1.1%. From examining the US Space Program’s flight logs, the odds of dying on a spaceflight are about 1 in 20. There’s no denying that this is dangerous work.
Astronauts in the US space program know this record much more intimately than we know it. They are prepared for accidents, injuries and possible death. These statistics can’t even begin to list the number of crashes that didn’t result in fatalities but were near misses. These are even scarier, as they occur with great frequency. Furthermore, we are only just beginning to understand the possible long-term effects of antigravity environments on the body. Some effects are relatively negative and could contribute to premature aging or shortened life span.
The problem with spaceflight is that it’s still highly experimental. The US space program and other space programs around the world don’t always know what will work, what will be safe, and all the potential risks. The astronauts set out to acquire further knowledge at potentially lethal cost. The US space program certainly learns from mistakes, but we have not yet accumulated total knowledge on how to explore space safely. So the US space program cannot be said to be completely safe, but its participants can certainly be honored as brave.
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