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Thanks for compiling the numbers. 18 "work"-related fatalities out of 546 "workers" represents a massive amount of risk over any widespread form of civilian em

Thanks for compiling the numbers. 18 "work"-related fatalities out of 546 "workers" represents a massive amount of risk over any widespread form of civilian employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fishing is the riskiest job these days, with an annual fatality rate of around 12 per 10000. Even granting that safety has improved with experience and better engineering, I think it's safe to say that being an astronaut is at least 10x more dangerous than the most dangerous civilian job.

delazeur 11y ago
You're right; when I say "not that risky" I'm comparing reality vs. perception of space flight more than reality of space flight vs. reality of dangerous civilian jobs. On the other hand, for an accurate comparison to BLS numbers I think we would need the total number of astronauts, not the number of spaceflight participants. As for safety improvements, 3 of the 4 fatal spaceflight accidents (and 11 of 18 deaths) occurred in relatively new vehicles. Only one of the accidents occurred in a tried-and-true vehicle, and the fatality count is inflated by the number of people NASA put on each shuttle.