Apollo 1 should count. Gus Grissom had been to space twice. Ed White once. They were the top candidates in the program at the time. The accident was clearly rel

Apollo 1 should count. Gus Grissom had been to space twice. Ed White once. They were the top candidates in the program at the time. The accident was clearly related to space exploration and the Apollo program. When we lost those astronauts it directly effected the outcome of the Apollo program since they were going to continue to actively participate in future missions. [1] As for the space shuttle, it is a failure of both complexity and the inability to adapt. Had it been either less complex or more adaptable it would have had a different fate. All of that being said it was designed to last 10 years or 100 missions[2]. That should be read whichever comes first. So all the reliability engineering that was run on the parts in the 70s did not assume the same parts would still be in use in the 00s. Such an accident should be expected when using hardware that was designed to have been retired over 10 years ago. My own take on it is the Apollo program was more dangerous and we were relatively lucky. Meanwhile the shuttle program was safer yet we didn't follow our own rules and got burned. Whether it's launching outside of recommended temperatures or running shuttles for twice as long as they were designed for... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program