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The Space Shuttle suffered 2 total losses in 135 missions. Apollo had 1 total loss from a dozen or so flights (plus several heart-stopping near misses). If priv

The Space Shuttle suffered 2 total losses in 135 missions. Apollo had 1 total loss from a dozen or so flights (plus several heart-stopping near misses). If privately flown Cessna 172s had that kind of fatality rate, I (and many other posters on this board) would long since be a smoking hole in the ground. Space flight is spectacularly dangerous, and US launch vehicles have a particularly gnarly safety record. Some paranoia is probably warranted.

walrus01 8y ago
The space shuttle, Apollo and early Soyuz were also very different spacecraft than current designs and technology. Challenger and Columbia were lost due to institutional ineptitude. The engineers that were the manufacturer of the SRBs on Challenger specifically warned against the cold temperatures and were overruled. People noticed the foam shedding issue with the space shuttle many years before the Columbia incident. The space shuttle was a catastrophic clusterfuck of a pork barrel political design. There was actually no launch escape system or possibility of recovery from early launch phase anomaly once the SRBs were lit, until they burned out (unlike the launch escape system on Soyuz, Apollo, Dragon2, etc). The space shuttle had a ridiculous number of moving parts and degree of complexity compared to a Dragon2 on a Falcon9 (or a Soyuz on top of its booster) The soviet union and russia have had zero fatalities since Soyuz 11 in 1971. I would actually venture that at this point it might be statistically safer to fly along as a passenger in a modern Soyuz mission than to fly as a second passenger in some sub-500-hour pilot's kitbuilt piper cub clone.
- meredydd 8y ago
  Granted that current Soyuz is the most reliable human-carrying spacecraft today (not that there's much competition). And granted that the Shuttle was deeply weird and a bad idea. But Wikipedia tells me that the next Soyuz to go up will be #142, counting from Gagarin. In the hypothetical world where (say) the Mir crisis had been fatal, Soyuz would have a lifetime success rate almost exactly the same as the Shuttle's. Even if the new ones are much better, we don't have the statistical power to say. Gimme the kitbuilt Piper any day.
  - consp 8y ago
    Considering the Soyuz-U has over 700 launches and the R7 family has over 1000 (of which all Suyuz launch vehicles are part), only taking the manned versions is a somewhat distorted comparison (though not unfavorable in some aspects). The Soyuz-success/failure manned rate is about the same as the space shuttle, though a bit higher but with successful escapes and launch aborts. If you start comparing casualties the space shuttle loses massively as only 4 cosmonauts have died, all in the decent stage (either crashed or died on entry) with the R7 and derivatives as launch vehicles and Suyuz or Voskhod as name. To be fair, the total of the R7 family (which is skewed since there are way more failures in the early days than after the 1990's for all kinds of rockets) is 137 vs 1755 or about 7 % vs the 1.5% of the space shuttle.

walrus01 8y ago

The space shuttle, Apollo and early Soyuz were also very different spacecraft than current designs and technology. Challenger and Columbia were lost due to institutional ineptitude. The engineers that were the manufacturer of the SRBs on Challenger specifically warned against the cold temperatures and were overruled. People noticed the foam shedding issue with the space shuttle many years before the Columbia incident. The space shuttle was a catastrophic clusterfuck of a pork barrel political design. There was actually no launch escape system or possibility of recovery from early launch phase anomaly once the SRBs were lit, until they burned out (unlike the launch escape system on Soyuz, Apollo, Dragon2, etc). The space shuttle had a ridiculous number of moving parts and degree of complexity compared to a Dragon2 on a Falcon9 (or a Soyuz on top of its booster) The soviet union and russia have had zero fatalities since Soyuz 11 in 1971. I would actually venture that at this point it might be statistically safer to fly along as a passenger in a modern Soyuz mission than to fly as a second passenger in some sub-500-hour pilot's kitbuilt piper cub clone.

meredydd 8y ago
Granted that current Soyuz is the most reliable human-carrying spacecraft today (not that there's much competition). And granted that the Shuttle was deeply weird and a bad idea. But Wikipedia tells me that the next Soyuz to go up will be #142, counting from Gagarin. In the hypothetical world where (say) the Mir crisis had been fatal, Soyuz would have a lifetime success rate almost exactly the same as the Shuttle's. Even if the new ones are much better, we don't have the statistical power to say. Gimme the kitbuilt Piper any day.
- consp 8y ago
  Considering the Soyuz-U has over 700 launches and the R7 family has over 1000 (of which all Suyuz launch vehicles are part), only taking the manned versions is a somewhat distorted comparison (though not unfavorable in some aspects). The Soyuz-success/failure manned rate is about the same as the space shuttle, though a bit higher but with successful escapes and launch aborts. If you start comparing casualties the space shuttle loses massively as only 4 cosmonauts have died, all in the decent stage (either crashed or died on entry) with the R7 and derivatives as launch vehicles and Suyuz or Voskhod as name. To be fair, the total of the R7 family (which is skewed since there are way more failures in the early days than after the 1990's for all kinds of rockets) is 137 vs 1755 or about 7 % vs the 1.5% of the space shuttle.