ISTR the acceptable risk statement for the Apollo program was that there be no more than a 20% chance of losing a crew. NASA lost the Apollo 1 crew in the pad

ISTR the acceptable risk statement for the Apollo program was that there be no more than a 20% chance of losing a crew. NASA lost the Apollo 1 crew in the pad fire, nearly lost the Apollo 13 crew, and lost a bunch more astronauts to plane crashes in the early days. They also nearly lost the Gemini 8 crew during the docking accident, and nearly lost Gus Grissom when the hatch cover pyros blew unexpectedly after his Mercury capsule splashed down. (On the other hand the attrition rate among test pilots in the 1945-1975 era was sky high.) Then there was the Shuttle, which was supposed to have a less than 1% chance of losing a crew and managed to kill 14 astronauts in 130-something flights (and had a couple more very close calls). Even the best/safest crew launch vehicle to date -- Soyuz -- killed four cosmonauts (on Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11) and had a couple of extremely hairy launch aborts and uncontrolled ballistic re-entries. TLDR: nearly 60 years after Gagarin's flight, human space vehicle launch and re-entry is still extremely dangerous. (Living on a space station: somewhat less so, but still not as "safe" as the crew of a nuclear submarine.)