On the other hand, you don't usually get hit by random pieces of debris traveling at mach 25 [1] on Earth. And on the other-other hand, the things that go wron

On the other hand, you don't usually get hit by random pieces of debris traveling at mach 25 [1] on Earth. And on the other-other hand, the things that go wrong in spaceflight usually go wrong on launch or reentry - the parts where you combine the extreme conditions of space with the unpredictable extra nonsense of Earth. Like, say, a cold morning making an O-ring brittle or aerodynamic stresses ripping you apart on reentry. Only three deaths - the crew of Soyuz 11 [2] - have actually occurred in space proper; all other deaths have occurred within the Earth's atmosphere. (Although Apollo 13 came close to adding to that list.) [1] LEO orbital velocity is ~8 km/s, mach 1 is ~300 m/s, although meteoroids necessarily strike at much higher velocities than that because they're accelerated to at least Earth's escape velocity on descent. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11