1 in 23 flights resulting in booster loss due to an uncontrolled fire is not good enough for human space flight. The space shuttle had a catastrophic failure ra

1 in 23 flights resulting in booster loss due to an uncontrolled fire is not good enough for human space flight. The space shuttle had a catastrophic failure rate of 1 in 67 flights. This is a very high risk to human life that NASA and others have agreed is unreasonable. Whether the booster that failed this time was reused many times is irrelevant. There does not seem to be evidence that reuse correlates with landing failure risk. Several Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters have failed[0] after a much lower number of flights and the sample count is much too low to infer a trend. This was also not a freak incident. On average, Block 5 boosters fail to land 1 in 28 times. This is about on par with the catastrophic failure rate of De Havilland Comet, which was notorious for failing. Although admittedly rarer, Falcon 9s have also had ascent-related failures. CRS-7 mission saw Falcon 9 explode 139 seconds after liftoff. Another one failed in AMOS-6 during a static fire test. This is about 1 in 190. In this context, it is wise to demand that SpaceX investigates the failures before putting humans in space for tourism. I know we all want to see private astronauts, but it only took two spacecraft failures to end the entire Space Shuttle program. Today, with increased safety expectations, it would not take more for NASA to re-evaluate their partnership with SpaceX and set back private space flight significantly. It's best to take due care. For comparison, there was 1 Concorde crash per 7,957 flights. It was deemed too unsafe as a vehicle. Putting it all in context shows that Falcon 9 does not have an excellent safety rating. And while more modern Falcon 9 boosters may have it one day, today is not that day.