Celestial versus Terrestrial Travel – An Analysis of Spaceflight Fatalities and Comparison to Other Modes of Transportation

With the advent of commercial human spaceflight, it is important to analyze the historical safety of humans travelling to, in, and from space. We break down the fatality rates of human spaceflight and compare them to those of several terrestrial transportation modes. We created a database of human space travel, containing the vehicles, launches, and the total time and distance travelled. For the four fatal space missions and 18 fatalities, we determined the fatality rates, calculated by several methods, including rates per trip, person, and distance travelled, stratified by the mission segment affected.