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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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A trip to space is actually about 100,000 times more likely to lead to a fatality than a 20 mile car trip.
People really underestimate how dangerous space travel is.
(The math is in another comment below if you're curious.)
I feel like the sample size is too low though. I wouldn't argue that it's more safe... But a lot of the deaths in space travel were in the early days when we were still figuring shit out and had less sophisticated technology for things like automatic abort systems etc.
For a more recent data point, how about NASA's safety requirements for SpaceX manned flights, circa 2020?
Would you get in a car if you had a 1 in 270 chance of dying during each trip? Those aren't great odds for surviving a year's worth of daily commutes.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/05/22/nasa-review-clears-spacex-crew-capsule-for-first-astronaut-mission/
the difference is i doubt anyone will ever fly more than a few dozen trips in the rocket if that
For the sake of argument, let's use your numbers and say an average astronaut ends up taking a dozen flights on rockets designed to NASA's 1-in-270 "loss of crew" standard. If that probability holds, then we would expect 4.4% of all astronauts flying in modern rockets to be in a fatal accident during their 12-mission career.
For comparison, lifetime driving fatality risk for American drivers is right around 1%.