alt Hacker NewsWould be unpleasant if there was crew.
19 people have died in the 391 crewed space missions humans have done so far. The risk of dying is very high. Starship is unlikely to change that, although the commoditization of space flight could have reduce the risk simply by making problems easier to spot because there's more flights.
Replies
api • 01/17/2025
I could imagine the risk going down to a few times air travel after 50+ years of operating a mature launch system.
BurningFrog • 01/17/2025
Modern space ships are very likely to change that, as designs mature and improve.
Early aviation was extremely dangerous. Now a plane is among the safest places to be.
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helpfulContrib • 01/17/2025
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The higher frequency of launches seems likely to have a big impact on reliability. It's no different than deploying once per day vs once per month. The more you do it, the more edge cases you hit and the more reliable you can make it.
SpaceX also has a simplification streak: the Raptor engines being the canonical example. Lower complexity generally means less unexpected failure modes.