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Sometimes, the safety of various forms of transportation are compared based on the rate of fatalities (or injuries or other unplanned destructive accidents) per person-mile or person-kilometer traveled.

I see this most often used to calm people's safety-based fears about flying in airplanes, especially when that fear is being used to justify choosing to drive instead, because the safety record of commercial aviation is much better than automobiles. Where do launch vehicles, as a class, fit in?

I am specifically referring to vehicles intended to carry people between the Earth's surface and outer space, excluding time/distance spent orbiting in a space station as that would be such a dominant factor. That major factor is a key distinguishing aspect between the present question and this related one.

I'm also interested in an answer over the history of spaceflight rather than any carefully selected range, so this would cover Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, and any others I may have missed. I'm not quite sure where to find good data to calculate the denominator. Showing sources and any information/tips on how to get data for future recalculation (as space travel activity is increasing) can earn more points :-).

WBT
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  • Do you also want to exclude miles traveled in orbit by non-space-station spacecraft? Just launches and reentries? i.e. does Gemini 7 count as 3000km or as 2.5 million km? – Russell Borogove Apr 21 '21 at 14:42
  • No, I think I would count that as 2.5 million km; it's the occupied vehicle traveling that distance. I think that simplifies things somewhat. – WBT Apr 21 '21 at 14:58
  • I would expect that per-trip safety statistics would be more relevant for modes of travel where incidents are orders of magnitude more likely at the beginning or end of the trip than in the 1000's of miles of uneventful travel in between. – brhans Apr 21 '21 at 20:50
  • @brhans yes, one would expect that, and commercial aviation fits into that category along with space travel, though collision probabilities en route are increasing. – WBT Apr 22 '21 at 17:01

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