Five missions have been fatal to space travelers.
Spaceflight is anything but safe, and the quest to explore the final frontier comes with huge risks for the astronauts leading the charge. But has spaceflight actually cost people their lives?
Five spaceflight missions — three by NASA and two by the Soviet Union — have ended in fatalities."The accidents are usually a combination of unusual circumstances, equipment error, human error, politics and management," said Jim Hermanson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"Hot gas leaked out and burned into the propellant tank and caused a massive explosion," Hermanson told Live Science. Management was also partially to blame, as leadership proceeded with the launch against the warnings of some NASA engineers, he added.Another deadly spaceflight accident occurred in February 2003, when space shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry, killing the seven crewmembers.
Four cosmonauts have also lost their lives in spaceflight. In 1967, the Soviet Union's Soyuz 1 crashed into the ground after a parachute failure, killing the astronaut on board. Politics were partially at fault, as this was the beginning of the space race, and the launch was scheduled to coincide with a political event even though the people involved in the decision knew it wasn't ready, Packham said.
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