• blobjim [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    It's kind of amazing only three people have died in actual outer space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents

    I'll point out, more people died in the US space program than the Soviet one.

    • MoreAmphibians [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Depends on how you count. The US had more astronauts killed in their space program while the Soviets had some rocket explosions that killed a lot of ground crew.

      • MoreAmphibians [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        It's unclear if the Nedelin catastrophe should count. That was done by the military rocket program and not the Soviet Space Program. It did take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome which is the same place the civilian space program launched it's rockets from. If you include the Nedelin disaster then you have to include the non-NASA/military rocket disasters of the US. I know the US had at least 2 ICBM disasters with heavy loss of life.

        Plesetsk counts because for some reason everybody decided that launching spy satellites is the job of the civilian spaceflight programs.