I used to live about ten miles from the launch pads (as the crow flies).
I saw a lot of rockets blow up on launch. I was on the sand in Cocoa Beach when the Challenger blew up.
It's a sight you never forget.
There are various ways of measuring the danger of spaceflight based on comparing the number of fatalities to the number of non-fatal spaceflights.
About two percent of the manned launch/reentry attempts have killed their crew, with Soyuz and the Shuttle having almost the same death percentage rates. Except for the X-15 (which is a suborbital rocket plane), other launchers have not launched sufficiently often for reasonable safety comparisons to be made.
About five percent of people who have been launched have died doing so. As of November 2004, 439 individuals have flown on spaceflights: Russia/Soviet Union (96), USA (277), others (66).[citation needed] Nineteen have died while in flight: one on Soyuz 1, one on X-15-3, three on Soyuz 11, seven on Challenger, and seven on Columbia. By space program, 16 NASA astronauts (5.8%) and four Soviet cosmonauts (4.1% of all the people launched) died while in a spacecraft.
Soyuz accidents have claimed the lives of four cosmonauts. No deaths have occurred on Soyuz missions since 1971, and none with the current design of the Soyuz. Including the early Soyuz design, the average deaths per launched crew member on Soyuz are currently under two percent. However, there have also been several serious injuries, and some other incidents in which crews nearly died.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents
