• Bldck@beehaw.orgEnglish
    625·
    17 hours ago

    I mean… not really.

    🛰️ Space Race Fatalities Comparison: Soviet Union vs United States

    Aspect 🇺🇸 United States 🇷🇺 Soviet Union
    Total astronaut/cosmonaut deaths 9–10 (incl. test/training accidents) 8 (official)
    On-mission fatalities 3 (Apollo 1, ground test) 4 (Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11)
    Training/test deaths (astronauts) 6+ (e.g. Theodore Freeman, C.C. Williams) 4+ (e.g. Valentin Bondarenko, others possibly unacknowledged)
    Deaths among ground personnel <10 100+ (notably the Nedelin disaster)
    Transparency High (accidents publicized and investigated) Low (many incidents hidden until after 1989)
    Major catalyst event Apollo 1 fire Soyuz 1, Nedelin disaster
    Key Takeaways
    • 🇺🇸 U.S. suffered more astronaut fatalities, including test pilots and training accidents.
    • 🇷🇺 Soviets had higher total human losses, especially among engineers and soldiers during explosive launch and fuel testing incidents.
    • 🔥 The Apollo 1 fire led to sweeping design and safety reforms in NASA.
    • 🚨 The Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 tragedies were fatal in-flight accidents; Soyuz 11 remains the only in-space human fatality.
    • 🕵️ The Nedelin disaster, one of the worst rocket catastrophes in history, killed over 100 but was kept secret for decades.
    • 🧾 Transparency and institutional accountability were key differences: NASA publicly investigated accidents; the USSR often concealed failures.
    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      21·
      17 hours ago

      You can certainly blur the space race with missile development as they were intimately tied on both sides, and if you want to include it then the deaths from the US ICBM disasters need to be included as well, but I do think it’s a bit absurd to uncritically report that 100+ people died in Nedelin when official numbers revealed it to be 54. Plus, wherever you sourced this from is clearly generally biased against the soviets beyond the scope of this report.