"Skylune" wrote:
Hey. By using vehicle miles as the standardization factor for
statistical comparisons, the Space Shuttle should be by far the safest
form of transportation. Right Jim?

Well, let's see, first we have to find the miles traveled. I found this
site with some totals:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches..._sidebar2.html

They say:

"Fleet Total: 354,775,865 miles (567,641,384 kilometers)."

Space fatalities (and many other space stats) found he
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/...pacestats.html

14 fatalities.

So the rate for the Space Shuttle fleet works out to:

~3.9 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles.

By comparison, according to http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/ the U.S. rate
for motor vehicle accidents is:

~1.7 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles.

CONCLUSION 1: On a per mile basis, auto travel is safer than space shuttle
travel. So it isn't the safest form of transportation even by that generous
measure.

CONCLUSION 2: You don't actually research anything yourself, thus getting
yourself into trouble by making assertions you haven't checked. You could
have found the space shuttle stats yourself with some trivially obvious
search keywords.