Only really repeating what the first few posts said, but rocket science is still not safe. The loss of two space shuttles is, from what I've read, in line with what you would expect. Even now a fair proportion of satellite launches fail - one very recently. Yes, after every loss you can look back and say that we did this wrong and what happened was inevitable and could have been avoided, but if we all had the benefit of hindsight you could close all casualty departments and a lot else and there would be a lot fewer liability lawyers. The trouble with spaceflight is that simple failures can be catastrophic particularly at launch. Had one of the five engines on the Saturn V failed in the first few seconds that would have been it. The escape tower might have worked but from what I've read I wouldn't have counted on it.
There were two unmanned Saturn V launches before it lifted men into space. The first (Apollo 4 I believe) was successful, the second (Apollo 6) had serious problem with rocket oscillations - the pogo effect - and it was lucky that no one was on board. These were fixed before men were put on the top of the rocket.
Doubtless the "anomalies" that caused the crash will be overcome but even when the technology matures there will likely still be disasters. It will be interesting to see that effect that this has on bookings.
Last edited by Peter47; 1st Nov 2014 at 21:35.