On the other hand, some astronauts could get significant money out of giving talks and writing books, etc. At least if they are the first to land on the Moon, or Mars, or similar.
However, I suppose most of those who enter training will never even enter space. It's a rock star earning model: very many try, very few succeed completely. But people do it also for other reasons than money.
I couldn't help feeling some schadenfreude when watching a video where 72-year-old Buzz Aldrin is pestered and provoked by some (much younger and bigger) nutjob who is in denial about Moon landings and yells at him and pushes him, and eventually Buzz smacks him for good. He sure did his aerobics when he was younger and seemed to be still quite fit.
Sure. But when you do fly I’d say it’s pretty risky.[1] Even some of the training can kill you. Seems more risky than a typical desk job, but maybe that depends on how deadly boredom can be.
For context: 4 out 301 spaceflights have resulted in fatalities, or 18 out of 546 people who have been to space. 13 people have died in training, but I have not been able to find the total number of people who have trained as astronauts or cosmonauts. I suppose we would also have to account for health risks due to spaceflight: radiation exposure, accelerated aging, respiratory issues among Apollo astronauts due to lunar dust in their capsules, etc. It's certainly riskier than a desk job, but it still doesn't seem that risky to me.
18 "work"-related fatalities out of 546 "workers" represents a massive amount of risk over any widespread form of civilian employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fishing is the riskiest job these days, with an annual fatality rate of around 12 per 10000.
Even granting that safety has improved with experience and better engineering, I think it's safe to say that being an astronaut is at least 10x more dangerous than the most dangerous civilian job.
You're right; when I say "not that risky" I'm comparing reality vs. perception of space flight more than reality of space flight vs. reality of dangerous civilian jobs.
On the other hand, for an accurate comparison to BLS numbers I think we would need the total number of astronauts, not the number of spaceflight participants. As for safety improvements, 3 of the 4 fatal spaceflight accidents (and 11 of 18 deaths) occurred in relatively new vehicles. Only one of the accidents occurred in a tried-and-true vehicle, and the fatality count is inflated by the number of people NASA put on each shuttle.
Swings and roundabouts. An astronaut has a greater risk of dying in an accident than most people, but the greater amount of fitness required increases the chances of living a long life if they don't have any accident.
Conversely, there is much less of a risk of a fatal accident in a desk job - but long, stressful, hours combined with a bad diet and lack of exercise can massively increase the chance of dying early from heart disease or stroke.
Astronauts aren’t doing it for the money. The government doesn’t pay it’s people well for risk. Contracting with the government is much more lucrative in this regards. Military can often pay less than $50k a year[1] to people taking a ton of risk when a contractor taking significantly less risk is making $1000 a day. This is one reason privatizing so much of the military is corrosive.
It would be great, if that cost reigned in our willingness to go to war. However, it just provides even more incentive for all the people making money off it directly or indirectly to support the war.
