The Space Shuttle Columbia burned up during reentry on its 28th flight.
The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during its tenth launch.
The Space Shuttle Discovery has completed 34 flights.
The Space Shuttle Atlantis is conducting its 29th flight.
The Space Shuttle Endeavour has completed 20 flights.
This is a total of 121 shuttle flights. Of those, 9 docked with the Mir space station and 24 docked with the ISS.
As of 02/11/2008, 1036 total people (counting repeats) have successfully reached orbit. (This does not include suborbital flights, such as the first two Mercury flights, the X-15 flights, Soyuz 18-1 or the X-prize winning flights.) The Soviets/CIS/Russians had launched into orbit 244 people. The USA had successfully launched into orbit 789 people. The Chinese have launched 3 people. (These numbers ignore the nationality of the person, e.g. a Russian going up on the Space Shuttle counts as an American launch). This also counts each trip as a separate person.
1036 people trips have been made into earth orbit, including 466 distinct people, and 570 repeat visits. Of the distinct people, 335 first reached orbit on an American craft, 128 on a Russian craft, and three on a Chinese craft.
Of these people launched towards space, 4 have died on the Soviet/CIS/Russian missions and 14 have died in the USA missions. Thus the loss rate is just under two percent. This is somewhat less than the loss rate of people that have stood on the peak of Mt. Everest - slightly over two percent of those people have died on their way back down the mountain!
