Admittedly the Canadian designed a capsule that would have killed the shit out of astronauts if they ever had to bail out of it but they never did and the (((Space Shuttle))) killed the shit out of astronauts pretty much for fun so.
@yockeypuck@merchantHelios challenger is really kind of a worst case scenario. When you're sitting on a few tons of rocket fuel and containment parts fail there isn't really enough time to get far enough away to survive
@merchantHelios Challenger was a failure of the space shuttle in that 1) the SRBs were sort of part of the thing, not just the orbiter 2) the orbiter had no escape system so in the event of a totally-foreseeable series of failures the result would be total astronaut death.
@yockeypuck@merchantHelios right, most of the escape systems have a chance of working successfully when its a near ground accident. Once you've been accelerating for a minute it's a bit harder.
@sickburnbro@merchantHelios The second N1 launch blew up a rocket larger than the Saturn V with nearly a full propellant load, creating one of the largest manmade non-nuclear explosions in history; the launch escape system pulled the crew capsule to what would have been safety if anyone had been in it.