I suspect the first people to sail the globe did so knowing the risks. I suspect if we reduced astronaut safety thresholds by a factor of 10, we will still have a surplus of high quality candidates for space missions.
The public has spend billions of dollars on this program, if the end result is astronauts getting cooked during reentry then how could that possibly be an outcome worth the expense?
>The public has spend billions of dollars on this program, if the end result is astronauts getting cooked during reentry then how could that possibly be an outcome worth the expense?
The public has spent [tons of 15th century money] on earth exploration. If the end result is sailors drowning, then then how could global exploration be an outcome worth the expense?
A 50% death rate from scurvy alone was assumed.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-age-of-s...