How does the risk of continuing the CGRO mission compare with other risks?
The current worst-case estimate of the risk to any human life is one in several million. Many NASA activities have greater risks to human life, for example, NASA Safety Standard 1740.14 specifies the maximum permitted fatality risk from the reentry of a spacecraft to be 1 in 10,000. In the US, motor vehicle travel has a fatality rate of 1.7 per 100 million miles traveled (1997 data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), so one person traveling a few tens of miles causes a casualty risk comparable to the risk of flying CGRO summed over the entire human population. In short, continuing the CGRO mission is extremely safe.
