I heard an interview with one of the primary engineers for the space shuttle years ago, he said there was no way he would ride the space shuttle. This was while the program was still running. His take was that rockets are just controlled explosions and that it's an inherently dangerous way to travel. Expecting space travel to be safe is unrealistic.
I think a good way to look at it is, seafaring travel wasn't exactly the safest of ideas either way back when. It took hundreds of years of technological development to get to the point where the risk was minimal. Space travel will more than likely follow a similar safety/technology curve. Though if what francopoli says is true, we're already starting to see that development curve. Maybe 100 years from now, we'll look back at our current space program and shake our heads in disbelief as we mumble "those crazy bastards."