This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. Not with the death of SpaceShipTwo’s co-pilot. And not a few months before the space plane would have begun its first commercial flights.

The rocket-propelled, suborbital SpaceShipTwo broke up and crashed during a test flight on Oct. 31. It’s unclear why the accident occurred, but it was the first time Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites—the plane’s manufacturer—had tested a new plastic-based fuel mixture while airborne.

Michael Alsbury, the plane’s 39-year-old co-pilot, died in the crash.

But there’s another problem with Virgin Galactic. When it comes to space travel, the company over-promises—and downplays the risk. The result is a bunch of bad incentives that can make accidents more likely.

The Halloween Day catastrophe raised questions about the future of the private space industry, and the fate of Virgin Galactic.

Chris Taylor at Mashable highlighted the inherent dangers of space travel, but cast aside doubts on the company future’s in an ode to technological progress.

“Everyone who boards a Virgin Galactic flight, whenever such a thing happens, will be a space pioneer—and they’ll assume all the risks that all pioneers in previous centuries did,” Taylor wrote.

But others noted the dissonance between the company’s star-trekking public image and the reality of sub-orbital leisure flights. The company is indeed a pioneer in the field of engineering, Wired’s Adam Rogers wrote, but it’s hardly a space pioneer in any meaningful sense.

It’s unrealistic to expect the company’s customers to accept the same risks that professional pilots and astronauts face in the pursuit of far-reaching science and space exploration.

It’s cliche to say that space and rocketry are dangerous industries, but do people really grasp just how dangerous? In terms of the fatality rate, being an astronaut is perhaps the most dangerous profession there is.

Of all people who have flown into space, four percent have died in the pursuit of their work.

Many of Virgin Galactic’s customers are well aware they’re taking serious risks by signing up to fly—and they do it anyway for the adventure and thrill. But it’s worth asking whether Virgin Galactic’s business model could survive if its passengers’ fatality rate equaled that of the actual, existing space program.

Most certainly not. If a company saw four percent of its own customers die over the course of several decades, then it’d be a shock to know how the company ever survived that long.