Is it necessary to make your response jingoistic? The US also lost astronauts. Apollo 1 (see comment below) and the Challenger shuttle come to mind.

Space exploration is extremely complex and thus inherently potentially fatal if there are humans on board.

The Apollo 13 near disaster, which happened just before this story, could have easily ended with 3 dead Astronauts. Fortunately for the crew of Apollo 13, the failure was something non-instantaneous and in an area the Astronauts could fix themselves with some McGyver-level ingenuity. It could have very easily happened that the three astronauts would slowly asphyxiate before they could get back to earth.