To be technical, it wasn't a tragedy, but pathos. A tragedy involves a flawed hero struggling vainly against an inexorable fate that he brings upon himself. Pathos is someone suffering or dying because of forces greater than they are, in spite of their goodness or heroism or youth. Dying before your time by accident is an example of pathos, not tragedy. Possibly a collective version of tragedy would be if the space program was seen as a fundamentally flawed enterprise because of pride, and the astronauts victims of that pride; and their fate thereby would shed light on the inevitable failure of human ambition. I doubt if the astronauts would be happy to be seen in such a light. Of course, it may be that (as partly occurred in the Challenger disaster) someone knew that something was going to go wrong, and was prevented by their own blindness from stopping it -- that would then be a tragedy for that person.

yours, Peter T.