A problem with the whole "space is an ocean" concept

I started tweeting about how a whole lotta proletariat gotta die for the "perfect future" in Star Trek, given that well-known trope about how anyone with a red shirt is going to die, and there's no money in the future. So they're a bunch of suckers. Seriously, though, in five series and twelve films, exactly... um... four or five main characters have stayed dead:

• Spock in The Wrath of Khan didn't stay dead
• Tasha Yar in TNG (main character? she was in the titles)
• Kirk in Star Trek Generations
• Jadzia Dax in DS9 (kinda had an Nth Doctor thing, though)
• Everyone at one point or another in Voyager (nobody stayed dead)
• Data in Star Trek Nemesis
• Trip Tucker in Enterprise
• Kirk in Star Trek Into Darkness didn't stay dead

So, yeah, obviously this is because shows want their main cast to stick around, and Tasha and Jadzia died because their actresses wanted out, and Real!Kirk and Trip died because their series were over, and Data died but not before creating a backup copy that you know would have been him had the TNG film zombie shuffled onward.

And no, I didn't count Benjamin Motherf*ckin' Sisko because whatever the hell happened to him at the end of DS9, he didn't actually die.  

So I started thinking - okay, you could try to subvert this. I mean, unless you wanted Gene's Utopian Future to be one where the underclass take all the risks. (Awkward.) You could do a Hornblower-type thingy where your main character (or ensemble cast, because those are a thing) start out low in the ranks, and their friends get killed as redshirts are wont to do - but so do the lieutenants and the captain, on occasion.  Ensign Spaceman's ship gets exploderated and he's set adrift...

Ah, but you see, if your ship sinks in one of Earth's oceans and you have enough food, a) you're probably going to wash up somewhere eventually, and that place is likely to be b) habitable and c) inhabited.

Space, says the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is big. Really, really big.

Of the nine planets in the Solar System (suck it, The Scientist Neil Tyson!) only one is capable of supporting life. Not only that, but it's not that easy to get to. I'm going to assume Apollo 13 is scientifically accurate here and say that if the Earth were a basketball, you would need to hit a window no thicker than a piece of paper in order to safely enter the atmosphere.

OK? So, if you manage to survive your ship getting exploderated around you, and if your escape pod isn't mangled by debris, and if you manage to float your way to an inhabited planet, you would still need to hit that teensy window. And good luck getting the attention of a passing ship to get off your new planet...