AgentR11 wrote:They *WILL* have more failures. Russia will have more failures. NASA will have more failures. ULA will have more failures. EU,China, India, Japan; all are going to blow up more rockets and wreck more landers and screw up more satellites and probes....
I posted a chart one time that showed success percentages of the all the various systems. I can't remember for sure, but I think the best anyone has ever done was a 98% success rate, and then that was the top tier of the various launch systems (including Russian proton / soyuz) and then it went down from there with China, India etc.
The space shuttle was finally canceled in part due to the reality of it just being too dangerous, on the numbers. Not sure what the percentage was, there were a LOT of launches and successful missions but honestly one failure too many (what was the total that didn't make it back, 3?).
So.. yes, Spacex will have failures.. but it's concerning they've had one so soon. It's that success ratio thing they need to be in that 98% category but that's averaged out over hundreds of launches, if they've lost one already then one just doesn't know at this point, what the reliability rate is.
They shouldn't be given up on, it should be fixed.
But also we cannot take a chance with human crews unless it's as solid as it can be. If ULA is safer, then that's how it has to be, gotta use ULA.
Also -- you're right, failures happen, but they're still a new company. It's just unfortunate it happened, satellite customers don't want to lose a payload for one thing (the satellite costs more than the rocket). It's like any other business. Think of airlines -- a crash really sets them back. More than one, or too many, can put one out of business.
Space flight is *hard*. Failure goes with the territory. You have to learn from each failure, and improve based upon that knowledge, just to stay in the game.
Yep. They've been doing great. Really what I think is that the gov should throw some money into it, like I said so far Spacex has all been on the cheap -- maybe, at least as far as air force and NASA is concerned, some more money should be put into spacex.
SpaceX losing this rocket, at this particular time is inconvenient for NASA and kinda bad for them as a company; but its something that is expected, and you have to be ready to deal with it and move forward.
Yep, hey I'm not writing them off I'm just saying the reality. Agent, they actually cannot have too many failures -- test rockets okay, but not payloads -- one or two more failures too early on will put them out of business.
That's why I say really the gov should get involved with it and put a bunch of money into it, really get this system working. Because we do need those engines and spacex, we can't rely on Russian engines alone, for national security reasons.
You always say "money". Its *TIME* that is the critical component; it takes a long time to design a new engine, test it, adapt it to its mission. You don't just walk down the street and say, "Hey, I needs me 500 guys and gals to come help build a rocket engine." If money could solve it, SpaceX would have been launching years ago.
Not sure what you mean, they have done quite a few launches already, they've been years in development already. They already had all their test launches. But yep, rocket science ain't easy.. this sets back everything -- the dragon crew vehicle, and the Falcon Heavy they were planning, and the self-landing stages. I think they need more funding, a lot more money, get things right and slow it down a bit.
It takes years to grow, money's important, but the US Congress can't write a check big enough to cause a new engine to come into existence by the end of the year, or even next year really.
Right, exactly. Merlin engines are good engines -- congress should put some serious money into it, make sure there aren't any problems, get it fully up to "code" so to speak. Would be a bad mistake to leave spacex to work it out on their own and maybe fail, the system clearly works but needs some more work maybe. (we still don't know what happened, I'm assuming some flaw in their process or design or a part flaw, but for all we know they may have just been unlucky here having their 2/100 failure too soon, statistically)
So yeah, both the US and the Russians have discovered that our cultural distaste for each other simply exceeds what we can be comfortable with. Thus, we'll go our separate ways;
Well it just is what it is -- regardless of how one feels about it, from a national security perspective there's been enough friction with Russia that yes we have to get American rockets.
Putin would do the same thing, he wouldn't be reliant on anything critical from the US, at this point.
About rockets failing and success rates.. this is all a reminder of HOW AMAZING the entire Apollo program was and that nasa team and all the contractors. (and, the MONEY was spent to get it right too)
That was in the 1960s. They only lost one crew, in that capsule fire on the ground. Then Apollo 13 had an emergency in space, and they fixed it in space.
But all those Saturn launches, with crew on them.. not one loss. Stellar performance and record.
I read an interview one time from a guy that worked with von braun from the start on up to apollo. He said the biggest thing the public doesn't realize is how much TESTING they did, and how many test failures there were. And that they did it "the german way" -- they were methodical, little step by little step, after each failure they'd go over every last little thing and process, on down to how pages are numbered on a clipboard.
And I know from other reading, that the Soviet program did that even more so -- American program was overall known for doing all the work on the drawing board and minimizing failures, whereas the soviets were more iterative design and not so sensitive to losses.
We weren't first into space, only because we were more cautious.
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