Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by planteen 3596 days ago
It seems like there is a wall in reliability with getting chemical rockets much more reliable than about 99% - 99.5%. SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing cool things, but I don't see them being any more reliable than previous generations of chemical rockets.

If an elevator could provide more 9s of reliability, that could be huge.
1 comments
oliwaw 3596 days ago
But cost is also at issue. For cargo, it might make sense to take on 0.5-1.0% risk versus the massive investments necessary for the development of a space elevator.

And when we're talking about human spaceflight, consider the work SpaceX and Blue are putting into in-flight abort and propulsive landing - SpaceX's Crew Dragon should be much safer than the Space Shuttle, for example.

link
planteen 3596 days ago
Yeah for cargo I agree. I was thinking more along the lines for human rating.

Propulsive landing helps for some failure modes but not all. Like I don't think it would have helped the CRS-7 failure had that been manned.

link
hLHEDuYtSh 3596 days ago
It actually would have helped on CRS-7 -- That capsule was fine until it hit the water.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/07/saving-spaceship-dra...

link