[kadenshep]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2018/01/15/doubts...

I googled it for you.

>"Zuma" satellite is the third payload sitting on a Falcon 9 that has been lost in four years. By way of comparison, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX's sole competitor in the military launch business, hasn't lost a single payload in 12 years and 124 missions.

>two recent government reports raise questions bearing upon the reliability of SpaceX products and processes. The first is an evaluation of quality controls among launch-vehicle suppliers to the military space program. That report, prepared by the defense department's Inspector General and dated December 20, found 181 deviations from quality standards at contractor sites. Over a third were "major nonconformities," meaning deviations that might contribute to a failure in quality controls.

[rory096]

Zuma was not a SpaceX failure. This article is FUD by the COO of a think tank linked to the defense industry.

https://twitter.com/lthompsonlex

http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/boeing-meant-america-cente...

[kadenshep]

Okay how does that negate the other payload losses that SpaceX has had, with only half the number of launches as its competitor? SpaceX has 61 launches according to this: http://www.spacex.com/missions

You've totally missed the point.

Haha, and then you edited your comment to attack the source. Honestly the person could have been North Korea's super extra special space dictator and it wouldn't change the reality that SpaceX has a higher incident rate than comparable companies. Which is what OP basically asked.

[rory096]

ULA is indeed remarkably reliable — that is its main advantage, given its high prices. However, ULA is only the sole competitor to SpaceX in military launch — for commercial and NASA launches several other alternatives exist. Let's take a more thorough review:

• Proton-M: 9 failures and 2 partial failures in 102 launches.

• Ariane 5: 2 failures and 3 partial failures in 98 launches

• Antares: 1 failure in 8 launches (this is SpaceX's competitor in NASA resupply launches)

• Pegasus (smallsats): 3 failures and 2 partial failures in 43 launches. Derivative Minotaur-C had 3 failures in 10 launches.

• Falcon: 1 failure, 1 partial failure, and 1 non-launch payload loss (Amos-6) in 58 launches (59 campaigns).

SpaceX's failure rate is in line with industry norms.

While ULA has a perfect safety record since it was formed in 2006, its rockets do not (though they are still impressive).

• Atlas V: 1 partial failure in 78 launches.

• Delta IV: 1 partial failure in 36 launches.

>two recent government reports raise questions bearing upon the reliability of SpaceX products and processes. The first is an evaluation of quality controls among launch-vehicle suppliers to the military space program. That report, prepared by the defense department's Inspector General and dated December 20, found 181 deviations from quality standards at contractor sites. Over a third were "major nonconformities," meaning deviations that might contribute to a failure in quality controls.

Bizarrely, the author here attributes nonconformities at all three EELV contractors — including ULA and Aerojet Rocketdyne — to SpaceX. The actual breakdown:

• ULA: 21 major, 43 minor

• SpaceX : 33 major, 42 minor

• Aerojet Rocketdyne: 14 major, 28 minor

https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/29/2001862093/-1/-1/1/DOD...

[kadenshep]

>SpaceX's failure rate is in line with industry norms.

SpaceX's 93% launch success rate is still below average for ALL launches (94-95%), and has a higher incident rate than its "competitors" in any form. That's what was asked. You don't need to apologize for SpaceX.

Some of the rockets in your "thorough" have radically different missions, specifications, and costs than the type of rockets we're discussing. Let's talk about what we're actually comparing. Orbital launch rockets actually beat "industry" averages by a signification margin. And let's talk about failures, unrecoverable ones.

* Altas V (actually built by Lockheed Martin, not ULA): 98% successful launch rate.

* Delta (entire family): 99% success rate across the ENTIRE family.

* H-IIA: 98% success rate

* Araine 5: 98% success rate.

* Long March (entire family): 98-99% success rate.

See a pattern? All of the above families have mission histories of 100+ launches.

>the author here attributes nonconformities at all three EELV contractors — including ULA and Aerojet Rocketdyne — to SpaceX

No they didn't. Are you just purposefully misreading the article?

>The first is an evaluation of quality controls among launch-vehicle suppliers to the military space program. >at contractor sites.

Beyond reading comprehension differences, I am not interested in willfully misrepresenting basic facts as some sort of intellectual jerk off exercise. SpaceX is below the industry average and way below the launch success average for the type of work they're doing. That's what the OP asked.

[kanox]

> let's talk about failures, unrecoverable ones.

Then why is spaceX at 93%? 2 unrecoverable failures in 59 campaigns equals 96.6% success.

All the competitors you listed have roots in government space programs going back many decades. Rockets tend to have a lot of "infant mortality" that those programs are way past.

Also, some of your claims are value/wrong: the Delta and Long March families are very large and very old and if you count the earliest attempts of governments to build ICBMs you get reliability figures worse than SpaceX.

Conversely the H-IIA, Delta 4, Atlas 5, Ariane 5 have fewer than 100 launches each.

Good data can be found here: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/logsum.html

[rory096]

  (ATLAS ORBITAL     325(46)     .86    .86)

  (ALL ATLAS         582(116)    .80    .80)

Ouch.

[kadenshep]

>the Delta and Long March families are very large and very old and if you count the earliest attempts of governments to build ICBMs you get reliability figures worse than SpaceX.

"If you do this thing that you didn't do, you get worse figures."

Um, okay.

[rory096]

>Altas V (actually built by Lockheed Martin, not ULA)

Er, what?

(Missed this before.)

[kadenshep]

You could maybe, I dunno, click on the wikipedia link and read it.

[rory096]

>SpaceX's 93% launch success rate is still below average for ALL launches (94-95%), and has a higher incident rate than its "competitors" in any form. That's what was asked. You don't need to apologize for SpaceX.

How do you get to this number? Even in the least charitable way to calculate it, excluding Falcon Heavy, using Amos in the numerator but not the denominator, and counting the secondary payload loss on CRS-1, Falcon 9's failure rate is 3/57. That's 5.2%, or a success rate of 94.74%.

>Some of the rockets in your "thorough" have radically different missions, specifications, and costs than the type of rockets we're discussing. Let's talk about what we're actually comparing. Orbital launch rockets actually beat "industry" averages by a signification margin. And let's talk about failures, unrecoverable ones.

Zero of those rockets are non-orbital. The only one not in Falcon 9's class is Pegasus (though the TESS mission was intended for Minotaur). Ariane and Proton are Falcon's main competitors in the commercial market, where ULA is uncompetitive.

>See a pattern?

Yes, designs tend to get safer as they mature. Falcon is at 58 launches and is likely to exceed 80 before any crewed launch. Its last failure was mission #29.

>All of the above families have mission histories of 100+ launches.

Counting 'family' legacy back to ICBMs is ludicrous. Atlas V has flown 78 times, Delta IV 36 times (Medium and Heavy), H-IIA 39 times.

And can you cite those family success rates? The Thor/Delta family, by a quick calculation per Wikipedia's launch lists[0], has an 87.42% success rate.[1]

>No they didn't. Are you just purposefully misreading the article?

No, but the article's author is purposefully misleading readers by citing that number alone:

>Against that backdrop, two recent government reports raise questions bearing upon the reliability of SpaceX products and processes. The first is an evaluation of quality controls among launch-vehicle suppliers to the military space program. That report, prepared by the defense department's Inspector General and dated December 20, found 181 deviations from quality standards at contractor sites.

Moreover, ULA rockets consist of both ULA and Aerojet Rocketdyne parts (and indeed RL10 caused Atlas' partial failure). If we're correlating nonconformities with risk, their numbers should be added together. And, of course, the inspector general didn't evaluate RD-180 production facilities.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launche...

[1] https://i.imgur.com/izkMH14.png

[kadenshep]

>Counting 'family' legacy back to ICBMs is ludicrous.

I didn't do that and you know it. Those are all rockets used in orbital payload missions. All of them have been used within the last 5 years.

I used some inline JS for this table here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_s...