[ajross]

Meh, but there's nothing to hit in space. The energy required to reach a routine geosynchronous orbit is already ~85% of escape velocity. The added boost is minimally more dangerous and the trip is just empty hours. "Time" does kill spacecraft, but not often.

The Webb self-assembly is absolutely where the scary bits lurk.

[jpgvm]

Yeah valid. Though the whole "hurtling upwards on top of a bomb" part is still definitely scary in it's own right.

[argiopetech]

Particularly given the launch record of the Ariane 5 platform. I did some quick research, and no modern launch platform has as high a mission failure rate (4.5%.) The Delta family comes close at 4.4%, but that's a 50yr launch history. The Delta 4 iteration has had no failures.

[jacquesm]

As I wrote elsewhere, the bulk of those failures were in the first 15 launches, after that it was a very long string of one success after another with one partial failure in 2018.