Author Topic: Rocket Reliability  (Read 22277 times)

Offline DonPMitchell

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Rocket Reliability
« on: August 09, 2009, 03:01:14 PM »
Interesting article about rocket launches, success rates and causes of failures:

http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html

Some basic statistics on space launches:

USSR - 2589 successful, 181 failed, 93.5% success rate
USA   - 1152 successful, 164 failed, 87.5% success rate
EU     -  117 sucessful,  12 failed, 90.7% success rate
China -   56 successful,  11 failed, 83.6% success rate
Japan -   52 successful,   9 failed, 85.2% success rate
India -   7 successful,   6 failed, 53.8% success rate
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Offline jdbenner

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Re: Rocket Reliability
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2009, 03:07:37 PM »
Maybe we should copy the Rushens.  They do not push the margens so close, and have lower prices and greater safety despite often launching in bad wether.
Joshua D. Benner Associate in Arts and Sciences in General Science

Offline DonPMitchell

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Re: Rocket Reliability
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2009, 10:59:11 PM »
Yeah, the Russians did very good jobs on designing the Soyuz and Proton, but then they just focused on perfecting those designs.  I'm sure most of those launches are military -- their satellites tend to not last as long as ours, and they relied on film-return spy sats way longer than the US.  Unbelievable satellites with dozens of film-reentry pods that would separate and return to Earth regularly, or the Zenits where they just reloaded the film and sent them back up again, over and over.

http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogEarth.htm
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