Completely agree. I've worked in "old space" and the fundamental problem is that they can't afford to experiment. SpaceX has the option to physically test an idea that's holding them up before investing in fully bringing it up to production quality, only to have to redo all that work next iteration. That's why they can make new things and do it cheaper and faster.
Ironically, "old old space" = Soviet space was so damn good at innovating it probably would have made SpaceX look old-fashioned. Really I don't think there's a fundamental reason why we can't have two SpaceX's (Spaces X?) so why is there no other?
Haha I had a feeling someone would bring this up. To me, old space isn't farther back in time in the golden age of space, but rather what the space industry eventually calcified into. New space is like a Renaissance.
There are other new space companies, but they're just not as good.
Except SpaceX’s failure rates are similar with every other successful launch system. Rather than looking at failure as a constant rate you need to consider these numbers change with every flight. Initially major design flaws are identified and workers become more skilled at a process, eventually new errors creep in etc etc.
They have greatly benefited from being able to use modern tools and seen where other systems failed. Many rocket companies have failed when trying to go fast and break things because it isn’t an easy shortcut. Instead SpaceX has used the normal approach used by other successful organizations and simply executed it well.
> Except SpaceX’s failure rates are similar with every other successful launch system.
Falcon 9 has the record for most consecutive successful orbital launches. Their last failure was AMOS-6 in September of 2016. Since then they've had 189 successful launches in a row.[1] In that same time Soyuz has had 113 launches with 3 failures. Soyuz's longest success streak was 100 launches from 1983 to 1986.[2] The US's Delta II had 100 consecutive successes from 1997 to 2018, though it has since been retired. A total of 155 Delta IIs were launched with 2 failures.
Falcon 9's current successful landing streak of 110 missions exceeds the competition's best launch streak. By any metric one can measure, SpaceX has the most reliable rocket.
You can always slice and dice data to make one side look better.
The actual number of successes vs partial successes vs launch failures vs fatalities are the best data we have. Throwing away any of that data because it makes you look worse isn’t a good idea.
Similarly we needs to understand that there’s a huge difference between risk and what actually happens. People get lucky in Vegas every day, what matters to most of us is the accuracy of the estimate of underlying odds not just the exact outcomes out to seven decimal places.
> actual number of successes vs partial successes vs launch failures vs fatalities are the best data we have
Current vehicles are vastly different from the originals. What we’re trying to do is predict the probability of the next launch failing. Equally weighting far historicals and recents is bogus statistics.
> What we’re trying to do is predict the probability of the next launch failing.
I thought we were comparing methods. Unless the next payload is yours then the odds of the next launch failing is meaningless to most of us, but we can learn something from the methods used.
But sure, if you have a bet in Vegas or something then feel free try and calculate things as closely as possible. Just understand that several of Soyuz failures didn’t kill the crew so there’s other metrics people might care about.
What does this mean? The question most of us care about is which method resulted in a more reliable rocket. And SpaceX’s track record shines uniquely in that respect. The frequency, moreover, makes the results robust. Legacy rockets like Ariane will never reach that confidence because the likelihood of fluke successes won’t have been minimised when the rocket is retired.
As to why their methodology is important this isn’t the Falcon 9 this is a new launch system which is likely going to have multiple failures before it’s own streak can begin.
So sure, we can reasonably assume that Starship will get to a state of reliability similar to current Falcon rocket, eventually. We can’t assume the first few commercial Starship launches are going to even approach that level of reliability. And in fact the best point of comparison may be the early days of Falcon 9.
Speaking of methodology, it's incorrect to relate a development test result to reliability or risk. Source is my personal experience doing reliability calculations for a NASA rocket component and working with the statisticians incorporate my numbers into their risk model.
You have it mixed up. I've worked with the stats at NASA. Mission success and failure counts. Test quantity and quality count, test freedom counts, how they learn from test counts, but the test result does not count. This isn't a mission.
This was a partially successful test nothing more and nothing less. I get people really really think SpaceX had done an excellent job and I don’t disagree but people who are comparing the end result of a long process Aka the current state of falcon 9 with a new system like Starship are going to be disappointed.
Starship is extremely likely to fail repeatedly before achieving anything close to the same streak as the Falcon 9 has. That’s not an issue with SpaceX that’s an inherent aspect of doing something really difficult.
I don't think you realize this, but when you said that we can't exclude the test failure from the risk/reliability assessment, that's exactly what you're saying. I didn't realize until just now that you're actually defending the test failure as being acceptable.
This isn't a production flight so why are you treating it at one? What if I told you that you can't compile your code until you deploy it for the first time and you don't get to change it much after that? I'll leave you to contemplate that thought experiment yourself.
I am not treating this as anything but a test flight. Several government test flights have similarly achieved core objectives while failing to achieve every objective.
I guess I'm not sure what point you're making. If you consider a test flight failure to be part of the overall failure rate, then you're treating it the same as a "real" flight. The government is constrained to less experimentation on every level from a daily basis up through test flights. Overall they do less useful engineering and more unnecessary work.
> Except SpaceX’s failure rates are similar with every other successful launch system
Really? I make is 189 successful F9 launches since the last issue in 2018 (there's a couple of landing failures, but given that everyone else apart from the space shuttle has a 100% loss...)
If you look at the "finished product" of block 5 that makes 162 launches and zero failures.
That's reliability far beyond any other launch system, including the space shuttle and Ariane 5 which are the only ones to come close in numbers of launches. Ariane 5 is certainly a reliable system as far as spaceflight goes, but it flies 3 times a year, Falcon 9 flies 3 times a month
Hardly, landing on launch pad had a lower success rate and requires significant fuel so many otherwise perfectly reusable boosters were sacrificed for a higher launch payload.
They got great publicity from it, but landing vertically is a major compromise.
Sure, ignoring past failures can always make someone on a winning streak look invincible. But calculating the underlying odds to hit even a 200 long winning streak with the observed failure rates on other systems wouldn’t be particularly unlikely.
These systems all are quite good, and they have tended to get better over time.
