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Yumewomiteru t1_iuj4f29 wrote

Loss of an entire payload of satellites.

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Shrike99 t1_iujfy1b wrote

>Loss of an entire payload of satellites.

That was a payload failure, not a launch failure, since the rocket delivered the satellites to exactly where it was supposed to. And they didn't lose the entire payload - 11 of those satellites are currently in operational orbits.

Starlink payload failures also aren't exactly rare - SpaceX have lost 321 to date over 64 launches, or about 5 per launch on average. If you want to consider losing some satellites to be a launch failure, then SpaceX have had 37 launch failures over the course of the Starlink program.

This would give Falcon 9 Block 5 an overall launch success rate of only 72%, making it by far the least reliable operational launch vehicle with a statistically significant number of launches - an obviously absurd claim.

You can use the aforementioned Starlink numbers to argue that SpaceX aren't very good at building reliable satellites, but by the standards used in the industry they're very good at building reliable rockets - Falcon 9 has had no launch failures in the last 6 years and 158 launches.

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seanflyon t1_iuje4cc wrote

The last SpaceX (non-test) failure was in 2016 when AMOS-6 was lost before launch during a static fire. Since they retired the Falcon 1 in 2009 they have lost 2 primary payloads and delivered 1 secondary payload to the wrong orbit. They have had zero failures or partial failures in the last 100+ launches.

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Yumewomiteru t1_iujf3yw wrote

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seanflyon t1_iujfhiz wrote

Nothing about a launch failure in that article. Did you read it?

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Yumewomiteru t1_iujio1a wrote

Launching a payload into destruction is by definition a failure, this applies to your precious SpaceX too.

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seanflyon t1_iujjyqu wrote

You are the one who brought up launch failures. There were zero problems with that launch. There were problems with a majority of the payloads after launch for reasons that had nothing to do with the launch itself.

Are you just trolling here?

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