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It doesn’t take rocket science to understand that rockets eventually have a success rate of less than 100% . (Edited changed failure rate to success from child comment)


I think you mean success rate, but very true observation regardless.


Yes, there is not a single thing in the world working with 100% success (0 failure rate). World does not work like this. Everything ages.


> Everything ages.

That is true, but it is not directly related to this issue. SpaceX doesn't (can't) reuse second stages. (For now.) The one in question which had the anomaly was a "brand new" second stage.

It is more likely that either this is due to a defect which escaped their QA, or a design issue with a very low probability rolling a nat-1 this time, or some change they introduced not working out as they expected. I would not describe any of those as "aging".


You can get cancelled before you fail (and after you launch), resulting in 100% success.


No, that's not true. Atlas V and ~Delta IV heavy had a 100% success rate.

Ok strictly speaking atlas V is not 100% yet. There are 16 more opportunities for failure.


Those two systems have 116 launches combined. If there was one failure tomorrow, that would be a 99.1% success rate vs falcon now at 99.7%.


That's besides the point.




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