4 ms·

Is that due to the larger history of success of the Arianne family of rockets?

• planteen 8y ago
  Certainly part of it. I think the JWST is supposed to be a collaboration between NASA, CSA, and ESA. The European contribution is the launch vehicle.
• Symmetry 8y ago
  Rockets tend to get more reliable as they get older because designers find all the various failure modes and fix them. It's normal to have a couple of rapid unplanned disassemblies in your first ten or twenty flights. Ariane 5 did. Falcon 9 did. Basically everyone but ULA does. The only difference between the Ariane 5 and Falcon 9 is that the Ariane 5 has a lot more flights under its belt.
  • danpalmer 8y ago
    I was interested in your comment about Ariane 5 having a lot more flights under its belt, as it has seemed like SpaceX has ramped up their launches considerably, and the article talks about 5-10 launches per year for the new Ariane 6. So I went and looked up the details... For anyone interested, Ariane 5 has had 98 launches (93 successful) and Falcon 9 has had 54 launches (52 successful). However, Falcon 9 has 18 launches in 2017, and is on track for 28 this year (8 completed so far), whereas Ariane 5 had just 6 in 2017 and is on track for 10 this year. It’s definitely true that Ariane 5 has more experience under its belt so far, but that seems to be changing quickly, and with Ariane 6 resetting some of that experience, I think SpaceX are at a significant advantage here.
    • valuearb 8y ago
      Another way to look at it is that the Ariane 5 has 5 failures across less than 200 rocket engine uses (ignoring solids), while SpaceX has 2 failures across 540 rocket engine uses.
      • baq 8y ago
        spacex also had a total vehicle and payload loss while standing on the pad with engines off, so your metric should be more like 1/540... but then you want to count test firings at mcgregor and every wet dress rehearsals/static fires.