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I think it's mostly new rockets. KAIROS was a new rocket and this was its first launch. Old rockets that haven't been changed in decades like the Soyuz stopped

I think it's mostly new rockets. KAIROS was a new rocket and this was its first launch. Old rockets that haven't been changed in decades like the Soyuz stopped exploding long ago. As another example, Toyota Tacoma trucks are known to be reliable... because they have barely changed for years but now are kind of dated. Ford, on the other hand, keeps changing the F-150 so you get a lot of modern comforts, but there "bad model years" and "good model years." New stuff just doesn't have the kinks worked out, especially when you have budgets and deadlines. Just how engineering goes.

TMWNN 3y ago
>Old rockets that haven't been changed in decades like the Soyuz stopped exploding long ago. Context for others: Soyuz, the spacecraft, is launched by Soyuz, the rocket. The rocket is the latest iteration of the R-7 that the USSR developed as an ICBM in the 1950s, and which it used to launch to orbit Sputnik 1 in 1957 and Vostok 1 with Yuri Gagarin in 1961. The Soviets had to develop such a rocket—far more powerful than US ICBMs—because its electronics and warhead technology was inferior, resulting in far larger and less reliable warheads and satellites. On the other hand, Soviets and Russians have used variants of that rocket for 65 years and counting, even while the US used many, many varieties of Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Delta, and Saturn ICBMs and rockets for its satellites and spacecraft, along with the shuttle and now SLS and SpaceX Falcon. While Falcon 9 and the forthcoming Starship are far, far, far superior to anything the Russians (or Arianespace, or NASA or other US commercial firms) are producing today, there is a lot to be said for having gotten the booster right the first time around and iterating it over years and decades.