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On Earth, it's cost-efficient to build things with a reasonable "bathtub curve" failure rate because they can be repaired or (if a consumer product) replaced un
by Analemma_ 2y ago
On Earth, it's cost-efficient to build things with a reasonable "bathtub curve" failure rate because they can be repaired or (if a consumer product) replaced under warranty. Neither of these are an option in one-off space projects: everything has to be built to ~100% initial reliability, which makes everything much more expensive.
In theory falling launch costs will eventually mean maybe we can make space science missions more disposable so a loss from random failure is no big deal, but we're not quite there yet.
- mmooss 2y ago> In theory falling launch costs will eventually mean maybe we can make space science missions more disposable Launch is less than ~10% of the cost.