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A comment on SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryogenic test. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryoge... by gamblor956 on Friday April 03, 2020 @01:58PM (#22772217)
ULA didn't lose very expensive government satellites with no explanation. In fact, there are no notable ULA launch failures.

You get what you pay for: with ULA, your payload makes it to orbit/space every time. With SpaceX, there's a significant non-zero risk of losing your payload, and that risk discount is what lets SpaceX undercut ULA. (That risk discount is also why SpaceX has to severely undercut ULA; the economics from a customer perspective wouldn't work out if SpaceX were only a small discount from ULA prices.)

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Re:SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryoge... by ceejayoz on Friday April 03, 2020 @10:21PM (#22775670)
> ULA didn't lose very expensive government satellites with no explanation.

Are you talking about Zuma?

There's "no explanation" because it was a classified launch, and the indications we do have are that it was an issue with a Northrop Grumman payload adapter.

ULA's perfect score is a bit of a cheat, as the rockets they launch were inherited. The first flight of the Delta IV Heavy, for example, was a partial failure... but happened before ULA's formation.

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