> $50m is still a lot, and not every sat costs that much. How does a corporate bean counter justify spending $50m more than they have to?

That's seems pretty easy? The satellite easily has a 2 year lead time, and it's 100s of millions so you can't afford to build a spare 'just in case'. At that point, spending an extra $50M to reduce the (perceived?) chance of a 2-year project delay starts to look pretty cheap.

Of course, this is dependent on there being a material reduction in the probability of RUD. And as SpaceX has accumulated more data on reliability, it starts to get very hard to argue that there is indeed a material reduction.

The Falcon 9 launch cadence is simply incredible right now. You have to start wondering if the uneconomical competitors will be able to stay on schedule while losing business and money. How does one perceive a "chance of a 2-year project delay" with SpaceX under the current circumstances but not with Ariane? It's quite a stretch. Would it stand up in court if shareholders sued over unnecessary spending of an extra $50m/launch?

> Are there launchers that don't??

Naturally, everyone has delays. But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you.

Selecting launch providers is not just about the sticker price of the rocket. But with more and more launches it obviously becomes ever more important.

> But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you.

Let's not forget too that EVERY booster for EVERY rocket other than Falcon 9 suffers a rude, if scheduled, disassembly EVERY time. When Falcon 9 suffers an unscheduled one, it's SpaceX's loss, not the customers. How can you possibly think that the occasional loss of a booster post-boost phase is a problem for the customer?!

The problem is not loss of booster, but loss of or damage to payload. In this regard, Falcon is comparable to other rockets.

Starship and the undeveloped Superheavy, not so much.

That's not what u/choeger was saying. A booster loss post-boost does not and cannot damage the payload.

One simple manufacturing mistake can delay your launch by a huge amount. One technical software problem can do so too.

The fact is, Arianespace just had massive month long delays because of production issues.

While SpaceX has 5 flight proven booster ready in the pipeline if one fails, its next one up and very little delay.

Its not even comparable.

The bigger question is how much higher is the chance of the anomaly in the reused booster. If it's comparable or identical to new one, there's literally no problem for SpaceX, big one for everyone else.

Its hard know, but reused boosters have the highest DoD and NASA certification a 100% perfect flight record and the same insurance premium.

IIRC they have re-flown two boosters 9x each.

Anyways, soon enough we'll know what their real reliability story is.

> But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you.

What?!