> 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?!