Re: "World's Best Launcher"?

On Fri, 23 Dec 2005 23:40:34 GMT, henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

>In article <a8moq11am5publ81p6pf9o2g08t2c80j9m@xxxxxxx>,
>Stephen Horgan <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>There isn't one, not yet. None of them are reuseable.
>>
>>Reusable doesn't matter. Cost does per kilo to orbit does.
>
>Reusable does matter, if it implies intact abort.
>
>Even the best of today's launchers has much too high a failure rate,

What, even Soyuz?

>and
>when your payload's number comes up, launcher failure almost invariably
>means payload loss. The most important attraction of reusables is not
>lower cost (there is great potential for that, but it might not happen in
>the first generation or two), but higher reliability and lower payload
>loss rate, because of testability and intact abort.
--

Christopher
.

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