Re: Falcon 1 Fire Caused by "Procedural Error"-New "Info"


Rand Simberg wrote:
On 8 Apr 2006 20:32:30 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Geoffrey A.
Landis" <geoffrey.landis@xxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 simberg.interglo...@xxxxxxxxx (Rand Simberg) wrote
(corrected):
I'm not talking about his per-launch cost. I'm referring to his total
stated costs, to date, which are about a hundred million dollars

Hmmm. So your criterion is cost per failure?

In fact, that's an attractive metric, since failing is a fast way to
learn, the cheaper the cost per failure, the faster you learn. In an
odd way, it has something to go for it.

However, I do note that a metric of cost per failure does penalize
*success*, so it's not a terribly good metric.

I don't have a criterion in this fight. I'm just pointing out that if
you're going to (absurdly) try to compare SpaceX's failure record to
NASA's, that at least they can fail for a lot less money than NASA
does. NASA has spent many billions to avert the loss of astronauts
(which are relatively cheap), and yet they still lose astronauts.
They may not be spending their money cost effectively...

There is no guarantee of success, ever, but I believe
that NASA's "signatures" (its quality control efforts,
its designed-in redundancies, etc) have bought more
success than would otherwise have been achieved.
One metric to judge success could be number of
successful missions (or orbited tonnage, or number
of astronauts orbited, etc.) divided by total dollars
spent. On that basis, SpaceX earns a big fat zero,
tying it with North Korea and Brazil, and maybe
Iraq.

- Ed Kyle

.

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