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Whoelselikeants t1_jant4qu wrote

Reply to comment by AdminsFuckedMeAgain in After flying four astronauts into orbit, SpaceX makes its 101st straight landing — ‘I just feel so lucky that I get to fly on this amazing machine.’ by marketrent

Delta IV heavy is 100% reliable

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Chairboy t1_japzcsu wrote

Tell that to Sparkie and Ralphie from the inaugural launch.

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Shrike99 t1_jauoplw wrote

Over a small number of launches though. It's commonality with Delta IV Medium gives it some more credit, but generally speaking I'd rather fly on a rocket with 1 failure in 100 than 0 failures in 14, even though 99%<100%.

I used to make the point that Epsilon is also 100% reliable, but that since it only has 5 launches under it's belt that doesn't amount to much in practice.

I was quite vindicated when it recently failed on it's 6th launch, though also a little saddened that I'd no longer be able to use it as an example.

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Whoelselikeants t1_jaxry2g wrote

Well I expect Delta heavy to fly more also since the interest in mars science is ramping up along with Falcon heavy. Still, not having a failure in 14 launches of one of under a dozen special case rockets is pretty good.

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