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Shrike99 t1_iujfy1b wrote

>Loss of an entire payload of satellites.

That was a payload failure, not a launch failure, since the rocket delivered the satellites to exactly where it was supposed to. And they didn't lose the entire payload - 11 of those satellites are currently in operational orbits.

Starlink payload failures also aren't exactly rare - SpaceX have lost 321 to date over 64 launches, or about 5 per launch on average. If you want to consider losing some satellites to be a launch failure, then SpaceX have had 37 launch failures over the course of the Starlink program.

This would give Falcon 9 Block 5 an overall launch success rate of only 72%, making it by far the least reliable operational launch vehicle with a statistically significant number of launches - an obviously absurd claim.

You can use the aforementioned Starlink numbers to argue that SpaceX aren't very good at building reliable satellites, but by the standards used in the industry they're very good at building reliable rockets - Falcon 9 has had no launch failures in the last 6 years and 158 launches.

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