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Staar-69 t1_j1yrj9o wrote

Hasn’t almost every rockets maiden voyage in history ended in an explosion?

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Shrike99 t1_j21kp8w wrote

No, plenty of rockets have worked on the first try. What is much rarer is for a given agency (or company) to succeed on their first try.

For example, NASA's first attempt to launch one of their own rockets; Scout, failed - but the subsequent maiden flights of Saturn 1, Saturn V, Space Shuttle, and SLS all succeeded.

Ditto for SpaceX with Falcon 1 failing, and then Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy succeeding. Fingers crossed for Starship.

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