h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
On 1 Dec 2003 07:02:01 -0800, in a place far, far away,
(ed kyle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

(Tom Merkle) wrote in message . com...

Interesting that though Japan is the #2 economy in the world, and
supposedly techno-centric, there are no Japanese entries for the
x-prize. California and Texas both have multiple teams.

Probably because Japan is busy with important stuff like
conquering the world-wide automotive market, ...
This thread inspired this week's Fox column:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104758,00.html

A good way of presenting the issue, I think. One of your
paragraphs helps highlight the problem even further. As you
said:

"Consider--the most reliable proven launch system is probably
the Soviet (now Russian) Proton. *According to International
Launch Services*, the western firm that markets it, and has a
strong interest in putting the best face on its capability, it
has a 96% reliability record in about 300 launches over the
past four decades. They state this with apparent pride."

What the ILS web site actually says is that "Proton has
*earned* a 96 percent reliability record *with 300 launches*
since the mid-1960s". This sounds carefully parsed, eh?
What on earth does it mean?

It turns out that Proton is far from the most reliable
launcher. Its record is actually on par with Titan IV!
Although Proton "earned" a 96 percent mark during its
27 missions for ILS, when it suffered only one failure,
its overall career has seen 37 failures in 301 missions
for only an 88 percent realized success rate. Since 1990,
Proton has failed 8 times in 119 attempts (93% success).
It could be that Proton's true reliability is nearer to
93% than 96% and that ILS has merely been lucky - so far.

I can think of at least seven active space launch vehicles
that have better (proven) reliability than Proton. They
are Atlas IIAS, Delta II, STS, Soyuz/Molniya, Tsyklon 2/3,
Kosmos 3M, and the Long March 2 series. The best of these
have proven reliabilities of 97% or better.

Sad to say, and hard as it is to believe, with the passage
of Ariane 4, even at 88% Proton *is* the most reliable bigsat
geosynchronous-class commercial space launcher that a
prospective customer can currently buy (Soyuz and Delta can
only boost small geosync satellites). All of the remaining
Atlas IIAS vehicles are sold out, Boeing has pulled Delta IV
from the market, Ariane 5 is struggling, and it is too soon
to say how reliable Sea Launch Zenit, Atlas V, and H-II will
be.

- Ed Kyle