I'd argue that a private company, ran by an immigrant, that started with private capital, carrying out the launches makes it more American than if NASA had done it.
Russia != Soviet Union. That being said, they've been using roughly the same vehicle for a very long time (20+ years if you only consider the latest gen Soyuz, much longer otherwise). I would hope it is reliable by now.
More than half of Russia's space history is Soviet space history. Russia just happens to be the country that inherited most of the stuff after the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Soyuz-U had 765 successes in 786 flights. (97.3%)
Soyuz-FG had 69 successes in 70 flights (98.5%)
Soyuz-2 has 160 successes in 166 flights (96.3%)
Falcon 9 has 362 successes in 365 flights. (99.1%). That includes the partial failure of the CRS-1 mission, which successfully delivered CRS-1 to the space station but released secondary payloads into a lower than expected orbit. It does't include the AMOS-6 fire, which would bring Falcon 9 down 98.9%.
Interestingly none of those numbers is enough to give a significant difference between failure rates in a chi-squared test with p < 0.05 - not even if you pool all the Soyuz variants. Though they do all hit p < 0.10.
Thanks for running the numbers, which I think prove that it's impossible to say that Soyuz is more reliable than Falcon, even if you count AMOS-1 (which feels like it should be counted) and CRS-1 (which I don't).
Jesus please go back to reddit. I was simply pointing out that Soyuz has had a LOT MORE launches than Falcon 9, literally over a thousand more, so no one can in good faith that Falcon 9 is more reliable given the numbers and statistics.
But they can claim, in good faith, that Soyuz is? Im afraid thats not how logic works. Either the error bars are too large to take a position, or they aren't. You can't have it both ways.
Fact remains that Soyuz has over a thousand more launches than Falcon 9 with an average success rate of 98% over all its variants. It's the single most reliable launch vehicle mankind has ever made.
> pointing out that soyuz has like 1500+ launches over Falcon 9
Not the current variants. If we’re integrating everything called Soyuz we may we well do the same with Long March and every American rocket that uses similar engines.
Falcon is widely considered the most reliable platform you can launch on today.
Not just more launches, over a THOUSAND more launches. Soyuz has a 98% success rate. Falcon 9 needs to do A LOT more launches before it can be comparable.
China has literally dropped rockets on Chinese villages.
The Soviet Union treated its astronauts as disposable, and covered up many of their failed missions.
What do you consider a free pass for Boeing btw?