Russian Rocket Proton-M Crashes At Launch 145
First time accepted submitter Jade_Wayfarer writes "Today, at 02:38 UTC (08:38 local time), Russian rocket Proton-M crashed after only several seconds of flight. Proton-M was carrying 3 GLONASS-M satellites of the ill-fated Russian navigational system. There were no causalities, but evacuation of personnel was ordered because of toxic rocket fuel fumes. Video of the event can be found here."
Re:probably... (Score:4, Interesting)
This was the 387th Proton launch. A quick check, and I find that 36 of them have failed (including this latest one), plus three or four "partial failures" (they got into the wrong orbit, but were still usable).
So Proton has a 9.3% failure rate, which is still much more reliable than Shuttle's 1.5% failure rate.
Oh, wait....
Note, for those who would like to insist that Proton failures were common in the early days, but very rare once they got the bugs out, that Proton failed once in each of 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.
Re:probably... (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh, you are comparing man-rated (multiple times the cost, built specifically for 100% reliability) with cargo-only rockets (built for price/performance, where price actually includes failures).
There is simply no comparison. For Proton to still be in use it is obviously reliable enough that its cost including insurance for cargo is competitive. The space shuttle on the other had a much larger than acceptable failure rate.
Hey, get in this "bus", there is only 1.5% chance you will blow up!
Way, way too much and all because of politics basically, it was not really an engineering choice to make the boosters far away and move them disassembled or to fly in temperatures dangerous for the O-rings etc.