What are the odds of a safe rocket launch?
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How risky is it to go into space?. Compared to jumping in your car you might be surprised that it's not much more dangerous, provided that you are not on a first few launches of a new rocket system. Space is always going to be a risky business but once all the bugs are shaken out it could turn out to be like nipping down to the shops in your car. So in this video, we look at the odds of a safe launch..
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woo woo woo !!!
Are you almost done with that nord vpn shit or for how many videos did they pay for?
Let's be honest. SpaceX's rocketry program has killed fewer astronauts than NASA's.
@@ColonelEvisceratoryeah cause they only started 3 years ago!
Thanks Paul....
Shoe🇺🇸
Reading the Apollo 13 investigation , it seems that the failure of 13 can be partially traced to the changes applied to fix the Apollo 1 errors. The nasa report is a really interesting read.
You should do a video on the parallels between the upcoming Artemis flight and Apollo 8. Fun fact, all 3 of the astronauts from Apollo 8 (1968) are still alive today
I think that it would have been helpful to more explicitly point out how a lifetime risk of dying in a car accident is a different sort of measurement than a per-flight risk of dying in a rocket. It may have also been helpful to try to find a way of comparing the two that made the relative risks of each form of travel easier to understand. Comparing the risk of death per journey, per unit of time spent in transit, and per distance traveled would all be interesting comparisons to see. The Wikipedia page for "Transport Accidents and Incidents" includes those comparisons for a number of transportation methods, but not rockets.
At the end you said "then maybe going into space will become no more dangerous than jumping into the car and nipping down to the shops". It needs to be emphasized that rockets inherently need to operate much closer to their safety limits than automobiles. The fact that travel by airplane today is much safer than travel by automobiles by most metrics despite arguably being a more fundamentally dangerous technology suggests that it might also be possible to get passenger travel by rocket at least as safe as travel by automobiles. That will likely require the application of the same sort of safety procedures and standards that have been applied to passenger air travel, including thorough investigations of flight failures, and the use of lessons learned from each to correct the relevant procedures and design issues that led to each respective failure.
It will take a lot of time and work to get there, though. Perhaps ironically, we probably need to see a dramatic increase of the volume of passenger traffic by rocket (and the inevitable associated higher number of fatalities from flight disasters) in order to learn the lessons we need to learn in order to get travel by rocket as safe as travel by automobile. In the meantime, it will be a clearly less safe form of travel, which may dissuade enough of the public from using it that it won't reach a high enough flight volume to ever get as safe as travel by automobile.
Also, the perception of the safety of various types of transport is different, depending on the type of transport, the scale of the likely accident, how often people travel my that method, their understanding of the technology, etc, etc. And, generally, people have a very poor understanding of probability - far more based on the severity of the an accident, rather than it's actual likelihood, as well as factors such as familiarity and convenience. As a very basic example, air travel is much safer than going by car, yet few, if any, people worry about car travel, but nearly everyone worries to some extent about air travel. My wife (to just pick one person, at random) will always choose a taxi, over walking, especially at night (we don't have a car), despite the fact that walking (even alone at night) where we live is many times safer than road travel. Frustrated by this, I once pointed out that if crossing to the other side of the road we live on to get to the shops was as risky as travelling by car, she probably would never leave the house. Did this make any difference? No. If she could justify a taxi for the 5 minute walk to our local Aldi (which is literally visible from our front door), she would!
Well said. If you took a shuttle ride every day, you would likely be dead in a couple of months. Two astronauts were on the Space Shuttle 7 times, the most of anyone.
@@paulhaynes8045 Same with nuclear accidents. Although rare, the consequence can be both extreme and very spooky. Dying in a car wreck is not spooky, albeit the risk still quite real.
I think Paul only made the easy to make mistake of not stating the obvious. I'm sure that he understands and he likely assumed that everyone else understands that a lifetime risk of 1 in 200 in automobile driving is after tens of thousands of individual trips. He simply asked the question whether someone has a greater lifetime risk from driving than launching on rockets, I don't think he was trying to provide a definitive answer he was just mentioning a few of the factors that would need to be taken into consideration.
And I'm not sure that airplane travel is that much more of an inherently dangerous technology than driving, even though I realize this flies in the face of logic for most people. But I think the point made by @paulhaynes8045 is quite valid that a lot of how people evaluate risk is based on their knowledge of the technology, or lack thereof. The common but overly simplistic view is that I'm on the ground in my car but in an airplane I am way up high and in constant danger. However the same person is likely completely calm driving over a bridge, even though in most cases their car is being suspended at fatal heights. But that's because they understand how a bridge works, and they can see the structure, and after all the bridge is on the ground. But we can't see air, so it's difficult to understand that the law of lift is just as reliable as the law of gravity. As long as the structure of the airplane remains intact the airplane will keep flying, or at least gliding. No different than our reliance on the structrual integrity of the bridges that we drive over every day.
And yes to state the obvious there are other things that can go wrong with airplanes, but that is pretty rare, and then we have to circle back to cars and notice that most people are perfectly calm about having 2 tons of steel and aluminum and glass heading towards them at a combined speed of over 100 mph and missing them by just a few feet, with their life fully dependent on the driver of the approaching car maintaining control of their vehicle. And they are perfectly fine with this dangerous event happening in many cases hundreds of times per day. But "I'm on the ground and I'm in control so I feel safe" compared to "I'm in the air and I'm not in control and so I feel very unsafe".
@@paulhaynes8045I agree that walking may be safer than driving, but perception is important. As a woman, I usually walk home from a friend's house at night, but am painfully aware of stories of abduction and rape - the case of Sarah Everard and Wayne Couzens still resonates with many women in the UK. And of course, perception explains why so many worry about air travel but not about getting in a car. Statistics is hard to understand, but perception is instinctive and easy.
5psi pure oxygen isn't dangerous and represents the partial pressure of oxygen in air. 5psi positive pressure at seal level (for a total of 20psi) in order to simulate the loads on the capsule is, however really dangerous.
Those pesky seals, eh?!
@@paulhaynes8045
Yeah, they need to get off their high horses.
3psi, and even that has potential problems--the lack of nitrogen (~80%) affects the combustion, probably due to changes in convection. These differences were not well enough studied, snd even less so considering a 0g environment.
Seals are pesky.
I read that Apollo 1 was at 16 psi, if so they were just over 1 psi difference. Enough apparently to make it difficult to open the hatch, although I'm not sure they even got that far as I think several bolts had to be loosened first. Also I hadn't thought about it before, but I wonder if the astronauts (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo) ever had their visors open while at that pressure (16 psi or whatever it was), since breathing pure oxygen at atmospheric pressure can be toxic, and I would think the higher pressure makes that worse. But I suppose it's okay for a couple of hours. Apparently people in hyperbaric chambers alternate between pure oxygen and normal air but I don't know how often. And they are usually at extremely high pressure so that may be a factor also.
I cant help but imagine that behind every big boom is an engineer or inspector muttering to themselves _"I f%&#@+ told them so..."_
Or an idiot claiming it was a 'success' because "we got loads of data"...
@@paulhaynes8045 Along with a youtube comment that belies a strongly held opinion lacking in reality.
Naysayers are always present in every endeavor. Most don't get their say as things generally work out.
@@paulhaynes8045 that is what testing is... a quest for data.
One of my favorite channels. Everything is explained very well. I missed the moon shots, and started at Sky Lab. The first shuttle launch with Columbia was on my birthday. Thanks for your presentation. I always look forward to your next one. Crazy shirts not withstanding.
The odds are better than a trip with oceangate.
I used to work for Lloyd's doing high risk stuff like PGA hole-in-one insurance and million dollar full-court basketball shots. Actuaries are just a wild-ass guess and a starting point.
Once we pulled a number out of our ass, the only thing that mattered was if we made money. We'd then adjust the odds and the premiums accordingly.
It really is that screwed up and simple.
Fantastic topic, thanks for always provoking thought :)
The giant tank with "LIQUID OXYGEN NO SMOKING" written on it is probably the most 1960s thing I've ever seen
I love your videos Curious Droid. They are well researched and always concern interesting topics. Thumbs up!
But they are almost all space related. He stopped doing non-related space videos years ago. Channel hasn't grown in years because of that decision.
People will finally stop applauding and cheering…when SpaceX launch explodes again…with a crew onboard 😔 Nothing has exploded in its development..more…than SpaceX….the comic book design is prone to always to find a new…unexpected…fatal problem 🚀💥🔥 🎉Building space ships must under a government safety program with adequate budgets to make no shortcuts and allow the expense for thorough reliability testing and backups.
Great content, love your videos. Technically there has never been an escape system for reentry, just for launch. The Columbia disaster was inevitable once they made the decision to reenter the atmosphere just as it would have been for the Apollo program. I’m speculating but I think this will always be the most vulnerable part of the mission as long as we rely on ceramic tiles for heat shielding. The only option is a rigorous inspection plan and a redundant lander.
A key point to keep in mind regarding Starship is that they won't be carrying people anytime soon so they are free to blow them up to their heart content essentially.
Shuttle didn't have such luxury with STS-1 being crewed and very narrowly avoiding a tragedy and SLS/Orion is also on the same boat pretty much. While there have been some tests Orion will carry crew on its second SLS flight and on top of that it will be the first time a key system like ECLSS will be used.
In other words SpaceX can blow Starship as much as they want to quickly find issues and fix them while NASA so far didn't have this luxury which means they have LESS opportunities of finding issues in a safe way (no people on board) and this makes SpaceX way MORE safe not LESS
Yes, Elton is free to blow the government's money
@@vladdumitrica849 What government money exactly?
@@vladdumitrica849 Right. Because Boeing and LockMart aren't doing the same thing or worse... Do you have a real argument or just MDS (Musk Derangement Syndrome)?
@@vladdumitrica849to fly to the moon, Space X is taking a loss on that NASA contract and funding practically it all by itself. And before that it started developing Starship and it's engines with zero NASA money, just their own.
When it came to developing Falcon 9 NASA estimated it would cost 4 billion, Space X did it for 390 million, saving billions, less than 1/10th the estimate. And since then NASA (and the world) have been Space X's customer, and Space X charge half what the next cheapest rocket provider charges. Again that's saved NASA (and many others) billions!
Any idea how much one SLS launch costs? How much money has been spent on the SLS for development?? Seems to me you'd rather waste billions just cause you don't like Space X (or Musk)
@@vladdumitrica849 I used to think that Elon would be a great modern role-model, until he went off the deep-end during covid and all this other crazy bullshit. His engineering prowess is top notch tho, only people that have no idea try and dispute this.
A friend worked in commercial satellite production, they had an order for as I recall 4 comms satellites and give the chance of a launch failure and the production time they built 5 identical satellites. The four launched successfully so they booked a later launch and put that up too since it was already built the cost was much less than for a dedicated one.
We need to have the designer of your shirts in each show notes.
"Soyuz 1 in 20 failure rate" BZZT! If you include all the uncrewed test missions. Soyuz has had just two total losses, and no deaths since 1971. Wish I could say the same for USA.
Just watched Ship 25 perform the first static fire since the big one! Next vid I see is yours. Talk about timing. Great topic. Thanks for sharing.🚀🚀🚀👍
The bald wizard is so captivating I can't skip the NordVPN add😢
Wohoo! Great way to end my day. Thanks, CD!
A documentary some years ago narrated by David McCullough featured lots of the early footage from the US space program, failing badly. "Our rockets always blow up!" It also featured the tern "Stay-Putnik".
For my senior design class for my aerospace engineering degree I had to do a presentation of an ethics review for the Challenger disaster. The review had to be conducted from the perspective of having all the information available up to the day before the launch, and we had to give it a go/no-go for flight.
Sometimes the technician decided to install the guidance system backward, and they even use a hammer to put it in as there are guides that prevent this sort of thing.
The drunken proton launch. A classic
You are referring to the controllers in the Proton rocket that turned itself back on earth. Yeah that was pretty mucked up. So was that hole in the soyuz. Russian quality control still isn't quite there yet. Russians always try to cut corners to cut cost. And sometimes that yields a very foolish and incompetent technician.
@@danielrodelli345 It literally takes more effort to install it wrong than right. I mean if you put it in right way, it just snaps in. The guy literally took a hammer and bang it in.
Risk for rocket launches are discussed in the video as though they were “one off”. A thoughtless extension is that rocket launches are the only risky action that is done. But this is not so. In the case of space exploration, rocket LANDING is even more risky. Just calculate the probability of landing on Mars. In the case of the space shuttle, one accident was a landing or re-entry event. More generally, the entire set exploration expeditions is very risky. Of two expeditions to the South Pole, the Amundsen expedition came back while the Scott expedition did not.
I don't know why, but the tone and cadence of the last line you delivered reminded me of Mr Wizard from back in the '80s. Specifically when he had the segments that showed something very very zoomed in that you couldn't recognize at first and it would slowly zoom out over the course of a minute or two. Your phrase had a cadence very similar to his final phrase after the full object was revealed.
Lifetime of road travel vs single launch failure rate? Then at the end it's one trip to the shops. One of these things is not like the other.
NASA also took a big chance in the Gemini program, launching without an escape tower and deciding to rely on ejection seats. I've never read a single statement from the astronauts (at least) that showed confidence in being able to survive an ejection from the Gemini capsule once it was launched. They seemed to accept the risk with an element of grim humor. Probably one of the reasons Wally Schirra didn't pull the ejection when the launch failed on Gemini 6 was he thought he was as likely to get killed by ejecting from the capsule as he was by the vehicle exploding. That was the closest call. When you recall that two of the Agena rockets launched as docking vehicles for Gemini failed to reach orbit, and the Agena by that time was considered to be a well tested and very reliable system, you can see the risk they were taking by dispensing with the conventional launch tower in the much less well tested Titan-Gemini combination was quite considerable.
Voshkod had no escape system. Vostok, like Gemini, had the questionable ejection seat system.
More motivation to NOT screw up while onboard.
@@TucsonDude Launch escape systems mostly protect against failures of the rocket. Astronauts and cosmonauts usually have little or no control over the operation of the rocket. During launch, they are pretty much passive passengers, except for monitoring for any indication that a manual abort might be necessary. Thus no real opportunity for them to screw up.
There's a reason we say " It's not Rocket Science" when something is uncomplicated bcuz.... Rocket science is complicated.
excellent as always!
Such a relief from some of the dross being pumped out.
I really do look forward to CD uploads.
I always have the urge to re-watch Apollo 13 after you, Scott Manley or Frasier Cain upload a video.
Due iterations and improvements applied on the each mission the last Apollo missions were safer that the first ones. I would have liked to have flown in the 17 and not in the 11.
💡Idea💡
Why not channel rocket thrust I’m every launch into steal factory or clinker/cement oven or channel it into wheels to store electricity for later use⁉️🙄
We should launch experimental rockets every Fourth of July. Either it works, or we have a good show.
Thanks, Paul!
NASA took a needless risk by launching the first shuttle with a human crew. I was told once, and this may be urban legend, that the only thing a human was needed for to pilot the orbiter was to throw the landing gear lever on final approach. Everything else the vehicle did could be done by computer and remote commanding, at least for basic stuff. For once the Soviets did something smart and launched Buran's first flight unmanned. NASA was super cocky after the Apollo program and to put Young and Crippen into a couple of ejection seats and hope for the best was not wise. To make matters worse, it was later determined that the ejection seats were useless and would've killed the astronauts in the plume of the SRBs, so they were very fortunate they never felt compelled to activate them. It's a testament to the engineers who built STS that it worked so well on it's very first flight. The program managers should've known better, though.
Buran did it at the end of 80s without any human on board )) but did it only once ((
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
@@felixfrenkel7937 They did it only once because they ran out of money. The whole country ran out of money actually.
I agree with most of what you said. But actually the Shuttle absolutely required pilots, and not just to lower the landing gear. Which by the way was purposely not computer controlled because they were concerned about the computer accidently releasing the landing gear and the doors while on orbit, which would have made reentry unsurvivable because they were only designed to release in flight, the gear had to be manually retracted when back on the ground.
The launch itself was fully automated to orbit. But most of the on orbit operations required pilot control. Similar to the autopilot on an airliner, which contrary to popular misconception cannot function without the pilots telling it what do the entire flight. Also the computer managed the reentry and initial atmospheric descent automatically, but the automated landing system proved to be pretty incompetent during the one time they attempted to use it and the pilots took over and they never tried another automated landing for the remainder of the program as it was considered too risky with no real benefits. Actually the pilots relied on the computer for visual guidance all the way down to the runway, but the pilots could make the subtle changes needed as they got closer to the runway, something the Shuttle autopilot was not good at.
NASA actually looked at automating the Shuttle, but the study concluded that it would cost many millions of dollars and would actually be less safe than having the astronauts perform the tasks that they were already doing.
The downside, and this was a big one, is that there was no possibility of test flights without people on board. That's of course true with airplanes, but spaceships are nothing like airplanes, they are in a whole differnt league. And it would have allowed uncrewed test flights after changes to the Shuttle, or even uncrewed missions to launch satellites.The Russians proved with Buran that it could be automated.
Actually although I have always been a big Shuttle fan, I am now of the opinion that it should have not only been fully automated, but never should have carried crew to and from orbit. Which is also how I feel about Starship. As I mentioned automated satellite launches and other missions could have been flown remotely from the ground. And for missions that did require crew like SpaceHab missions or Hubble repair, the crew could have flown up on Apollo capsules and docked with the Shuttle on orbit. But Congress never would have gone with that, they required Shuttle to be one stop shopping for everything. In the end it wound up costing much more, both monetarily and in lives.
As for the ejection seats, yes they would likely not help during the first two minutes while the SRB's were firing. But they would have at least provided an escape method afterwards, something that was lacking after the four test flights were completed until after Challenger when they at least provided some bailout capability if they were not able to make it back to KSC or an emergency landing site.
You are not correct. The shuttle had to be hand flown when landing which is why they had a commander and a “pilot” as opposed to other flight crews. The terminology has since stuck.
Surely this is an unanswerable question given the variables at play
Excellent video as always!
12:53 …sure 😄 not in our lifetime though
I think an important thing to note about the Falcon 9 is that although the total failure rate is ~1 in 120, all launch failures were before flight 30. Falcon 9 has now flown successfully over 210 times consecutively, which beats the previous records for consecutive success by the Soyuz and Delta II rockets, which each achieved about 100 consecutive successes at maximum. I genuinely think SpaceX has a chance to never have a failed Falcon 9 (or Heavy) launch again, and will likely launch 500+ total Falcon's before they are retired. This is an unprecedented reliability that, coupled with the launch escape system on the Dragon capsule, mean dying in a Falcon launch is almost impossible.
Falcon 9 has more successful landing (attempts) in a row than any other rocket launches :D.
Which makes it all the more baffling that they chose to have no launch escape system whatsoever on Starship. That's a step backwards for them, as far as I'm concerned.
@@newqTDIL Starship really has NO CREW ESCAPE! Unbelievable. I think the world is going to start taking a lot more interest in listening to professional engineers after recent events.
„Almost impossible“…famous last words on so many occasions.
@@mbbb9244 it will have though, probably, as in starship being able to detatch from SH mid flight and go on its own in quite little time. You could complain starship itself won't have one, but then again the dragon capsule itself does not have any either.
Yet another excellent video. Thanks so much!
Amazing content as always, super interesting,Thanks!
Thank you for the upload!
Love your work... Thanks...
Thanks Mr. Droid.
I thought I had gotten over Challenger. But I was wrong.
If one would die every 120 drives, nobody would drive.
Love ya videos chap, hope your feeling better now 👍
This was an uplifting video.
Interestingly SpaceX use a combination of modern engineering techniques combined with rapid development techniques more typical of the moon landing programs. This is what has allowed them to push the boundaries of performance while at the same time dramatically reducing costs. When they have got caught out it’s been in areas where there was a lack of knowledge in that particular area.
They were also willing to burn through a lot of money with failures before attempting their first "real" launch. That's part of the "time and resources" investment required to make things really good. Arguable whether that time and resources were better spent blowing things up in the real world vs in simulations and more cautious design, but it seems to have worked out in the end so can't really fault their methodology (and exploding test rockets makes for better memery than a stack of engineering reports).
There were 135 space shuttle launches with 2 catastrophic failures. That's a failure rate of 1.5% which isn't great.
Having watched a video on Space X's cost cutting on their launch pad construction, where chunks of concrete were blasted off it up to 500 yards and pieces even hit the rocket, I would rate it as similar to the the chance of a small deep ocean submarine imploding!
Simply a great video thank you so much
JWST's amazing success does not prove that you can make things reliable if you try hard enough. With a sample size of n=1, it might have been sheer luck.
*IT IS NOT just SpaceX.*
Reliability is increasing in the industry overall. E.g. Russia has zero rocket failures (including test flights) for years by now. So yes, the safety of space flight is becoming really good.
What does Russia's safety record have to do with eloons? Last I checked pacex &roscosmos are two entirely different entities
@@o-wolf Did you watch the video? The same advancements in design and manufacturing allow to manufacture rocket components with higher consistency and fidelity. This is common for Elon and others, it is a general trend.
@@tatianaes3354 &yet eloon still blows up billion dollar rockets for funsies &handwaves it away as rapid unscheduled disassembly.. except this time he's even destroying launch pads because reasons
@@o-wolf Yes, but the guy’s point is that if/when Elon will solve the design issue, the rocket should be reliable. BTW, the USSR had a similar nozzle design for its Moon landing competitor rocket N1, but it was impossible to synchronise this many thruster parts at the time as it all was purely mechanical, no microcontrollers or anything was available. So the USSR lost the Moon race, but Elon has a sound chance. Let’s see.
@@tatianaes3354 *spacex has a chance. if eloon doesn't get in the way &they redesign the whole thing from ground up.. as a mission platform it has to be one of the most perplexing.. it has no safety measures so idk how he expects to get clearance to put passengers on it for his moon shot
ALSO.. unlike SLS starship cannot make a singular lunar insertion.. it has to be refuelled multiple times IN ORBIT.. (something that's never been done) before it can get to the moon
Remember what they taught us about multiple points of failure &minimising those at all costs? Yeh
Starship has to launch without killing it's passengers on takeoff..(no escape system)
it has to stay in one piece enroute to orbit (still no escape system)
it then has to achieve/maintain orbit safely
then it has to wait for another starship (tanker variant) to be launched
Then that has to do everything it did then they have to "mate" &transfer tons of fuel whilst in orbit without any issues which if even minor would be catastrophic for the crew &mission
Then they have to do it again
If there's inclement weather this could be delayed days
Then when ALLLLL that's said &done only THEN can they proceed to the most DANGEROUS part of the mission.. flying to the moon.. starting with igniting an engine that's been idle for hours of not days atp.. the achieve cis-lunar insertion &comeback home after giving ppl some nice zero grave window moon selfies
Great video, love your content
Great video! Very interesting
Hmmm. That 'lifetime risk' of 0.2% for car users is deceiving - who gets into a rocket multiple times a day, every day? Risk should be measured per trip or per hour, and not over lifetime use. That 1 chance of death in every 67th trip for the shuttle would kill the bulk of the UK population if extended over just a few months for its drivers.
It's more accurate to say that Falcon 9 has had two failures. One in-flight and one pre-flight.
Three if you count CRS-1, which lost an engine on launch, and was unable to deliver the secondary payload. But that was F9 1.0, which was arguably a completely different vehicle given how much changed with 1.1
@@simongeard4824 Yeah, that would be a partial failure.
I like to think of modern space travel like this, we essentially strap chairs to a glorified bomb. The fact that it does not explode into a million pieces immediately on launch is an engineering miracle and when it does explode it should not be surprising. We as a species have stumbled our way into space on what could possibly be the most dangerous method imaginable. Could we make a safer way? Probably. Could we have done it safer in the past? I don't know. But this is the way we chose to go into space and have made it work.
And what method do you propose that does not violate Newton's second law?
Well nuclear thermal lacks the T/W so chemical rockets are your only option unless you want to go the Orion route.
Don't forget that all the parts are made by the lowest bids from contractors.
It’s not the most dangerous method, it’s the only method.
Does the failure numbers for the Falcon Nine include or discount the booster that was deliberately destroyed as part of the Dragon In-Flight Abort System test?
I think in the UK the life time risk on the road is closer to 1 in 450 at current rates with the current population - that's if rates and population stay the same. The rate you quoted (1 in 200) sounds more like the risk from about 20 years ago.
I'm gonna start documenting all your shirts.
I’m imagining some Cambridge historian (in the year 3000) finding your work…. And fscepalming. Lol.
I implore you to get a life.
Early rockets: Bad gaskets...
Back in those days people where brought up with the words of J.F. Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" and while it did end up costing some human life it also put the USA at the forefront of space race. You can argue whether that was right or wrong to do but they did achieve the unachievable whereas today we struggle to achieve any major leaps forward in comparison. You cannot even fly from New York to London in less than 3.5 hours anymore, and they say they can go to the moon again, but goodness it is very complicated and it is all talk, talk, talk, and very little action.
Well, seeing how I will never actually be in a rocket, I suppose it's safer for me than pretty much anything 😂
It's always interesting when people talk about "safety." Safe is really a pretty useless term. Nothing is really safe but more a risk-benefit ratio. People are afraid to fly but don't realize they're more likely to be injured or killed on the way to the airport than be involved in an airline accident. In the US more than one death per day is associated with electrocution but we haven't a single thought about plugging in electronics. So in the end, safe is a relative term that always needs to be quantified with risk/reward.
Yep we're really bad at assessing risk. When I did my first parachute jump the instructor greeted the students "morning everyone well you done the most dangerous part by driving here today"
Very much a enjoyable video thank you 🙂
in order for a space launch to be safer, the complexity of rockets should decrease and the vibration due to combustion gases should be reduced
Thanks for the video.
Every step you take, every click you make, I'll be tracking you 😂
Oops, the image in "This IBM 650" from 1956 was an IBM 360 from a decade later, looks like a 360/50. Nevertheless, the presentation and story was great. ❤️👏👍
Great video as always Paul! Thanks for making such interesting and well presented videos, your uploads always make my day :)
Awesome 👌 👍.... Thank you sir 🙂
Well sometimes short cut are made by the management against the technical engineering point of view, for financials, politics or marketing reasons. Like with the rubber seal of Challenger or the reinforce carbone panel of Colombia. The Murphy's law is one basic engineering rules too.
Great video
Falcon rocket safety? Starship was expected to fail first time. Space X are cutting edge pioneers
NASA do not want to lose another crew which is why they are being conservative with SLS. That approach to the design and build paid off handsomely with a great first flight that tested the entire mission profile that the Artemis Astronauts will use.
4 billion per launch. We can’t afford that.
I'm going to mutilate a Quote/Question I remember hearing sometime back in the 70's that was allegedly made between Astronauts while waiting to be launched. Even if I don't get it exactly right, the point is clear and plays heavily into this piece on Rocket reliability. So the Quote goes something like this; " . . . so how's it feel knowing that everything below you were built by the Lowest Bidder"? That question points to a built-in flaw w/ the Gov Bidding process for Aerospace Contracts. Yea, they are building "to spec" but the contractor's ability to do thorough R&D work is tied directly to a limited Budget and that naturally leads to cost & delivery date overruns (which is almost expected w/ Cost+ Gov Bidding nowadays) and/or cutting corners. Privately run R&D groups have Much more latitude w/ materials, specs, processes as long as the goal of Scalability for mass production are met. Failure IS an option w/ privately funded R&D which teaches Many more lessons than that of a contractor who's told what materials, processes and the final spec must be while "under the gun" to avoid failure. I think there's a private Aerospace Company or two out there who may have already proven as much . . . who could that be ? ? ?
I have loved you videos for years ❤❤❤❤
💡 idea 💡
Submersible implosion as a way to ignite fusion reaction‼️😳 Why not install collapsible chambers deep down into the ocean floor & use the energy of the intense pressure to produce electricity or/and ignite fusion. 😳
People can not be replaced? Corporate America would bed to differ lol. Death is tragic yes, but there are people dying and being born every day. It is just the lead time from birth to being an astronaut is longer than replacing a rocket. This is why the Empire needs to implement a cloning program right away. That way we can have new generations of troop.. err astronauts ready to replace any that are lost in missions for the Empire. Long Live the Empire!
Exactly. Putting safety before profits is extremely anti-semitic.
Please do a video comparing the Apollo vs the new Indian trip. Why the difference in time to arrive?
Great vid
The challenger crew did not die
There are 4 main problem with rockets that make them unreliable.
1. Insane powers are involved, so small issues can quickly escalate into a fireball.
2. Reducing weight is essential, because the payload has to be accelerated to extreme speeds, for which chemical energy is woefully inadequate. This means minimal safety margins.
3. It's impossible to test the rocket, or even it's components in the environment they'll operate in. The proper test is launching, but that's very expensive, and failures are embarrassing.
4. Due to their insane cost and single use, rockets are made in very low volumes. And that means not just little experience, but also relatively low automation.
SpaceX addresses 3 of these 4 issues.
1. They can't really do anything about the required power, without breaking the laws of physics. Long term there are possible solutions, but those are not rockets (e.g. orbital ring).
2. Actually you want to optimize for is cost per kg of payload, weight is just a proxy for that. For a single use rocket cost and weight are strongly linked, but for a reusable rocket they aren't. You can sacrifice payload capacity for safety margin, if in exchange you can reuse your rocket many times. Even if you cut the payload capacity half (or double the size of the rocket), it's still cheaper overall, if you can use it more than twice. If the rocket can fly hundreds of times, then the cost of building it becomes less important than the cost of fuel and maintenance. Some Falcon 9 boosters flew 15 times now, and SpaceX overall completed 200 successful landing. And most failures were in the early days. Falcon 9 can be the most reliable rocket exactly because SpaceX could afford to build in much larger safety margins than any other rocket in history. And with other innovation they made it to outperform other rockets anyway.
3. SpaceX developed advanced computer simulations that help a lot with testing on the ground, but the real solution is just launching a lot. By committing early on to high volume production they can reduce costs and can afford to blow up many rockets both in units and expenses. Volume production allows automation and faster learning, and both reduce cost. And higher future revenue from higher sales volume pays for more test launches.
4. And by reducing the cost SpaceX can also find customers to much more launches, making the higher volume production viable. Then the real genius move was to create large demand in-house with Starlink. This and other in-house projects make Starship financially viable too. There would be little to no demand for such a big rocket otherwise.
And also as a private company, SpaceX can afford failures, they don't answer to politicians or taxpayers, and not even to shareholders, as it's not publicly traded. Plus they subscribe to the Silicon Valley philosophy that failures are part of the process, not something to be ashamed of.
That's why Starship exploded after ruining the launch pad. Both could have been avoided with more preparation, simulations, and testing, but they value time more than money. They optimize for overall speed of innovation, and that often requires taking risks and blowing things up. The trick is to know when to take risks and how much. Because it's easy to go too far to the other side and completely disregarding safety. Unfortunately there are way too many examples for that too. The rule of thumb is blow up equipment, not people.
That's a good explanation. The SpaceX approach helps mitigate many of the challenges to safety. But comparison to airlines like many people make will remain orders of magnitude different. Besides the higher stresses, temperatures and pressures that you mentioned, there are always little "gotchas" that can remain hidden for a long time, even years if they require certain exact conditions to be met. The Comet jet airliner for example flew for many years before the metal fatigue issue appeared and brought down three airliners in short order before it was identified. SpaceX had the issue with the titanium valve that caused a Dragon capsule to explode, even though they had (as far as I know) used that type of valve for a few years, and didn't believe that the type of failure that occurred was even possible.
A high flight rate helps ferret out the gotchas, and SpaceX certainly has higher flight rate than traditional rockets. But it still pales in comparison to airline flights. Commercial airliners fly over 20,000 times per day in the U.S. alone. This builds tremendous experience very quickly. And at more mundane speeds and altitudes. That's why spaceflight should never be considered routine, yet that's the mistake that continues to be made. During Concorde test flights the flight crew and onboard test engineers had pressure suits and parachutes available (although they didn't wear them during flight) and escape hatches in the cabin floor where they could drop out of the plane even at supersonic speeds. The first four Space Shuttle flights were considered test flights and the pilots wore pressure suits and parachutes and sat in ejection seats. After the test flights completed successfully the Shuttle was then declared "operational" as if it was the Concorde, and from then on up until Challenger astronauts wore just overalls and essentially an oxygen mask during launch. And there was no launch escape for much of the flight. Space flights should always be treated like test flights, with crews always having escape capability at all times. This is what concerns me about current plans to launch people on Starship, essentially riding inside the second stage, with apparently no launch escape capability, at least not that has been discussed.
Also the Inspiration4 mission raised some concerns. Starting with the first Skylab flight in 1973 NASA made sure that a rescue Command Module and Saturn IB were on standby in the VAB in case the astronauts on Skylab had a problem with their spacecraft. The rescue capsule was modified with five seats so that a crew of two could fly a rescue mission and bring back the three stranded astronauts. This rescue capability was available through the Apollo/Soyuz mission. But then when the Shuttle started flying NASA felt like space travel was now becoming "routine" and so they didn't bother having rescue capability. It was only after the Columbia accident in 2003 that all remaining Shuttle flights had a rescue Shuttle on standby, similar to the Skylab days, with a heightened readiness for the final Hubble servicing mission since it would not be docked at ISS. But when Inspiration4 flew in 2021 there was to my knowledge no crew Dragon and Falcon 9 on standby in case they needed rescue. I think we need to move back to a test flight mentality, which I think can be done and still accomplish everything that is planned, it just requires more vigilance, and maximum respect for the inherent risks of space flight.
if only we had aerospike engines
@@StevePemberton2
The comparison to airlines is primarily about safety, but operation. Elon wants to operate rockets like planes, meaning reusability and rapid turnaround. For safety they'll have to go through similar pains as the airline industry. Although in many ways they have a much easier job. Most importantly a lot of the lessons from aviation directly applies, so don't have to be re-learned. Things like material science, redundancy, maintenance, discipline, etc. Then rockets don't need to generate lift, which has many consequences, mostly in favor of rockets. The most dangerous parts of flying are takeoff and landing, because planes have to move very fast close to the ground, often in poor weather conditions. Rockets take off and land vertically and slowly. This practically eliminates most of the reasons planes crash. The main concern for rockets is engine failure, but that has been solved by SpaceX by simply using many engines, and making sure they don't blow up on failure. The latest Starship test flight demonstrated this capability perfectly. Another issue, with planes too, is losing control. Starship failed for that reason too, when the hydraulic system blew up. But the next one will have electrically actuated engine gimbal mechanism, which is naturally independent for each engine. If they make the power supply independent too, which is not hard, that's an extremely robust system.
SpaceX wants to fly very often too. Not 20K times a day, but long term maybe. Elon wants thousands of Starships, of which each could fly many times a day.
SpaceX flew the Dragon capsule many times before allowing humans onboard. It was far safer than old capsules from the start, just because of modern tech, and than the Shuttle, because that was very complex and had many serious design flaws.
And the probability of needing a rescue was extremely small. 99% of the possible unsolvable problems would have killed the crew immediately. The only way to require a rescue is getting stuck in orbit, which is extremely unlikely. And in that case I'm pretty sure SpaceX could have done it. Even then they were launching about every 10 days, and likely could have sped it up significantly in an emergency. And I'm pretty sure that the crew had supplies for about a week, which they could have stretched by a few days at least.
As for Starship, the Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) made a very detailed video about launch escape systems, and Starship specifically. SpaceX's official position is that they intend to fly Starship many many times before the first crew, so it will be by far the safest spacecraft by then. And Falcon 9's track record is a pretty good reference too.
One of the many advantages of Starship is that it's large and super efficient to the point that it can be over-engineered significantly. The latest launch already demonstrated that too, engines burst into flames, the hydraulic system blew up, parts were falling, the entire rocket tumbled, and still it did not blow up. It didn't blow up even when they activated the flight termination system. It worked just fine, cut a large hole into the fuel tank, it just wasn't enough.
Now imagine if they deliberately making it even stronger for passengers. With the 100+ ton payload capacity they can afford to do it, and still carry as many passengers as a jumbo jet.
Or it can be argued that the second stage is the launch escape system. If the booster fails, the second stage can fly away very quickly, especially now that they'll use hot staging, and it can just fly back and land normally, or abort to orbit if possible. The booster does the heavy lifting, the second stage is more about efficiency then raw power. And the second stage too has redundant engines.
@@Robbie-mw5uu
Not needed. Aerospike engines make sense for single stage to orbit vehicles, which we don't have. For a traditional two stage one you can simply use separate sea level and vacuum engines.
Watch Tim Dodd's first interview with Elon, they talk about this in detail. And I think he has a dedicated video for aerospikes too.
Could you do a program on non-chemical burn means to achieve orbit - it would be very interesting.
The Falcon 9 is more more dependable than my Chevy truck.
I love your content thank you
The over dramatizing VPN add is a bit off. It is nowhere near as dangerous as you picture it...
After Apollo 18 was cancelled several astronauts expressed their relief because there had been too many near misses (not just with 13).
The way I read the mission summaries each and every one of the moonshots had at least one failure that would cost the mission or lives were they not resolved on the fly by astronauts and mission control.
I wonder what the failure rate is for deep dive submersibles
No lost subs for 20 years until some CEO idiot decided he didn’t need experienced middle age sub guys working in subs and telling him no.
According to you, the chances of getting in a car crash in the UK are 1/200 in your life.
Assuming that's correct, that's in no way comparable to the 'all time figure of failed launches'.
Throughout your life you'll go into tens of thousands of car rides, and of all those, there's only a 1/200 chance, apparently, that any of them will be a crash.
Whereas the rockets are a 1/50 chance as is.
It's not just a factor of 4 difference.
If every car ride would have a 1/200 chance of resulting in a crash, there'd be tens of millions of car crashes each day.
It's a factor of tens of thousands.
Running pure oxygen anywhere poses an extreme risk. Patients on oxygen die over and over again in house fires because they are smoking on aren't paying attention. And that just a tiny increase in atmospheric oxygen. Both the Gemini and mercury programs were very lucky to not have had fires.
Interestingly at the time a pure oxygen atmosphere was seen as having some safety benefits. The fire risk would be low on orbit because of the lack of convection in zero gravity which is what primarily drives fires here on Earth. Meanwhile breathing pure oxygen had the benefit of purging nitrogen from the bloodstream, reducing the risks of getting the bends if there was a sudden decrease in cabin pressure. Also it was believed that the low 5 psi pressure in the cabin would help mitigate any fire risks. Also maintaining a proper oxygen/nitrogen ratio required sensors that could measure this. There was a concern that if these sensors failed the results could be lethal. Whereas with pure oxygen they simply needed to measure the air pressure, something which was much more simple and reliable.
The problem on Apollo 1 was that to approximate the differential in space of 5 psi pushing outwards onto a vacuum, they pressurized the capsule on the ground to 16 psi of pure oxygen. Made worse by the fact that the fire retardant materials that NASA was beginning to use inside the Apollo capsule only made it into the operational vehicles then under construction, whereas the Apollo 1 capsule had already been built using flammable materials and it was considered too late to change this.
Even after the Apollo 1 fire they continued to use pure oxygen on orbit, the oxygen/nitrogen mix was only used on the ground.
Soviet rocket launch failure? If there's no video or photographs, it didn't happen
Fair to say, NASA nailed it with Apollo.
Ok now do per minute of travel.
I'm disappointed that you didn't touch on the increase in reliability from using flight-proven hardware
The problem I see with comparing car statistics to rocket statistics as in this video is that cars typically have one person in them, average probably somewhere around 1-2 per. Most rockets carry at least 3 people every single time. And starship could carry 100 to LEO according to SpaceX. You would have to at least double the risk for the rockets since twice as many people on average are involved. A better comparison may be buses or trains, but even better would just be a per passenger adjustment to any stats used. (Successful round trips without injury/ per person)