Those that compares Antares/Cygnus with this one needs to remember that:
- All "traditional" orbital launch vehicles of today have an average success rate of only 90-95%.
- With oxygen-rich stage combustion engines such catastrophic failures shortly after liftoff are actually "within one's imaginations" with previous incidents.
Look at one of my nightmares....
- Had Antares been carrying a manned spacecraft on top the LAS would surely have enough time to pull it away.
And SS2? It was supposed to provide a very high rate of safe operations, given its nature of flying passengers with very quick turnarounds.
Yet the program run into so many troubles (
not the least of which a 2007 test of the original rubber hybrid engine exploded killing 3 engineers), and that Virgin Galactic has been under enormous pressure to fly someone to 100 km ASAP (remember that Richard Branson has declared recently that he is hoping to fly on SS2 by
early next year? Apparently Virgin Galactic's other shareholders, like a certain Middle East investment fund, were more than unhappy with the serious delays). And yet I still cannot predict such an accident on the
very first flight with the new nylon based hybrid engine that should have
reduced the oscillation problems with the previous engine.
Antares blowing up is at least within one's probable scenarios. SS2 disintegrating in mid-air on the other hand....