The hidden costs of reliability and failure in launch systems

In comparing the costs of different launch vehicles, the possibility of the risk of failure is assumed to be accounted for by the cost of insurance. The satellite may be insured against loss during launch, and the launch services provider may offer a ‘free relaunch’. However, actual costs of reliability and failure extend beyond this. Each failure necessitates an investigation and a ‘get well’ programme by the operating agency, while putting the operations team ‘on hold’ until services can resume. A commercial operator may also lose customer revenue and actual customers through loss of confidence or unavailability. Such costs tend to be hidden, and not evaluated in assessing the effectiveness of a system, but count towards total costs. Failure investigations help to improve system reliability, but this could equally have been achieved by expenditure in development and qualification. Reusable launch vehicles will have different costs associated with reliability and failure. The relationship between reliability and cost, properly assessed, ought to influence the design of both expendable and reusable launch systems.