J
josh_simonson
Guest
>ALL configurations MUST have the SAME "LOC" because the "LOC" of the LAS is the "LOC" of the entire rocket+crew! <br /><br />Nope, you're quite, flat-out wrong. If one rocket has a failure rate of 10% and another of 20%, and the LAS has success rate of 90%, for one rocked LOC is 1% and the other it's 2%. Now if you factor in that different types of rockets have different failure modes, some which might explode and damage the LAS, ect, it's quite easy to see different rockets having different LOC numbers when they use identical CEV/LAS.<br /><br />For these paper rockets, they know how many tanks, valves, pipes, pumps, pistons, actuators and other items there are, each has a certain reliability, so one can get a reasonable idea of a total vehicle's reliability. To a large extent they're built from existing engines and parts that have been very well characterized. <br /><br />SRBs are very simple, which makes them reliable, and is directly why they won out over the EELV options - a liquid fueled engine can't be made to be as reliable as an SRB due to the number of moving parts inside them. <br /><br />One might question the cost numbers, or more specifically the flight-rate (they claim 6/year on the HLV and that's unlikely).