Rocket launch success and failure rates for different countries (or space agencies)?

Question

Hi, I've been reading about the recent failed launch of the Russian rocket. I am curious to know the success and failure rates of rocket launches for the countries (or space agencies) which launch a significant amount of rockets. I know Russia launches the most rockets - and still has the highest success rate of any other country for rocket launches (at around 93% I think?).
If anyone could give some details regarding actual figures/statistics, that would be great - especially regarding Russian launches. Thank you. :)

Answer 1

A good place to look for this stuff is Wikipedia. It shows, for instance, that the Proton launcher has failed 3 times since the beginning of 2010 and partially failed once. That's out of 37 launches. Depending on how you account for the partial failure, you could say that it's running a 10% failure rate.



From the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2009, there were just over 80 Proton launches and 4 failures. That's a 5% failure rate.



Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an actual page where the failure stats are compiled but by looking at the 'list of...' pages for different launchers, you can get the data you like.

Answer 2

Additionally, there is question of definition - two of the Shuttle missions ended in deaths, but one of those was not a launch failure directly as it occurred during reentry due to failures that occurred during launch. Then there is the problem of secrecy - perhaps lately it is possible to build an accurate database of Russian launches and failures, but for a long time nothing was mentioned of a failure.

Further, exactly what is a failure? If the rocket is being tested to determine if it works okay rather than carrying out a mission to put something in space and it has to be destroyed midway through the launch at stage 2 or stage 3, is that a launch failure in the same sense as putting a $50 million dollar communications satellite on a rocket and having it destroyed during the launch? And to what extent is it a launch failure if the final positioning module of the satellite which is unique to that satellite fails in some way so the satellite can not function?

So

Rocket destroyed

Payload destroyed

Payload mislaunched

Mission not completed

Answer 3

The Space Shuttle program had two failures in something like 130 flights. That's roughly a 2% failure rate. It's pretty bad for a manned system.



The Soyuz series has flown 1700 times, with phenomenally low failure rates.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family)



In the old days, reliability was a serious issue, and statistics for rockets were easy to get. Of course, not many had flown, so there was considerable speculation on what the current failure rates actually are. One of the problems is that for most of these systems, the rocket is used once. Each lauch is a newly manufactured vehicle. If quality control deteriorates, then the failure rate increases. It can be difficult to guess what the current failure rate is, even for rockets that have had many launches.



The Saturn V flew 11 times, without failure. One could say that this is represents a 0% failure rate. Or, one could say that the upper bound is something like 1 in 22 launches, or something like it.



Even for the Space Shuttle, speculation ran rampant. The Challenger distaster failure mode seems to have been fixed. But the Columbia disaster failure mode was not. Does that mean that the Shuttle program was reduced to a 1% failure rate? Probably not.

Answer 4

Russia's success rate is not 93%. I wouldn't put their more recent decades at 43%.