Yes, first flights of a new vehicle type have gotten discounts. My point
is that currently, the market (or at least NASA) seems to want a proven
design with a new-car smell. I expect that will change at some point,
when the risk of infant mortality is viewed as higher than the risk of
fatigue.
On 2016-01-10 14:18, Chris Jones wrote:
On 01/10/16 5:01 PM, Rand Simberg wrote:
What I find more interesting than the financial aspects are those of
reliability. No commercial passenger ever flies on the very first
flight on an aircraft. But right now, the perception is, "If you
want us to fly on your used rocket, you'll have to give us a
discount." I think, or at least hope, we will reach a point at which
it will be "What?! You want me to trust my expensive brand-new
satellite/crew to a first flight? You'll have to give me a big
discount if I can't fly on a proven vehicle."
This isn't unheard of with recent vehicles (I think in the "olden days"
they tended to fly with test payloads or instrumented modules to gather
information on the cause of the unsurprising failure that often ensued).
As I recall, the first flight of the Ariane 5 carried Cluster
satellites to study the earth's radiation environment. The fact that
that particular launch splashed (excuse me, "failed to validate"
according to the press release) bit them, and they had to build and
launch another set of Clusters. I think some of the early launches of
the various versions of the Falcon launchers have also flown payloads at
a discount, and I'm confident there are examples I'm unaware of.
