> One was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system.
Not sure how that would mitigate the risk of explody Space-X rockets?
Exactly the way it was described. People are on board the rocket for the minimal amount of time before launch and not during the most risky operations in order to mitigate the risk of explosion. While the people are on board the rocket there are systems in place to increase their chances of escape, again mitigating the risk.
e: I realize you are saying none of this reduces the risk of the rocket exploding but at some point that doesn't matter because there's never going to be an absolute guarantee. The mitigation of risk that the rocket explodes is the further test flights the new rocket will complete before a manned mission to the moon.
Two lost rockets in a year is a lot better than previous years.
> Two lost rockets in a year is a lot better than previous years.
Uh no.. they're losing MORE rockets now than before, mostly because the rockets are getting bigger and more powerful - and they have the Heavy versions coming.
Consider that 2 of their last 13 rockets exploded.. that's not a good track record. Compare that to ULA, which hasn't had an explosion over 100 Atlas/Delta launches.
I don't think either of the explosions were related to the rockets getting bigger or more powerful. The CRS-7 failure would have happened on any version of the Falcon 9. It happened on that particular one because that one happened to have a defective strut. The AMOS-6 explosion happened because of their experiments with supercooled propellants.
Two losses in two years is a lot better than the very early days when they lost their first three Falcon 1s in a row, but worse than the early years of Falcon 9 where the only failure was a single engine out that didn't hurt the primary payload, and is certainly not a good track record overall.
Not sure how that would mitigate the risk of explody Space-X rockets?