Priorities in government and space

On 8/4/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> what about reliability. look at the percentage of saturns that had
> accidents compare to the percentage of flights the shuttle made
> compared to the failed ones.
(...)

I don't know about the safety record of the Saturns, by I know that
the safety record of the Soyuz launcher (which is a simple multi-stage
rocket like Saturn) is far better than that of the shuttle. Actually,
it is strange that you mentioned safety as a shuttle advantage, for
that is widely seen as one of the Achilles' heels of the shuttle.