> Titan II failed several times during development
I was counting "Titan II the launch vehicle" separately from "Titan II the ICBM". However, if we are talking about Titan II the ICBM, here's what Wikipedia [0] has to say about its first launch: "The first Titan II launch, Missile N-2, was carried out on 16 March 1962 from LC-16 at Cape Canaveral and performed extremely well, flying 5,000 miles (8,000 km) downrange and depositing its reentry vehicle in the Ascension splash net." So, for the purpose of an ICBM, the first launch was a success.
Now, it is true that the second launch failed to reach its target due to a problem with the second stage. But I was responding to the claim that first launches normally fail, so I don't think a failure on the second launch, when the first launch was successful, is directly relevant to that claim.
> and there was considerable drama between the Air Force and NASA getting the Titan II man-rated because of this.
As Wikipedia notes, Titan II had a lot of problems with vibration. However, for the ICBM use case, these problems were not an issue – a nuclear warhead can handle a lot more vibration than a crewed space capsule can. I don't think we should classify the first launch of a rocket as a "failure" if it has issues which would interfere with planned human-rating but not with the success of its primary uncrewed use case.
I was counting "Titan II the launch vehicle" separately from "Titan II the ICBM". However, if we are talking about Titan II the ICBM, here's what Wikipedia [0] has to say about its first launch: "The first Titan II launch, Missile N-2, was carried out on 16 March 1962 from LC-16 at Cape Canaveral and performed extremely well, flying 5,000 miles (8,000 km) downrange and depositing its reentry vehicle in the Ascension splash net." So, for the purpose of an ICBM, the first launch was a success.
Now, it is true that the second launch failed to reach its target due to a problem with the second stage. But I was responding to the claim that first launches normally fail, so I don't think a failure on the second launch, when the first launch was successful, is directly relevant to that claim.
> and there was considerable drama between the Air Force and NASA getting the Titan II man-rated because of this.
As Wikipedia notes, Titan II had a lot of problems with vibration. However, for the ICBM use case, these problems were not an issue – a nuclear warhead can handle a lot more vibration than a crewed space capsule can. I don't think we should classify the first launch of a rocket as a "failure" if it has issues which would interfere with planned human-rating but not with the success of its primary uncrewed use case.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II#Launch_histor...