Uhhh ! When did we have 10 shuttles? We only had 5. That is a 40% loss rate.
That's why I said 2/10 = 20%. I guess I should included a 'BTW' in there. Losing 2/5 on 131 trips into space is a record that I would not consider a failure by any means. It's a risky busness and sadly we, as a nation, have lost good people doing it. I would not begin to call our space program a failure though.
Failure is only truely found when you stop trying to succeed which is what we've done. Wasn't it Thomas Edison that said 'he didn't fail 10000 times to make a light bulb, but found 10000 ways to do it better'. Of all the things to quit spending money on, I don't think the space program is where we should start cutting. Most of those who do think this don't have the slightest grasp on how much the space program has contributed to our lifestyle today. GPS, Integrated Circuits (which later developed into CPUs), Medical Imaging, Robotics Advances and Velcro to name a few.