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As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
31–40 of 129 posts
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#32> Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much. It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the co…
> How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the cost?
The old jobs were under your directive. The new jobs are not.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
This problem will also bite the US launch industry. Hard. Once SpaceX has proven they can do safe crewed flights and Blue Origin goes beyond testing flights, why is there a reason to pay the huge ULA markup any more? ULA, as well as Airbus, has a problem: they're constantly being meddled with by politicians without any idea what they're doing and decide stuff that's totally unreasonable from an economical point but h…
> This problem will also bite the US launch industry I don't think so. ULA was formed in 2006 [1]. Before that, the U.S. launch market was competitive within itself and with the Russians. The Falcon 9 first flew in 2015 (EDIT: "first flew commercially in 2013") [2], returning the American market to a competitive state. American aerospace engineers are used to working in a competitive culture. If ULA doesn't become co…
Falcon 9 first flew in 2010, and launched its first commercial payload in 2013.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#34> Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much. It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the co…
More to the point, what would the engine and booster factories do if they had 12 months off each year because all the payloads would fly on cheaper reusable rockets? If the jobs are doing something inefficient, they're going away anyway.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#35> Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much. It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the co…
This is like bemoaning plastic factory worker jobs because we've become too good at reusing cups/bags/packaging/whatever and don't need to produce as much plastic anymore. Man that would be a nice problem to have. Mind-bending levels of justification here.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the article mentioning that they are working on 2 new rockets and that the plan is to not compete in SpaceX niche? I assume that we do not know that much about the innovation due to much smaller PR budgets.
AFAIK they don't have any capabilities SpaceX won't have, so SpaceX's "niche" is to just charge less for the same service.
> they don't have any capabilities SpaceX won't have
Correct. Falcon 9 is cheaper than Ariane 6 and the Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than Arian 5 or 6 for less. Given the piggyback market, where unused launch mass can be sold to third parties, the only reason to pay up for this platform is for political or scheduling reasons.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#37> Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much. It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the co…
This is like bemoaning plastic factory worker jobs because we've become too good at reusing cups/bags/packaging/whatever and don't need to produce as much plastic anymore. Man that would be a nice problem to have. Mind-bending levels of justification here.
Of all the places in the world, Europe is probably the most ripe for implementing a UBI, which would solve a lot of these problems.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#38> if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off?
Increasing supply often increases demand. Cheaper rockets will mean more trips which means you will still be building rockets.
But I think your model is a bit of hyperbole. You’re downplaying the statistical model that goes with this. Launching a rocket is Russian roulette. The odds are quite different when you want to launch a rocket once versus a dozen times.
(1 - p)^n = the odds that I still have a rocket after n launches, where p is the odds of it blowing up on any given launch. The asymptote is at 0 and it gets there pretty fast.
The good news is that the cost benefit analysis has a similar problem.
Let’s say you want to reuse a $10M part once. Right now it costs you $20M for two flights. You create a $11M version that costs $1M to refurbish. That’s $12M for two flights or $6M per flight. You got a 40% cost improvement. So now you go for 3 flights. Now you have a $12M part that costs $1M to refurb. That’s $14M for three flights or $4.66M per flight.
From 1 to 2 you saved $4M per flight. From 2-3 you saved an additional $1.33M per flight. From 3 to 4 you’d save $0.66M per flight, by adding another $1M to your up front costs.
The bean counters are probably going to push back here. Opportunity costs you see. They’re going to demand you reduce costs, find revenue neutral ways to improve profits. For instance if you can cut 25% off the refurb costs that’s a better cost improvement than getting to 5 launches. While that makes getting to five more appealing, it also takes time. So you can imagine what the gap between five and six will be filled with. Cheaper rocket, lower refurb costs again.
If they have money to spend at this point they’ll give it to the lobbyists or marketing department. You aren’t the best investment they have anymore. Increased revenue is.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#39I'm encouraged to see that their "vow to resist" seems to mainly involve trying to outperform SpaceX, as opposed to asking for legislation/regulation to give their rocket program special status. EDIT: At least that was the gist of this article, it seems like other sources suggest they may pursue legislative avenues as well.
> their "vow to resist" seems to mainly involve trying to outperform SpaceX The planned Ariane 6 is cost uncompetitive with the Falcon 9 and variable cost and mass uncompetitive with the Falcon Heavy. There are no plans for a European reusable. The “our mission is different...our culture is different” comment implies a regulatory, not technological, solution.
>The planned Ariane 6 is cost uncompetitive with the Falcon 9
This isn't really true. Ariane 6 is expected to cost €75 million for 5 tonnes to GTO and €90 million for 11.5 tonnes. Falcon 9 costs $50 million for 5.5 tonnes to GTO (reusable) and $62 million for 8.3 tonnes (expendable).
Because Ariane uses a "dual-berth" conops, it (generally) flies two payloads per launch, whereas Falcon 9's excess capacity is usually left unused. The two rockets are thus of comparable cost to a satellite customer, with pros and cons for each — Ariane is more reliable, but you have to work around the other customer's schedule.
The worry is that Ariane 6 won't be competitive with future rockets, like New Glenn or BFR.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> their "vow to resist" seems to mainly involve trying to outperform SpaceX The planned Ariane 6 is cost uncompetitive with the Falcon 9 and variable cost and mass uncompetitive with the Falcon Heavy. There are no plans for a European reusable. The “our mission is different...our culture is different” comment implies a regulatory, not technological, solution.
They are putting payloads into space, so it's the same mission. What the hell does "culture" have to do with anything? Really, there's a culture against re-useablility? No. It's fine (or at least honest) to admit they're a protectionist block and are looking into regulation to ensure French contacts are safe. But the mission is the same (put things into space), and the culture is irrelevant.
The culture is at least somewhat relevant if it gets in the way of efficiently performing the mission.