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As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

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Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#71

Post by ferongr »

greglindahl wrote: post #26
rdtsc wrote: post #10

> Even, so, Charmeau rejects comparisons to SpaceX, because he maintains that the company is heavily subsidized by the US government. Isn't ESA subsidized by the member governments? I'd understand if the criticism was coming from a private entity and they'd be complaining about SpaceX getting preferential treatment, but coming from a state sponsored agency it seems odd.

Ariane 5's commercial launches are directly subsidized by the EU. But it's a muddled story all around: if SpaceX rents an unused launch pad from NASA instead of spending $1 billion to build a new one, is that a subsidy? Was NASA's competition for commercial cargo to the ISS a subsidy?

> if SpaceX rents an unused launch pad from NASA instead of spending $1 billion to build a new one, is that a subsidy

No, it's called renting. If it was unused then the presumably low price SpaceX pays for it is the right one. This is actually efficient capitalist allocation of resources. If SpaceX was not allowed to pay a rent for the launch pad, capital would be used inefficiently on building one, instead of being spent on R&D. Furthermore, the depreciation and abandonment of the launch pad itself would result in a waste of tax-payer money.

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#72

Post by rory096 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #66
rory096 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would someone pay €75 million to launch 5 tonnes to GTO on the Ariane 6 when they can spend $62 million and get an extra 3.3 tonnes of capacity on the Falcon 9? Because their satellite is, perhaps, 3 tonnes, allowing them to fly in the upper berth for €45 million while another customer pays the rest in the lower berth. Capability isn't useful if your payload doesn't use it. >Based on your numbers, Falcon 9 is $9…

> their satellite is, perhaps, 3 tonnes, allowing them to fly in the upper berth for €45 million €45 million is over $52 million. The Falcon 9, in re-usable mode, is cheaper and, in non-reusable mode, requires you find a buddy who will pay at least $10 million for 2 metric tonnes of launch capacity. > Secondary payloads — especially multi-smallsat rideshare — are notoriously hard to coordinate It's an easier problem…

>€45 million is over $52 million. The Falcon 9, in re-usable mode, is cheaper and, in non-reusable mode, requires you find a buddy who will pay at least $10 million for 2 metric tonnes of launch capacity.

F9 reusable is about the same. For Falcon 9, you'll need that secondary payload provider to also pay for a custom payload adapter and deployment mechanism, since berths aren't standardized as on Ariane.

>It's an easier problem to solve than building a new launch platform. Particularly if reusability increases launch frequency.

Certainly, but it's not one that has been solved. I suspect moving forward we'll see it mostly solved for very small sats on dedicated rideshare missions, while excess payload for larger commercial sats remains unused.

>Ariane 6 was designed assuming reusability would fail. That wasn't unreasonable ten years ago.

Certainly. But it's important to note that designing for first stage reusability wouldn't necessarily be profitable either. SpaceX is already cheaper without it and is quickly taking market share away. As launch cadence drops, financial returns on reusability fall quickly. If you're second fiddle already, you may very well lose money by investing in reusability.

>I agree there will be niches where someone will be forced to pay up for scheduling. But as launch frequencies increase--from SpaceX as well as Blue Origin, RocketLab, India, et cetera--that niche will narrow.

I'd argue Ariane's niche remains reliability, not scheduling (which it has problems with because of the dual berth conops[0]). SpaceX will soon own schedule reliability as its backlog dissipates and boosters are rapidly reused. But there's a reason JWST is going on Ariane 5.

[0] https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/04/27/concerns-with-indian-p...

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#73

Post by PunchTornado »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #16
rory096 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stéphane Israël has repeatedly called for European governments to stop competing any satellite launches and guarantee them all for Arianespace, as well as to increase direct subsidies. http://www.france24.com/en/20150620-interview-stephane-israe... http://aviationweek.com/space/arianespace-esa-we-need-help Alain Charmeau has as well: >Even as Charmeau decries what he calls subsidies for SpaceX from the US government,…

The typical french reaction. I hope Germany will push back. Anyone remember the European search engine competitor "Quaero", another stillborn EU project?

a decision like that will keep europe decades behind in the space industry

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#74

Post by PunchTornado »

My God this makes me ashamed at being European.

Who are these guys and in which century do they think they are? Innovate and compete or resign and make room for others who can do it. I'm sure there are enough European engineers who can build reusable rockets.

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#75

Post by jlmorton »

marsokod wrote: post #49
bosdev wrote: post #27

> 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…

To me this is a major reason why the reusable launchers were not developed in Europe. The concept was being studied but never gained traction. One of the reason might have been vanity but if you look at it with the view point of a CEO from a European firm, reusability was a risky gamble: 1) In order to keep your manufacturing quality, one needs to produce a new rocket every two or three months. Beyond that, the peopl…

Alain Charmeau spelled this out explicitly to Der Spiegel:

> Charmeau said the Ariane rocket does not launch often enough to justify the investment into reusability. (It would need about 30 launches a year to justify these costs, he said). And then Charmeau said something telling about why reusability doesn't make sense to a government-backed rocket company—jobs.

> "Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year," he said. "That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'"

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/alain-charmeau-di...

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#76

Post by grecy »

bosdev wrote: post #27

> 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 mentality is what's holding back the establishment in any field from doing anything radical. The status quo is worth trillions and trillions of dollars, and a lot of people will fight very, very hard to keep it that way, even when it's horribly inefficient, outdated and just plain stupid.

Electric cars? Nope, we've invested too much in ICE R&D and need to pay it back over another 100 years.

Solar? Nope, we promised the private coal plants decades of profits.

Public Healthcare (In the USA)? Nope, waaaaaay too many billions being made on insurance.

etc. etc.

Which is why we need to ignore what the establishment things and just do our own thing whenever possible, or at least support anyone trying to go clean slate.

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#77

Post by Tuna-Fish »

bosdev wrote: post #27

> 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 not just about having makework jobs. In order for the engines to be both cheap an reliable, there needs to be continuous line production. An engine put together by workers who build rocket engines for their living is better than one built by people who make rocket engines 1 month of a year, and for the line to work properly there are limits on how slowly things can be built. This means that if your engine demand goes too low, the quality suffers or price skyrockets.

The financial basis of SpaceX reusability is conditioned on having access to a lot of launches, and increasing the market even further by making launches cheaper. If SpaceX ended up only doing 12 launches a year each year from now on, they would lose money from reusability instead of saving it, because they would have pay ~as much to maintain the Merlin line as they do today, and that is probably most of the cost of making rockets. In order for them to make bank, they need to be able to maintain the line, and grow launches to consume all of it. (Hence, StarLink.)

Alternatively, they can produce all the first stages they ever intend to make, a good enough stockpile of Merlins for the second stages, and then shut down the line and get paid for launches without the expense of making rockets. This is what I suspect they'll do, except that at that point they will not shut down the line but will change it to make Raptors instead. Both for Raptor engined upper stages on Falcon 9:s, and eventually BFR.

In any case, Arianespace probably doesn't believe they can raise the launch count enough for reusability to be useful.

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#78

Post by greglindahl »

marsokod wrote: post #67
greglindahl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ariane 5's commercial launches are directly subsidized by the EU. But it's a muddled story all around: if SpaceX rents an unused launch pad from NASA instead of spending $1 billion to build a new one, is that a subsidy? Was NASA's competition for commercial cargo to the ISS a subsidy?

Agreed, if one could take into account all the subsidies, I am sure we would be at similar levels. The commercial cargo contract was on par with the ATV program, but the prospect is much bigger, with better financial stability. And where should we stop counting subsidies? Are the government funded studies made by research institutes counted? They benefit a lot to the companies.

You can look at the Boeing vs Airbus trade case to see how far folks are willing to go when adding up "subsidies" -- into the weeds.

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#79

Post by 1996 »

grecy wrote: post #76
bosdev wrote: post #27

> 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 mentality is what's holding back the establishment in any field from doing anything radical. The status quo is worth trillions and trillions of dollars, and a lot of people will fight very, very hard to keep it that way, even when it's horribly inefficient, outdated and just plain stupid. Electric cars? Nope, we've invested too much in ICE R&D and need to pay it back over another 100 years. Solar? Nope, we promi…

And this is also why the establishment rightfully fears disruption: because they could have done marginal improvements for a long time: they chose not to for valid strategic reasons. But then there is a competitor which leapfrogs all that and who threatens to just wipe them out!

Once it happens, as usual, the establishment begs/lobbies for political protection (think about jobs!) which will often be granted. But political favors can just at best slow their demise.

Reusable spacex rockets will be to the EU spatial industry what uber was to its taxis: turning them immediately irrelevant, and unsavageable as an industry.

A better example might be the high administrative costs of the US healthcare system. Obamacare couldn't cut all these jobs during a downturn, so they were preserved. But even now, for a lot of people it makes more sense to opt out of that craziness and just get healthcare abroad. This sector is ripe for disruption. Maybe not now, but in 10 years even more so.

Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist

#80

Post by avar »

ferongr wrote: post #71
greglindahl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ariane 5's commercial launches are directly subsidized by the EU. But it's a muddled story all around: if SpaceX rents an unused launch pad from NASA instead of spending $1 billion to build a new one, is that a subsidy? Was NASA's competition for commercial cargo to the ISS a subsidy?

> if SpaceX rents an unused launch pad from NASA instead of spending $1 billion to build a new one, is that a subsidy No, it's called renting. If it was unused then the presumably low price SpaceX pays for it is the right one. This is actually efficient capitalist allocation of resources. If SpaceX was not allowed to pay a rent for the launch pad, capital would be used inefficiently on building one, instead of being…

You'd be correct if aerospace companies from other countries had as much of a right to rent the pad as SpaceX, but that's not the case.

The US with ITAR and other "national security" restrictions sets up a lot of economic moats around their aerospace companies, and the government gets to pick domestic winners over foreign competition. That's a subsidy.

Everyone plays this game when it comes to aerospace, it's why there's constant lawsuits between the likes of Boeing and Airbus on at the WTO.

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