Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX and other low cost space companies. If I read the article correctly, they plan on doing this by not innovating.
Par for the course for the EU.
Why was this flagged? Please explain.
As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
81–90 of 129 posts
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What will make even more sense is when he says to his teams: "Farewell, it was really nice working with you all, too bad the foreign competition slashed prices and bankrupted us"
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A basic, subsistence income solves the problem of losing a high-paying job that allows for a comfortable lifestyle?
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What will make even more sense is when he says to his teams: "Farewell, it was really nice working with you all, too bad the foreign competition slashed prices and bankrupted us"
The solution is therefore pretty simple: taxes will subsidize "industries of national interest". It is for the same reason as the US would never buy Swedish fighter jets, Israeli ICBMs or German submarines. This has been true since the beginning of the nation state.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#85>>> “Are you buying a Mercedes because it is cheap?”
>>> Ranzo, sitting nearby, chimed in and referenced the India-based maker of the world’s least expensive car. As he put it, “We don’t sell a Tata.”
Not with that attitude ;) There's nothing wrong with cheap spaceflight, as long as they're human-rated for crewed missions. I hope they also know that Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
But the premise that there will only be 10 launches per year is (hopefully) false.
If launches get much cheaper, there are many reasons to launch more stuff. To orbit, to the moon, to Mars, ...
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#87> 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.
SpaceX was "subsidized" by the govt even as they provided services to the govt in exchange for money. That's called business, and the customer here is the government. It's also in the best interest, long term financially, to have an American space launch company, so we don't have to give money to the Russians or Europeans to launch our astronauts or satellites. Language matters, subsidy vs. contract is an important distinction
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 the…
There is no underlying platonic reality here to be discovered around the concept of a subsidy. It's not entirely unreasonable to be careful about allowing foreign governments to launch large rockets on domestic soil.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
> 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) 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? Based on your numbers, Falcon 9 is $9 million and $7.5…
When it comes to the cost of the mission those differences are peanuts. I guess that at some point SpaceX will find out that the the price of the launch wasn't the bottleneck after all.
Re: As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist
#90> 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 dem…
This also exposes the shrewdness in using a rocket with 9 or 27 of your engines, instead of 2 or 3, which allows you to keep a continuous pace with a smaller sized production line vs having to stand it up and down.
This is all aside from the reliability/engine out gains.