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

arstechnica.com

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

#91

Post by MR4D »

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…

Quoting Charmeau from the article,

  "I think we are in different worlds,” he said. “In the US, they think and they speak like this. Our mission is different. Our culture is different.”
Yes. Yes we do.

As a fun analogy, I'd love to think what would have happened if AT&T had kept their operators and not put in electronic switches.

Commerce would still be back in the 1950's, and everyone would work for AT&T. We'd be making nowhere near as many calls, and business would operate much slower than today, meaning innovation & collaboration would be much slower than today.

But that's the choice

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

#92

Post by logfromblammo »

golem14 wrote: post #86
jlmorton wrote: post #75

Earlier 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…

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, ...

Right. You build the rocket for the 10 guaranteed launches, then you move right on to building the next rocket, because you'll need another in case you lose the first. Then you build another after that, and that one can put up some payloads that were not-so-guaranteed. Then you build another after that, and by then, some of the labor that used to go completely into construction is now reconditioning and inspecting the reusable hardware instead. Eventually, your construction crews are building at the replacement rate for whatever sized fleet of reusable rockets you need to put up the payloads you can cram into your launch pipeline.

As it is, that pipeline is fixed at 10 launches per year. If the pipeline were fatter, they could fit more launches into it. If they can do more launches, they can court more customers.

If cost to orbit is cheap enough, you can do things like launch a big, dumb tank of water, xenon, hydrazine, liquid fuel, food supplies, oxygen candles, or anything else useful only in quantity, and requiring no life support. With those up there, you can do rendezvous-and-go missions, and it costs less money to get to wherever you're going. If you can do more launches, you can spread more missions out across multiple launches.

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

#93

Post by greglindahl »

leot wrote: post #88
avar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire booster stage of the Antares rocket, which is only used for NASA payloads, comes from Ukraine. And Antares and Atlas V's main engines come from Russia.

ITAR works in the other direction, when you take US tech into other countries.

Liability for the launching company, now that's a separate issue from ITAR.

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

#94

Post by 1996 »

WJW wrote: post #84
1996 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great idea - note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets, the low quality of Israeli ICBM, and the rarity of German submarines.

A government can subsidize with taxes an industry as much as it wants, and force its products down its citizens throat as much as it can: it will not be able to create quality, which is essential to get a large market demand.

Unless the industry is very hard to replicate for whatever reason like large capital requirements given the available technology (ex: a computer in the 1940s, sending a human to the moon in the 1960s) this create a market opportunity.

Natural market forces such as competition ensure the end result.

EDIT: My bad, I forgot about the Swedish Gripen. It exists, which is no small feat by itself! It is just low quality and rare.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

"Gripen has achieved moderate success in sales to nations in Central Europe, South Africa and Southeast Asia; bribery has been suspected in some of these procurements, but authorities closed the investigation in 2009"

Thanks to bribery, this wonderful piece of technology could be sold to major world powers like South Africa and Hungary.

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

#95

Post by avar »

leot wrote: post #88
avar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rockets launched from the US are already considered to be malicious from a range safety perspective, since they might accidentally veer off course and turn into a ballistic missile.

Range safety officers already strap explosives to SpaceX's and other rockets and will detonate them in the event of an accident. This is how the SRBs on the Challenger space shuttle were detonated after the orbiter broke up.

So it's not because of range safety that foreign companies aren't allowed equal access to the US launch market. We could go into why that is. Briefly it's because rocketry is a core strategic military asset from both a proliferation and manufacturing perspective. Once you can launch a satellite into orbit you're really close to having an ICBM.

But that doesn't change the fact that this strategic advantage is partly maintained with subsidies to domestic companies, in a way that say doesn't happen when the US military needs to source some more basic technology (like nails, screws or lumber) from some outside provider.

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

#96

Post by syntaxing »

I recommend to read the book "Why Nations fail" if you're interested in how some countries become rich or stay in poverty. One of the key ideas is something called creative destruction. There is always something destroyed when something new is created (there are always losers and winners). When there is uncertainty, there is an opportunity. The fear of losing is what makes certain companies (and countries) not adopt a new technology since it challenges their current standing and this circle tends to lead to the collapse of a company's ecnonomy.

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

#97

Post by rbanffy »

1996 wrote: post #82
jlmorton wrote: post #75

Earlier 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"

There are a number of reasons why Europe would prefer a more expensive European launcher over a cheap American one. More or less the same reasons the US military has preferred pre-SpaceX American expendable launchers to superior and cheaper European ones for a lot of missions.

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

#98

Post by mnl »

1996 wrote: post #94
WJW wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great idea - note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets, the low quality of Israeli ICBM, and the rarity of German submarines. A government can subsidize with taxes an industry as much as it wants, and force its products down its citizens throat as much as it can: it will not be able to create quality, which is essential to get a large market demand. Unless the industry is very hard to replicate for w…

Actually Saab has been producing fine Swedish jet fighters for 60 years. Ever heard of the JAS 39 Gripen?

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

#99

Post by rbanffy »

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…

First-mover advantage is usually overrated. SpaceX is incurring in huge risks to prove a market hypothesis. When it's proven, other companies will follow. Blue Origin is right behind them.

SpaceX is following a series of failed initiatives - the Shuttle, SSTOs like the DC-X and Venturestar - and trying lots of seemingly crazy things in the process. Let's not get carried away by survivorship bias.

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

#100

Post by marsokod »

1996 wrote: post #94
WJW wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great idea - note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets, the low quality of Israeli ICBM, and the rarity of German submarines. A government can subsidize with taxes an industry as much as it wants, and force its products down its citizens throat as much as it can: it will not be able to create quality, which is essential to get a large market demand. Unless the industry is very hard to replicate for w…

The Gripen is not Swedish?

Competition works when the market is open. But the space market is far from being open. Even building a satellite without including an ITAR or EAR part was politically impossible a few years ago for an EU company.

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