As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by greglindahl » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 2:27 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

greglindahl wrote: post #24

If you'd like to read some more progressive thinking by a European, here's an interview with the CNES (French space agency) Director of Launchers: https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of... In which he talks about about a realistic path to a reusable rocket that could compete with Falcon 9. But it wouldn't launch until 2028-2030.

> a realistic path to a reusable rocket Technologically realistic. Politically unfeasible. ArianeGroup's factories provide high-paying jobs across Europe. Re-tooling them will not be possible for another generation. Source: I worked with launch start-ups. Their dismissal by EU politicos was resounding, particularly in contrast to the American and other countries' responses.

I figure that the opinion of the CNES Director of Launchers is pretty good when it comes to understanding European rocket politics, but if you want to claim you're a bigger expert, ok.

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

#122

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:34 AM UTC

1996 wrote: post #120

ahartmetz wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno, not much happened. Uber came in, broke the law, and went. The law already existed, and the taxi organizations aren't particularly powerful. Note that anybody can start driving taxis here after some mandatory course and exam, there's no bullion system.

Maybe, but I would still be surprised if whoever gives this courses and exams did not lobby for them to be applied to uber as you said, "it broke the law": the law is made to benefit incumbants, not newcomers.

It is true that taxi organizations lobbied ahainst Uber, but they had public opinion on their side. Uber is the one that was perceived as exploitative.

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

#123

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 11:23 AM UTC

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…

>If you look at the numbers from SpaceX, 4 launches per rocket is where the reusability starts making sense.

Shotwell mentioned that SpaceX actually saved money even on their first reused booster which was broken down and inspected to pieces. So I think your number doesn't stand. The Falcon 9 has a unique cost structure compared to other rockets, completely aimed towards making reusability work out as quickly as possible.

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

#124

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 11:40 AM UTC

rory096 wrote: post #39

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

>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…

Your numbers paint a very positive picture of Ariane 6 which I don't think is justified:

>Ariane 6 is expected to cost €75 million for 5 tonnes to GTO

There are a lot of GEO sats which are right at the 5 ton range so that leaves no room for a dual launch.

>Because Ariane uses a "dual-berth" conops, it (generally) flies two payloads per launch, whereas Falcon 9's excess capacity is usually left unused.

Dual launches come with a lot of issues of coordination which crop up all the time and result in delayed launches for Ariane. Also Falcon 9's excess capacity is left unused because no one has ever asked for it. Per Musk's words they could develop a bigger fairing if a customer payed for it but no one has asked for it.

>The two rockets are thus of comparable cost to a satellite customer, with pros and cons for each

No they are not. There is literally no pro for Ariane. It's more expensive and the most important thing is that the engine is not restartable so it literally can't do a direct GEO no matter the payload penalty. That results in satellites requiring more powerful and complicated thrusters and having to sacrifice part of the capacity for extra fuel instead of just altitude correcting thrusters. All of this translates into extra cost.

>Ariane is more reliable

This is a complete myth for the media. Ariane 5's reliability means nothing for Ariane 6. One of the early Ariane 5 launch failures was due to the use of Ariane 4's software but not modified. On the other hand falcon 9 is now frozen and at this rate will have about the same launches Ariane 5 had in it's entire lifetime but only in a couple of years.

>The worry is that Ariane 6 won't be competitive with future rockets, like New Glenn or BFR.

Ariane 6 was competitive with the non-reusable falcon 9 at 90m$. The bet the European industry made was that SpaceX wouldn't be able to make an economically meaningful reusable rocket but every design choice on the falcon 9 has benefited reusability( number of engines, cost structure etc).

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

#125

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

rory096 wrote: post #61

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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…

>Secondary payloads — especially multi-smallsat rideshare — are notoriously hard to coordinate.

Ariane would be terrible for such payloads. These tend to go into lower orbits and Ariane can't restart it's upper stage engine to change the orbit. Something like Electron is a much better -and cheaper- choice.

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

#126

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 11:46 AM UTC

mnl wrote: post #89

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Except it actually is. When a fully functioning satellite costs e.g. 200m$ and the launch is another 200m$ it makes sense to overbuild your satellite to 600m$ with crazy redundancies etc to make sure it won't fail early on it's mission life. At the same time the big dumb booster concept like Ariane 5 and 6 makes tradeoffs like no upper stage engine restart capabilities which are ok for GTO missions but mean that multi-sat LEO or MEO constellations are impossible( you can't change the orbit and drifting is expensive).

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

#127

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 11:58 AM UTC

marsokod wrote: post #108

PunchTornado wrote: post #74

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.

Oh yes there are enough of them. But to compete you need fair rules and open access to your competitors market, and that is not the case currently. What they are asking for is only the same protections as the US companies currently enjoy.

I'm sorry, what? What protections are you talking about? Nasa has booked flights on non-USA rockets many times in the past. SpaceX has received no subsidies( i.e. free money) but only contracts from the government which Ariane is now asking to be locked by law( and let's not even talk about subsidies).

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

#128

Post by magduf » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #83

magduf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well the alternative is propping up the high-paying jobs using subsidies and shutting out competition, which isn't exactly a winning long-term strategy. The high-paying jobs aren't going to stick around unless you force them to with some kind of jobs program which is just taxing everyone else so that this small, select group of people can benefit; why shouldn't everyone get a cushy do-nothing job at taxpayer expense? Clearly, that isn't sustainable or fair.

The UBI lets everyone in society have a safety net so they can go looking for another high-paying job, or get an education in another field to get a new high-paying job.

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

#129

Post by WhompingWindows » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

marsokod wrote: post #116

WhompingWindows wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

In government contracts in the aerospace and defence, the semantic distinction blurs a little bit. Government contracts are often inflated on purpose so that the work can leak towards other projects. Every country does that.

No doubt, contract bloat and missed deadlines are a hallmark of government contracting. Some combination of opportunism and lack of proper forecasting/planning lead to someone like ULA having much, much higher costs than a company like SpaceX.