Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

esa.int

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 403 posts

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#161

Post by admissionsguy »

nabla9 wrote: post #2

Ariane 6 exists so that European countries can get independent access to space between now and 2030s. The launch cost is almost 2x the cost of Falcon 9. Both platforms can lift 22t to LEO. 6-10 years from now Ariane Next/SALTO will aims replicate Falcon 9 efficiency and the design will be very similar: reusable, RP-1/LOX, Prometheus engine is similar reusable open cycle engine as Merlin with lots of 3D printed parts.

> 6-10 years from now Ariane Next/SALTO will aims replicate Falcon 9 efficiency and the design

That's what presentation by some high-ranking ESA person said when I was considering joining a Master's program in Spacecraft Design in Kiruna, Sweden, where some ESA launch facilities are located. I found that goal extremely uninspiring, especially combined with European salaries, so I opted to keep getting paid well working on software to feed people more burgers.

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#162

Post by 627467 »

lapphi wrote: post #154
627467 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

will it? or will engineering talent just move elsewhere after realizing their talents are wasted in bureaucratland?

Is nationalism really so far in the past already

nationalism is dying with the older generations and importing new labour from abroad is not really the short term solution for that

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#163

Post by threeseed »

ddalex wrote: post #89
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it a race instead of being of public and international importance to have an alternative to a for profit company? It’s not a meaningful alternative. The comparison to a Yugo is apt: it’s more expensive and less capable, with its sole advantage being it’s made in Europe and so will get European launches. But anyone launching on it is structurally disadvantaged against a competitor (or peer) who launches on Sp…

it's about maintaining political options - what happens when your peer denies your launches on their platform; what prevents ESA from launching 90% of their payloads on SpaceX for reduced cost, while maintaining alive a credible option ?

> what prevents ESA from launching 90% of their payloads on SpaceX for reduced cost

You only have to look at what happened with Starlink and Ukraine.

Last thing EU wants is to put their vital strategic interests in the hands of Elon Musk and his erratic whims.

Especially given they are planning to fine X 6% of their revenue which may end up bankrupting the company given its perilous financial state.

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#164

Post by p_l »

Reason077 wrote: post #101
pmezard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the US sending military payloads with non-US rockets?

The US is sending military payloads with private, low-cost commercial launch provider SpaceX. The success of this model hasn’t gone unnoticed by China, who are funding several private rocket companies (such as Space Pioneer) to develop reusable launch platforms in competition with the state-owned contractor CASC. They are making rapid progress!

The USA has been sending military payloads with private vendors since 1970s. In some cases blocking contractually those vendors from providing civilian launch capability, even.

SpaceX is absolutely nothing new in the process, other than having been funded by explicit military program to prop up new space launch vendors.

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#165

Post by qwytw »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62
MrSkelter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falcon’s costs are a fiction. SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA. It’s not a like for like comparison especially give SpaceX keeping its books private and giving no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost. Given Musks history of creative accounting quoting their PR numbers, the ones they pitch congress, as facts…

> SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA So does ArianeSpace [1]. (It’s majority owned by the French state. EDIT: It’s not.) > no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost Refurb rates and turnaround times for Falcon 9 first stages are publicly documented [2]. Refurb costs are more opaque, but they’d have to be multipl…

> It’s majority owned by the French state

Is that really true? I thought it was owned 50:50 by Safran and Airbus which are both publicly traded companies.

~25% of Airbus is owned by France, Germany and Spain. France owes ~11% of Safran. So France seems to own only ~10% of ArianeSpace

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#166

Post by mytailorisrich »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is still essential that we have multiple actors building rockets. The competition Twice the cost and at a small fraction of the frequency is competition in the way a rubber duck competes with a battle ship. Ariana 6 isn’t meaningful competition. ArianeSpace’s sole value is in its potential of becoming competition if one day sensibly managed.

Arianne 6 is not about competition, but about strategic independence at the first place.

You can't have that strategic independence in the long term is your capability falls more and more behind others in terms of technology and costs. This also has a ripple effect on your industry at large: Would European companies use this European independent launch capability if it was costly and obsolete? No. Would the European military be able to compete against adversaries? No.

An extreme illustration: would you say that Spain had strategic independent seafaring capability if it had maintained fleet a galleons to this day?

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#167

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

Reason077 wrote: post #148
The_Colonel wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge strategic weakness is depending on a foreign country (perhaps even worse - one moody individual) for your launches.

SpaceX is a 100% American company. Moody individual notwithstanding, they are no less American than Boeing or ULA or anyone else.

> SpaceX is a 100% American company.

It's a huge fucking problem if you're not American. If you don't want to be subject to American law. If you don't want your technology inspected or tampered with by Americans. If you don't want the transaction to be in dollars (extra-territoriality of US law on all dollar transactions). If you don't want to deal with the problem of American citizens and companies subject to FISA, who could face severe repercussions in the US if they don't spy or facilitate spying on their non-American clients.

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#168

Post by [deleted] »

ur-whale wrote: post #17
crest wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because an incumbent exists ESA should give up, let their production and development pipeline rot away and "enjoy" the monopoly until it's too late to change something?

> So because an incumbent exists ESA should give up No. But they should learn their lesson and try to run instead of plodding along at a glacial pace. Oh but wait, they're govt funded with no success incentives other than some sort of vague sense of pride for a job well done. My money is on they're not going to come out ahead in the race.

[deleted]

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#169

Post by JumpCrisscross »

qwytw wrote: post #165
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA So does ArianeSpace [1]. (It’s majority owned by the French state. EDIT: It’s not.) > no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost Refurb rates and turnaround times for Falcon 9 first stages are publicly documented [2]. Refurb costs are more opaque, but they’d have to be multipl…

> It’s majority owned by the French state Is that really true? I thought it was owned 50:50 by Safran and Airbus which are both publicly traded companies. ~25% of Airbus is owned by France, Germany and Spain. France owes ~11% of Safran. So France seems to own only ~10% of ArianeSpace

You’re correct—thank you. I missed CNES transferring its shares to Safran [1].

[1] https://www.arianespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Corpo...

Re: Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight

#170

Post by badcppdev »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #33
nabla9 wrote: post #2

Ariane 6 exists so that European countries can get independent access to space between now and 2030s. The launch cost is almost 2x the cost of Falcon 9. Both platforms can lift 22t to LEO. 6-10 years from now Ariane Next/SALTO will aims replicate Falcon 9 efficiency and the design will be very similar: reusable, RP-1/LOX, Prometheus engine is similar reusable open cycle engine as Merlin with lots of 3D printed parts.

Are the Europeans wworried that "between now and 2030s" the US will cut off their access to space? I understand things can go wrong and it's good to have a backup plan in the long term... But that's not that many years out. You can go without access for a few years .. It seems like a tiny risk

Sometimes nation states might disagree on what should be done in certain circumstances. An example of this is 39 years ago on this day the French government blew up a civilian boat in New Zealand [0]. Crazy but true. Having independent capabilities is part of being a sovereign rather than vassal state.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

Post reply on HN