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ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

arstechnica.com

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Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#21

Post by jeeeb »

rapsey wrote: post #15
arlort wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to review startups' business plans How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted? > That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make t…

The government should be a regulator and set ground rules. It should provide a market and clear requirements. Then leave private business alone to meet those requirements. If they need funding, leave the business to the VC industry.

They’re offering to fund 160 million euros to bootstrap private enterprises providing launch services to the ESA. Of course they want to review the business plan to make sure it’s viable before dropping a bundle of government money on some random company.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#22

Post by 9dev »

rapsey wrote: post #13
9dev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all trade offs, though. The US has vast problems with identity theft, fraud, and perverse privacy violations, because there is no regulation in that area. The market will only care about profits, and not the humans on whose backs these profits are materialised. There must be something in between these extremes on the spectrum.

You can take examples of working systems and adapt what works and discard what doesn't. Europe has spent decades and trillions on programs that do not work and produce nothing but word documents. With no sign of anyone acknowledging the poor results of these programs. Since I can't post on this thread anymore I will edit. I am talking about what this thread is about. Misguided and poorly designed industrial developme…

Now that’s just hyperbole, and factually wrong, too. The EU has managed amazingly much over its existence. After WW II, it managed to keep peace, establish the worlds largest single market, enabled free trade, allowed citizens to move, live, and even work in any member state; it implemented regulation that makes food, drinks, and products some of the safest to consume and use on earth; it devised standards that are globally adhered to; it funds art, research, and urban development across all member states (as the Brits painfully realised); it distributes wealth in Europe, making the union stronger overall; and that’s just a small sample.

There’s lots of things in dire need for improvement for sure, but downright dismissing the EU as having achieved nothing is just spite and not helpful. That attitude got the Americans where they are now, and I sure don’t want to go there.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#23

Post by perihelions »

arlort wrote: post #9
perihelions wrote: post #4

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

> to review startups' business plans How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted? > That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make t…

- "they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem"

No; I mean they should define the problem they need solved. If they're too unfocused to define that problem as "mass-produced reusable rockets", that's a strong signal they've already lost.

There's a dozen newspace startups pursuing reusability, and it's Europe's loss that none of them are in Europe.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#24

Post by thawawaycold »

prettyeyes83 wrote: post #14
thawawaycold wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol you don't know the half of it. Working with ESA for anything but the most trivial project is beyond frustrating; it's basically 99% about producing swathes of documentation, which in itself is more akin to philosophy and semantic dissertations over obscure standards than actual technical work. ESA is so risk averse that it's even weird for a space company

agreed, but what would you argue are the reasons for this mindset? i imagine the main cause is structural, ie. having to deal with all the member states?

not just the members states but also all the other behemoths stakeholders like Airbus, Thales, OHB and so on, which need to make sure that new missions are as easy to adapt to their preexisting flight heritage as possible

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#25

Post by mauriciolange »

thawawaycold wrote: post #7
perihelions wrote: post #4

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

lol you don't know the half of it. Working with ESA for anything but the most trivial project is beyond frustrating; it's basically 99% about producing swathes of documentation, which in itself is more akin to philosophy and semantic dissertations over obscure standards than actual technical work. ESA is so risk averse that it's even weird for a space company

A good counterexample is the Arctic Weather Satellite project. It was defined as a new space process at ESA, so documentation required was reduced at the minimum, and risk acceptance was increased. Absolutely successful, on time, on budget, contractors happy, end users happy. But it is a small project and still difficult to replicate at large and to spread the mindset to other sections at ESA. Source: me. I work at that project as ground segment engineer.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#26

Post by croes »

rapsey wrote: post #15
arlort wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to review startups' business plans How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted? > That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make t…

The government should be a regulator and set ground rules. It should provide a market and clear requirements. Then leave private business alone to meet those requirements. If they need funding, leave the business to the VC industry.

That doesn’t really work if you try to create competitors to already established companies in a limited market

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#27

Post by notahacker »

arlort wrote: post #9
perihelions wrote: post #4

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

> to review startups' business plans How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted? > That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make t…

> How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted?

This. ESA's grant approval process is, to its credit, usually considerably more focused on technical excellence than handwavy projections and box ticking common in other government grant applications and tenders, and whilst PSS forms may be a PITA, you'd think a company destined to solve the hard physics and unit economics problems of building a viable commercial launch service could figure out how to fill them in when given a EUR160m incentive to do so.

The European Launcher Challenge is based off the NASA COTS programme that originally funded the Falcon 9 (just with less money, because Europe, which is a bigger problem than straw bureaucrats) Don't know why people seem to think SpaceX got that money through NASA's magical genius American foresight anticipating Starlink, as opposed them being impressed with how SpaceX complied with their requests for very detailed milestone based plans (which two companies that failed to make progress also managed...)

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#28

Post by IrishTechie »

rich_sasha wrote: post #16

Meta; US produces well funded startups presumably because the exits are good. Investors don't mind the risk, expecting an outsized return. Exits are good, perhaps, because US stock valuations are just much better. Investors are happy buying at a higher P/E ratio, expecting it to go up in even further, and make a good return. Now, for a long time, there has been talk of US equities being woefully overvalued. Of course…

Two factors stick out to me.

Investing in the stock market is far more common in the US compared to the EU for the average person (something like 60% versus 15% of people in the EU). I imagine that has a huge impact on the amount of money sloshing around to fund companies from the top down.

The EU is bigger than the US in population terms, but when it comes to raising funding for a new startup it’s hard to look far beyond the borders of your own small country for many reasons. If this could be fixed it would make a massive difference in my view.

I’ve been involved in the founding of a few companies in Ireland and raising funding is tough and for all the work the figures are tiny compared to the US. You’ll likely be talking to Irish and UK investors only.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#29

Post by inglor_cz »

rapsey wrote: post #15
arlort wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to review startups' business plans How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted? > That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make t…

The government should be a regulator and set ground rules. It should provide a market and clear requirements. Then leave private business alone to meet those requirements. If they need funding, leave the business to the VC industry.

The EU is mostly stringent on the environment, and single-use rockets are pretty bad for the environment: all the metal and sophisticated parts must be produced, only to be thrown into the ocean.

I would expect reusability to be a requirement based on that factor alone. You ca produce carbon-neutral fuel, but there is a lot of environmental load involved in production of the very rockets.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#30

Post by jeroen79 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #29
rapsey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government should be a regulator and set ground rules. It should provide a market and clear requirements. Then leave private business alone to meet those requirements. If they need funding, leave the business to the VC industry.

The EU is mostly stringent on the environment, and single-use rockets are pretty bad for the environment: all the metal and sophisticated parts must be produced, only to be thrown into the ocean. I would expect reusability to be a requirement based on that factor alone. You ca produce carbon-neutral fuel, but there is a lot of environmental load involved in production of the very rockets.

reusability is mainly done for cost instead of environment, but you need to launch a lot to re-cup the costs, and esa is not a commercial org like spacex.

I do think the ESA rockets use a more eco friendly fuel then others, that is probably more important then some metal on the seabed.

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