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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?

#31

Post by perihelions »

jeroen79 wrote: post #30
inglor_cz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Solid rocket fuel is one of the less eco-friendly things that exists. A fully-stacked Ariane 6 is, by mass, 11% chlorine.

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

#32

Post by basisword »

IrishTechie wrote: post #28
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 b…

>> 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).

Is this accurate? For example, 80% of the UK has a pension and those are invested (partially) in stocks. Unsure how this works across the rest of Europe but 15% seems really low.

>> 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

Completely agree with this. As much as the EU is a single market, in a lot of ways it falls short. Even if you're in some of the larger capitals you still end up looking for funding within your country. What do you think the solution is? Is the problem language? The completely different tax systems in each country? The spread of things (e.g. less concentration in one or two cities the way tech is in the US)?

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

#33

Post by somenameforme »

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…

I think this concept, and this entire article to a large degree, at missing the entire state of the space industry. The competition in space is mostly a facade. This page [1] provides regularly updated overviews on most metrics of space 'marketshare' and SpaceX dominates to an exceptional degree by every single metric. For instance as of last quarter they were responsible for 83% of all mass launched to space, carried out 40 launches while the rest of the world combined did 36, and so on.

So for all intents and purposes SpaceX is not only the US space industry, but largely the world's space industry. And it was started on an ideological basis, not a financial one. Like the saying goes, 'How do you become a millionaire in aerospace? Start out as a billionaire in aerospace.' It's simply not an industry where you can throw money at it and succeed. Blue Origin, which only recently finally managed to send their first craft to orbit, was actually started before SpaceX and funded by Bezos bucks back when Musk was teetering on bankrupt.

It's also not an industry where you can just smart your way through it. Many clever individuals with money, John Carmack being one with perhaps the most name recognition, have tried their hand at aerospace, and failed. For that matter - China has all the wealth, human talent, and such of the largest economy with nearly the largest population. And even they, in terms of launch capabilities trail well behind SpaceX.

So basically the whole concept of the current state of things being a huge success for "commercial space" is, in large part, a facade. Had SpaceX not emerged then "commercial space" in the US would have been a complete failure, and people would be bemoaning such a waste of money to try to privatize things that history had shown were only able to be effectively executed by governments.

[1] - https://brycetech.com/briefing

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

#34

Post by ghaff »

jeeeb wrote: post #21
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.

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.

To compare, meanwhile Astra just $80 million to relaunch (so to speak).

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

#35

Post by graemep »

IrishTechie wrote: post #28
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 b…

The ESA is not an EU agency which complicates that comparison: https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Member_States_Co...

> 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.

I am not surprised, but you would probably find it easier to raise money from investors in the UK for a larger established business: lots of companies from lots of countries list in London, for example. I think other factors are probably more important than the lack of a single market for capital raising on people's direct investments.

> 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)

Are you looking at people investing directly? A lot of people in the UK have pensions that invest in the stock market. About 75% of people of working age, IIRC.

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

#36

Post by rapsey »

jeeeb wrote: post #21
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.

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.

Which is completely the wrong way of doing it. They are the market. So define it and leave it to private industry to fund and develop the capabilities to meet their requirements.

If they say, we are willing to spend X amount of money on Y number of launches. You can rent our launch sites for tests. Here is a list of requirements. They would see incredible results.

But no europe must micromanage and do things in their own bureaucratic way that has always failed.

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

#37

Post by perihelions »

somenameforme wrote: post #33
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…

I think this concept, and this entire article to a large degree, at missing the entire state of the space industry. The competition in space is mostly a facade. This page [1] provides regularly updated overviews on most metrics of space 'marketshare' and SpaceX dominates to an exceptional degree by every single metric. For instance as of last quarter they were responsible for 83% of all mass launched to space, carrie…

There's a large number of very well-capitalized startups in China trying to build reusable rockets, in competition to SpaceX. It's a significant national security priority for them. I'm pretty sure one of them will succeed soon. I don't understand your argument why they must all fail—I'm not clear if you've articulated such an argument, really, beyond "many people have failed, so it's probably impossible".

But SpaceX itself is existence proof that it's possible to do the things SpaceX does. And: the market in China is still wide-open for the taking, since SpaceX itself can't sell there.

Chinese newspace seems to be at an inflection point at this moment. I think there's five different private-sector teams that will attempt their first orbital booster recovery, either in this year or in 2026. That's: Deep Blue (Nebula-2); Landspace (Zhuque-3); Space Pioneer (Tianlong-3); iSpace (Hyperbola-3); Galactic (Pallas-1). Four of those five startups have already launched to orbit—Landscape even beat SpaceX (and Blue Origin) to the first orbital methane/oxygen rocket. (Not that you'd have heard about that on a Western-focused place like HN[0]. China's space startups are a blindspot for us, and, I think we're going to end up blindsided by them very soon, in the same way we were blindsided by Huawei, by DeepSeek, by BYD. We just ignore all the fast-moving developments there right up to the point they're impossible to ignore...)

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=zhuque-2 (0 comments)

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

#38

Post by rich_sasha »

somenameforme wrote: post #33
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…

I think this concept, and this entire article to a large degree, at missing the entire state of the space industry. The competition in space is mostly a facade. This page [1] provides regularly updated overviews on most metrics of space 'marketshare' and SpaceX dominates to an exceptional degree by every single metric. For instance as of last quarter they were responsible for 83% of all mass launched to space, carrie…

This is true for sure. But even if you look outside SpaceX, it's all American firms (sort of). Blue Origin, Rocket Lab (NZ origin but by now American). So maybe they aren't making money or getting much "market traction" but at least are in the race.

Europe has some such startups, Isar is one that comes to mind, but only going by media buzz, seemingly much less. I have zero insight into this industry so I can't tell if it's just my biased reading of biased reporting, or reality.

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

#39

Post by verzali »

perihelions wrote: post #23
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…

- "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.

No, the problem should be "find a way to launch x tons for If mass produced reusable rockets are the best solution then companies will propose that.

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

#40

Post by maxglute »

perihelions wrote: post #37
somenameforme wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this concept, and this entire article to a large degree, at missing the entire state of the space industry. The competition in space is mostly a facade. This page [1] provides regularly updated overviews on most metrics of space 'marketshare' and SpaceX dominates to an exceptional degree by every single metric. For instance as of last quarter they were responsible for 83% of all mass launched to space, carrie…

There's a large number of very well-capitalized startups in China trying to build reusable rockets, in competition to SpaceX. It's a significant national security priority for them. I'm pretty sure one of them will succeed soon. I don't understand your argument why they must all fail—I'm not clear if you've articulated such an argument, really, beyond "many people have failed, so it's probably impossible". But SpaceX…

Basically. Last year spaceX had fleet of 18 F9s doing more than 50% of global launches, 80% including starlink.

SpaceX stans wank over 50% and 80%, but ignore that 18 is rookie numbers.

7/145 US space launches in 2024 was Non SpaceX.

That means US in aggregate build 25 rockets.

Versus PRC 68 (wanted 100 which was kind of reach).

Next 5-10 year projection need to account for # launch vehicles once PRC figures out reusable. Bearing in mind that PRC already producing ~2.5x launch vehicles, just not reusable.

To add, PRC didn't take reusable seriously until UKR war, and now they likely have multiple viable candidates due end of year. "Seriously" as in they proposed years prior to squat megaconstellation orbital rights but development wasn't urgent. Frankly no reason PRC won't have 50-100 reusables fleet _IF_ demand justifies it. And then like with all PRC catchup, they'll put more than SpaceX lifetime aggregate payload in a few years, and then it won't even be close.

The fundemental reality is, despite having ~10 year headstart, SpaceX is still an American company operating at American scale. US space launch lead is not particularly durable / sustainable.

If future of space is anything like EV, there's potential for several PRC rivals with fleets larger than SpaceX if there's demand for it. TBH only short/medium term demand is militarization of space (including isr megaconstellations). I expected PRC to only modestly eclipse SpaceX by factor of 2 in medium term. But with US murmuring about Brilliant Swarm, probably more and quicker, because technically it going to be faster for PRC to build 1000s of rival space interceptors than proliferate 1000s of nukes for parity (enrichment limitations > launch tempo).

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