Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by jltsiren » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #184

ncruces wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the entire world should rather be dependent on SpaceX, and be done with it? Arianespace had the lead and lost it, because it kept the old way of doing things. Or are you arguing Ariane 5 was technically behind and wasn't competitive in the '00s? Ariane 6 is not that far behind the other "old space" companies, which the US is struggling to keep around as alternatives to SpaceX. It's not like Boeing and ULA are doin…

> the entire world should rather be dependent on SpaceX, and be done with it? No, compete. There is a menagerie of European space start-ups starved of oxygen by ArianeSpace. Arianespace is Europe’s ULA. Europe with Ariane 6 is about as dependent on SpaceX as Europe without. The difference is whether it will continue to be dependent on SpaceX. Every euro that goes to Arianespace cements SpaceX’s global dominance. > Ar…

The space start-ups are starving, because nobody sees any business opportunities there, and because governments don't care about rockets beyond baseline national security needs. If somebody actually wanted a reusable rocket, the real issue would be engineering, not funding. Even a small country like Finland could run two programs the scale of Ariane 6 with the money it's currently using to support Ukraine.

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

#222

Post by 627467 » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:08 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #194

627467 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at this stage I question the resolve of any European leader in actually wanting to achieve anything of note in a consequential manner. it's cheaper but not cost-free to sustain a narrative of "independence" and "alternative to incumbent" when the actual result is just wasting tax payers money for vanity projects with no clear path to actually build a sustainable alternative to the incumbent. ESA has no resources to d…

> it's cheaper but not cost-free to sustain a narrative of "independence" and "alternative to incumbent" The narrative is independent of the price. SpaceX has showed that they may refuse service in various situations, such as drone access to Starlink Internet in a battle during Ukraine war. Thus a government being dependent on them for their space fleet, gambles the possibility of being suddenly unable to guarantee c…

my argument is, none of the observable actions from European leadership are effective towards independence and I would argue those actions are detrimental - ie. wasting money in a decaying, incapable and parasitic organizations

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

#223

Post by protomolecule » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

boricj wrote: post #125

contrarian1234 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The French mantra is strategic autonomy. We are allies with the USA, we are not vassals of the USA and we do not want to depend on anybody else to defend our own interests or our own agenda. This is why the French army has independent expeditionary and nuclear deterrent capabilities and why nearly all of our military kit is designed and produced either locally or in partnership with nearby European countries. It's no…

>we are not vassals of the USA

Aren't you? In 2003 Russia, Germany and France were strongly against illegal American invasion of Iraq. The US invaded anyway, ruining the country. What have France and Germany done about that?

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

#224

Post by leoedin » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #121

Xixi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized, with ArianeGroup getting €340M per year to operate it [1]. With an expected 10 launches per year, that's about €34M/launch. But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves... [1] https://europeanspacef…

> But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves... I'm very surprised the EU and the USA and SpaceX didn't work out a deal to buy a certain number of F9's to be launched and operated from the EU. The EU would pay a (vey high) price to bu…

European space programs are motivated by jobs, retaining domestic skills and actual usefulness in that order. Funding is allocated to companies based primarily on the country they’re in - funding must be split across all funding countries.

ESA is never going to just buy a rocket, because that would completely defeat the point of ESA.

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

#225

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:13 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #201

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…

You don't actually believe that a rocket that is thrown away every launch could possibly be cost competitive with one that can be reused 20 times, do you?

A rocket that's thrown away was cheaper per flight than the shuttles, which were only partly discarded. It all depends on how much does it cost to build vs refurbish. Falcon 9 was designed to be easily refurbished and Ariane 6 was designed to be cheap to build. Also, launch campaign costs are not neglectable - moving the parts around, fueling, testing, and so on, are expensive.

Their next-gen ones should be reusable, and share a lot of design with the Falcon 9 family. Methalox might next, as it's very promising, but the RP1 supply chain is well established.

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

#226

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:15 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120

lm28469 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is amazing: Europe does something > Aha it's bad why did they even try Europe doesn't do anything > Aha Europe always late, never innovate, Europe bad

You’ll find no complaints out of me on ESA’s scientific missions. ArianeSpace is simply a shitshow. And this isn’t a European problem—I’ll call out ULA and Boeing at keeping them company.

It's bit like the "too big to fail" that happens to banks, but "too strategic to fail", which is common in aerospace with dual civilian/military applications.

Companies in that space can have islands of inconceivable incompetence that remain surprisingly stable.

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

#227

Post by leoedin » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:18 PM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #105

ricdl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ariane is apparently so obsolete that they are behind rockets that haven't even launched yet!

Ariane 6 isn't significantly ahead of New Glenn in terms of time. Probably a few months difference for date of first launch. Just as Vulcan launched a few months ahead of Ariane 6.

New Glenn is a ground up unproven design. Ariane 6 is an incremental improvement from a well proven and highly reliable rocket. Just because they’re both making their first flights doesn’t mean they’re comparable as commercial offerings.

The cost to build a satellite is high enough that most customers don’t want it to explode. Until New Glenn has a solid track record they’re not really comparable.

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

#228

Post by unethical_ban » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:19 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #50

kuschku wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ariane is one generation behind SpaceX, but that still puts them on second place. All while being independent from the whims of one single individual, ensuring independent launch capabilities for national security reasons.

> Ariane is one generation behind SpaceX, but that still puts them on second place. The first doesn't imply the second. Ariane 6 is behind: * ULA's Vulcan * SpaceX's F9/FH * SpaceX's Starship (who knows when it'll start launching payloads) * Blue Origin's New Glenn (supposed to be launched in September) in terms of raw performance as well as $/kg. There are also a number of other rockets like RocketLab's Neutron and…

Two operational, and a bunch of dreams.

Right now, Europe has a functioning rocket program under their own control.

I think it's understandable for an engineering community to talk about the tech, but people seem to be forgetting the geopolitics.

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

#229

Post by ckozlowski » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:19 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #194

627467 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at this stage I question the resolve of any European leader in actually wanting to achieve anything of note in a consequential manner. it's cheaper but not cost-free to sustain a narrative of "independence" and "alternative to incumbent" when the actual result is just wasting tax payers money for vanity projects with no clear path to actually build a sustainable alternative to the incumbent. ESA has no resources to d…

> it's cheaper but not cost-free to sustain a narrative of "independence" and "alternative to incumbent" The narrative is independent of the price. SpaceX has showed that they may refuse service in various situations, such as drone access to Starlink Internet in a battle during Ukraine war. Thus a government being dependent on them for their space fleet, gambles the possibility of being suddenly unable to guarantee c…

This was a special case. Much of Ukraine's connectivity came via donations from SpaceX, and via their commercial business. They gave free connectivity to Ukraine for a direct military purpose. There's legitimate reasons for why SpaceX would not want to be blurring the lines between the two. Programs such as the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program exist for this reason, providing a legal and contractual framework for such arrangements that route business through the state, with the legal and diplomatic oversight that comes with such.

SpaceX rushed to provide terminals to Ukraine for free when they asked for them, and that was laudable. But SpaceX had no mature defense sales program set up, or it was bypassed. I could argue that this was another instance where Elon's impulsiveness created issues that SpaceX would have to deal with down the line, such as ongoing payments and the lack of a shield for their commercial business.

Properly set up, a defense sale will include such things like a guaranteed minimum buy, service level agreements, and the legal and diplomatic framework to provide a level of shielding to the contracting company from third-party complaints to alleviate the risk of an arbitrary service shutdown.

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

#230

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 1:21 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #221

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entire world should rather be dependent on SpaceX, and be done with it? No, compete. There is a menagerie of European space start-ups starved of oxygen by ArianeSpace. Arianespace is Europe’s ULA. Europe with Ariane 6 is about as dependent on SpaceX as Europe without. The difference is whether it will continue to be dependent on SpaceX. Every euro that goes to Arianespace cements SpaceX’s global dominance. > Ar…

The space start-ups are starving, because nobody sees any business opportunities there, and because governments don't care about rockets beyond baseline national security needs. If somebody actually wanted a reusable rocket, the real issue would be engineering, not funding. Even a small country like Finland could run two programs the scale of Ariane 6 with the money it's currently using to support Ukraine.

> space start-ups are starving, because nobody sees any business opportunities there

I’ve raised money for and invested in space start-ups. There is a lot of opportunity. There are even more vapid PowerPoint decks.

> If somebody actually wanted a reusable rocket, the real issue would be engineering, not funding

It’s absolutely a problem of funding. You need to be able to tell a group of highly-demanded engineers with other life options that they will have access to the materials and resources repeated destructive validation of exorbitantly-expensive kit requires.

That doesn’t mean any numpty with a few billion can do it. But, like, Europe could. (It hasn’t because that would threaten Ariane 6.)

> Even a small country like Finland could run two programs the scale of Ariane 6 with the money it's currently using to support Ukraine

But they don’t.