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

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

#251

Post by boricj »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #193
boricj wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems just a ton of money and R&D down the drain developing something already obsolete for some tiny and very theoretical advantage. It seems more sensible to lose a tiny bit of independence for a small window of time and instead use the money to develop an actual state of the art rocket.

De Gaulle would be rolling in his grave hearing this. The point is not about economic efficiency. The point is that we're not one embargo on foreign components or systems away from crippling our capabilities and surrendering our ability to act independently.

The Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier almost got immobilized back in the early 2000s due to withholding of spare parts from the USA because they were pissed we called bullshit on their Iraq WMD claims. The USA routinely uses ITAR as a pressuring tactic to stop European weapon sales to foreign countries, which is why we're actively scrubbing every last ITAR component from all of our weapon systems.

Just because we're allies doesn't mean that the other party has or will have our best interests at heart. The Americans have proven to be quite temperamental and under-handed when our strategic objectives aren't aligned with theirs.

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

#252

Post by nordsieck »

unethical_ban wrote: post #228
nordsieck wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Two operational, and a bunch of dreams.

Lol.

Starship has successfully launched more than Ariane 6. The only reason they aren't launching payloads right now is because they want to nail down reuse first.

There's less info on New Glenn, but a lot more footage has come out since David Limp took over. And the DoD thinks Blue Origin has a good enough shot at launching this year that they added them to NSSLv3.

> 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.

Sure.

But that would have also been true if they'd just kept Ariane 5.

A lot of people are dumping on Ariane 6 because ArianeGroup spent a bunch of money and time to make a rocket that's not that much better than the previous one. When they could have made an actually competitive rocket instead.

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

#253

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #166
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> Would European companies use this European independent launch capability if it was costly and obsolete?

If USA will go hermit mode like at the end of 19th century, then they will have no other choice. And we certainly have signs of US wanting to go into isolation.

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

#254

Post by imtringued »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32
pmontra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will still be building that knowledge inside Europe. Rocketry in general is deemed to be strategic so it's OK for any country to invest money in that, keep scientists and engineers on the subject, keep the industries alive, etc. It's not only about access to space, it's also about defense.

> will still be building that knowledge inside Europe Ariane 6 cannibalises Europe’s chance at being more than an also-ran in space: “An Arianespace manager pushing his company as the only solution to Europe’s launch challenges isn’t that noteworthy. However, the fact [Arianespace’s CEO] urges the need for a ‘reusable heavy launcher’ is notable, considering his previous noncommittal remarks about rocket reusability.…

You're under the misconception that it makes sense for Europe to have a launch vehicle at all. The launches happen in French Guiana. The only reason why you would build it on the European mainland is as a jobs program for Europeans.

No commercial entity would come up with the idea of building a launch vehicle in Europe. Making a rocket reusable means that it would not leave French Guiana far behind. There would be less need for rockets from the European mainland.

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

#255

Post by actionfromafar »

protomolecule wrote: post #223
boricj wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They did not participate?

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

#256

Post by inglor_cz »

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…

In that case, tough luck for us.

We cannot build an European equivalent of Starlink with expendable rockets. It would be just too expensive to build hundreds and hundreds of one-time rockets and immediately destroy them.

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

#257

Post by Sakos »

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.

> The launch cost is almost 2x the cost of Falcon 9.

I can't be the only one who thinks this is still a huge win. What did launch costs look like 10-30 years ago?

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

#258

Post by jccooper »

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…

From about 1990 to about 2016 Arianespace was the leader in commercial (meaning mostly GEO) launch, and acted like it. (Actually, they still do, just it's less believable now.)

In retrospect, I don't think they ever really had the eye of the tiger; mostly they managed to be less terrible than the competition. The US competitors got far too fat at the government teat and didn't even try, and the Russians couldn't keep Proton from 'sploding.

They'd probably still be king of the (small and expensive) hill without SpaceX. But they'd be in hot soup today, if some sort of LEO constellation market had come around without Falcon, 'cause they wouldn't even have started on Ariane 6 and Ariane 5 isn't well suited for that, and "Europeanized" Soyuz, which they'd use for that, would be unavailable due to Russian imperialism.

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

#259

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #189
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Arianne 6 is not about competition, but about strategic independence at the first place That’s what the Starliner folks said. The fault in their argument was ignoring scale effects. Ariane 6 buys Europe zero practical launch independence, other than maintaining the workforce (and accompanying skill set). If SpaceX blocks Europe, it’s game over for any constellation operator and, in all likelihood, the European comm…

It is completely irrelevant how much Falcon 9 cost if political leadership of USA is unreliable and unstable. Flacon 9 could be flying for free, but if you could lose access to it any time, it is like it does not exist.

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

#260

Post by imtringued »

chgs wrote: post #28
haspok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know that. Starship does not exist.

a thing which can get into orbit and deploy objects exists

I don't know what you mean by deploy objects, but even according to Musk himself, the current Starship version will not carry any payloads any time soon.
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