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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

#311

Post by pfdietz »

ambicapter wrote: post #264
Rinzler89 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized All major aerospace companies and projects are heavily subsidized in every country otherwise they would never survive or even be born. Like how much profit did NASA make over its lifetime?

Right? At a certain point, governments are the only entities that can afford to send things to space. "Highly-subsidized" here just means "government is 99% of company's market base".

That certain point is in the past. Today, all sorts of private entities send things into space. As launch gets cheaper, private activities in space will dominate, if they don't already.

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

#312

Post by dotnet00 »

amelius wrote: post #233
flohofwoe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, rocket science is just Newtonian physics. Spoken like a true software engineer ;)

Software engineers have a lack of self-esteem when comparing to other STEM disciplines. The reason we see more fuck-ups in software than in other fields is not because software engineers are stupid, but because software is inherently difficult.

Software engineers are not stupid, but in other STEM disciplines they have a reputation of making themselves look stupid because of beliefs like "it's just newtonian physics".

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

#313

Post by ddalex »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #97
ddalex wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happens when your peer denies your launches on their platform Strongly agree—Europe needs an indigenous launch option. Ariane 6 is not it, and I’m sceptical ArianeSpace can ever deliver it.

What do you mean, can deliver it? This article is specifically about the maiden flight of Ariane 6, which was successful. It's already delivered.

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

#314

Post by dotnet00 »

amelius wrote: post #84
ur-whale wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, rocket science is just Newtonian physics. Disagree. The newtonian physics part of flying a rocket is indeed the boring part of rocket science in these days of Ghz computing. But all the engineering (an altogether different - if related - discipline) required is anything but simple. And engineering and all of its sub-disciplines (materials science, propellant research, iterative refinement, operational researc…

I view the things you mention as incremental improvements on stuff that basically worked since the 60s.

They're only incremental improvements in the sense that developing LLMs is an incremental improvement on stuff that basically worked in the 60s.

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

#315

Post by dotnet00 »

mrtksn wrote: post #10

Unfortunately the mission didn't perform smoothly as intended at the end, there was an issue with the auxiliary power unit and it wasn't able to de-orbit once deployed the cubesats: https://x.com/AndrewParsonson/status/1810794808828641546

*auxiliary propulsion unit :)

It isn't the same thing as the APU in a plane (where I think most people are getting the 'auxiliary power unit'). The APU here is a secondary thruster which ensures proper pressure (and likely ullage) for the main engine to start.

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

#316

Post by ddalex »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118
ddalex wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I would be begging for new development money from the parent org after just launching a new product, I would also say that the new product is obsolete and we need to work on a replacement ASAP... especially in a pork-barrel org

> I would also say that the new product is obsolete and we need to work on a replacement ASAP Sure. See the rest of the article. Everyone else has been saying the same for a decade. Note that the reusable heavy launcher he’s pitching is still aiming to deliver in a decade what SpaceX can do today. It’s not a strategic option, it’s a jobs programme.

It is a strategic option because should SpaceX suddenly say no to launches, you have a backup. An expensive backup, but it's there.

If ESA has 100 payloads, it can just book 90 of them on SpaceX and the mandated 10 of ArianeSpace (to keep the political pork happy), and lose only 10% efficiency (considering Ariane flight is twice as expensive as SpaceX).

The problem is that ESA has no scalable payload economy, nobody has a good reason yet to launch that much mass. SpaceX is its own customer with Starlink for scalable launches, but ESA or NASA will not deliver 100 sattelites per year.

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

#317

Post by mort96 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #286
mort96 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on a company which is headed by a famously unreliable narcissist seems like a bad choice though, I wouldn't really count those SpaceX options as proper alternatives EDIT: I would like downvotes to explain their reasoning.

It's a tired ad hominem, all the evidence shows that SpaceX is by far the most reliable operator in the space industry right now.

When the question is "should we trust this guy?", judging the character of the guy based on past behavior and statements is not a fallacy.

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

#318

Post by dotnet00 »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #243

Too bad they are not equipped to rescue the 2 astro nauts Boeing has been left stranded on the ISS for over a month. There they are munching up unbudgeted food and oxygen. Which will not be a problem, since ISS should have a reserve supply for 3 months, but it should impact the the next supply run. Will Boeing bring them back? I would think NASA has reached out to SpaceX, and possibly the Russians (? in today politic…

If they were actually stranded, the Crew Dragon being prepared for a private flight in August would probably be in the process of being prepared for heading to the ISS instead.

They are not stranded. They are staying because this Starliner is rated for 45 days at the station and since the service module (the location of the helium leak) is disposed of before reentry. Better to delay and attempt to gather as much information about the leak as possible while they can still run tests than have to try to figure out what might've been wrong after the fact.

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

#319

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

inglor_cz wrote: post #261
Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

In practice, those who seek launches on commercial markets don't mind all those America-related complications much. The US isn't really interested in the secrets of some Malaysian or Brazilian TV satellite.

> The US isn't really interested in the secrets of some Malaysian or Brazilian TV satellite.

Once again, compliance with US regulations, including export control, dual-use goods and tax regulations, can be weaponized, and has been in the past.

Maybe the TV satellite manufacturer has also supplied a weather satellite to Brazil that contains technologies covered by export control, bingo. Your satellite and your assets in the USA are frozen until the manufacturer provide all the information needed to decide whether or not it was a spy satellite.

The godamn Mars rover is covered by 14 export control technologies. https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/pdfs/1008-satell...

It's a minefield and it was designed to be one. I know of several non-defense companies whose first question on the phone is "are you a US person as defined by FATCA and FISA ?".

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

#320

Post by Gud »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #269

The bearishness, pessimism, and criticism in this thread—especially by just a handful of prolific commenters—is off-the-charts. We have people comparing strategic assets and state-owned enterprises to private commercial enterprises. Well done.

Sorry, but the pessimism, criticism and bearishness is warranted.

By now, making a new rocket today that is non-reusable is like inventing the penny farthing and trying to compete in modern day tour the France.

Europe deserves to be led by bold industrialists, not ran by frightened bureaucrats.

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