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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

#331
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> can deliver it? This article is specifically about the maiden flight of Ariane 6, which was successful. It's already delivered. It's not commercially viable. That means it has no room to organically drive economies of scale and thus learning curves, which has downstream effects on evertyhing from recruiting to supplier negotiations. Europe has a launch vehicile. It does not have a platform. Virtually everything in…

There are no economies of scale required. This is not a commercial venture, and it's not required to be commercially viable. This is a strategic and political program, and as a jobs program it is wonderfully executed - the more to throw away, the more jobs will be required for the next iteration.

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

#332
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly has Musk actually done that goes so far beyond the pale of typical corporate shenanigans that it would register as not being trustworthy to governments? At most he has had overly optimistic timelines, overly optimistic social media statements about future capabilities, a bunch of business ideas that didn't pan out and some QA issues in a car manufacturer. This is pretty par for the course for every busin…

I wouldn't downplay the Starlink Ukraine thing the way you're doing. But if you're still a Musk apologist after all these years, there's nothing I can say to convince you. For many of us, the whole diver pedophilia accusation was enough, and that pales in comparison to everything that came after.

Why wouldn't I downplay the Starlink Ukraine thing, when everything about it from the media has been at best misleading?

The usage of Starlink to control drones wasn't allowed because that is not a civilian-style use case and thus would require the US government to provide authorization (remember that Starlink was initially provided directly by SpaceX without going through typical US government aid processes). The reports about outages buried the lede that the terminals with the outage were ones provided and paid for by third parties that had decided to stop paying for them, and the reports themselves mentioned that Ukraine had swapped them out. The usage of Starlink in Crimea had always been disallowed to prevent Russian usage, and to be in compliance with US policy at the time. Ukraine had made the unreasonable request of having it enabled with a day's notice, which was obviously too fast for a decision to be made, it was enabled a few months later when things had been properly worked out with both governments (this was still well before the story ever became public). As for Russia using captured Starlink terminals, the DoD has also come out in support of SpaceX's efforts to mitigate it, making it clear that it isn't an easy problem to solve, as they need to somehow distinguish between third party terminals in use by Ukraine, from terminals captured or black-market imported by Russia being operated in Ukraine.

There's nothing you can say to convince me because you likely have nothing to say that is backed up by facts. I'm not saying you have to like him, I'm saying that there's nothing he or his companies have done that makes them any less trustworthy or any more untrustworthy, compared to any other company the government works with. You'd have to be able to point to something worse than even what Boeing has done, considering that the US govt continues to consider Boeing to be an important defense partner.

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

#333
This reminds me of reading about the launch of the HMS Dreadnought in 1906. The Dreadnought was a revolutionary battleship: a turbine engine made it faster than any other battleship, and it had all 12-inch guns (instead of a wasteful mix of small and large guns).

It was so clearly superior to all other battleships that the name "dreadnought" become a generic name for a modern battleship.

But here's the thing: navies around the world resisted building their own dreadnoughts. If you've spent your military treasure on pre-dreadnought battleships, how do you explain to citizens that they're all obsolete and you need to start from scratch?

And so it is with reusable rockets. In 2018, Alain Charmeau, an ArianeSpace exec, said that re-usable rockets make no sense because, "Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year!" And that would be bad because what do you do with the employees? [1]

This is classic sunk-cost fallacy.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-f...

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

#334
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't downplay the Starlink Ukraine thing the way you're doing. But if you're still a Musk apologist after all these years, there's nothing I can say to convince you. For many of us, the whole diver pedophilia accusation was enough, and that pales in comparison to everything that came after.

Why wouldn't I downplay the Starlink Ukraine thing, when everything about it from the media has been at best misleading? The usage of Starlink to control drones wasn't allowed because that is not a civilian-style use case and thus would require the US government to provide authorization (remember that Starlink was initially provided directly by SpaceX without going through typical US government aid processes). The re…

[flagged]

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

#335

This reminds me of reading about the launch of the HMS Dreadnought in 1906. The Dreadnought was a revolutionary battleship: a turbine engine made it faster than any other battleship, and it had all 12-inch guns (instead of a wasteful mix of small and large guns). It was so clearly superior to all other battleships that the name "dreadnought" become a generic name for a modern battleship. But here's the thing: navies…

At the risk of beating a dead horse: In 2018, Starship was not even fully designed (later that year they switched to stainless steel instead of carbon-composite).

Yet Starship managed to fly into orbit and re-enter successfully before Ariane 6 flew even once.

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

#336
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't I downplay the Starlink Ukraine thing, when everything about it from the media has been at best misleading? The usage of Starlink to control drones wasn't allowed because that is not a civilian-style use case and thus would require the US government to provide authorization (remember that Starlink was initially provided directly by SpaceX without going through typical US government aid processes). The re…

[flagged]

Yeah I guess acknowledging well documented reality and keeping things in perspective makes me a Musk-apologist and cultist. Which echo chambers and lies would you recommend I consume to correct this?

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

#337

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…

Having followed the launch industry for 30 years, I can safely tell you that this is the exact line that every competitor (save RocketLabs and the startups fueled by the SpaceX diaspora of engineers) says whenever they are trying to justify their legacy wasteful rockets. Even Rocketlab's CEO had to "eat his hat" when he finally realized that the cost difference was real, that reusability was here to stay, and they ha…

>So why isn't SpaceX cheaper?

Another way to look at the price is from supply/demand angle. Even if real cost of falcon 9 launch is much lower than its price, SpaceX can not just lower the price, otherwise they will need to handle even greater demand.

Even with current price their launch cadence grows exponentially year by year. With lower prices they would need to grow even faster.

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

#338
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah I guess acknowledging well documented reality and keeping things in perspective makes me a Musk-apologist and cultist. Which echo chambers and lies would you recommend I consume to correct this?

I don't know what well documented reality you're talking about, you've made a bunch of unsourced claims wrt the Starlink thing which may or may not be correct, and you've chosen to close your eyes and ignore everything else you know people tend to bring up (even stuff I specifically brought up). There's nothing more for us to discuss. You even admitted yourself that there's nothing anyone could say to make you change your mind, so why are we still here?

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been an unreliable partner since Bush Jr. became the president. Every 4 years, there is a real risk that things will go wrong.

It's more complicated than that. Even before W Bush, the United States didn't hesitate to twist the arm of its partners in economic matters. France and the USA may be allies, but economic relations have been complicated for over 40 years. The USA has no hesitation in interfering with or sabotaging the French economy (aukus subs, alstom, airbus defense, galileo), claiming that its law is extraterritorial in order to c…

That's what happens when your group of nations freeloads on a superpower for their defense.

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

#340
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can deliver it? This article is specifically about the maiden flight of Ariane 6, which was successful. It's already delivered. It's not commercially viable. That means it has no room to organically drive economies of scale and thus learning curves, which has downstream effects on evertyhing from recruiting to supplier negotiations. Europe has a launch vehicile. It does not have a platform. Virtually everything in…

There are no economies of scale required. This is not a commercial venture, and it's not required to be commercially viable. This is a strategic and political program, and as a jobs program it is wonderfully executed - the more to throw away, the more jobs will be required for the next iteration.

> is a strategic and political program, and as a jobs program

Jobs, yes, strategic, no. Being able to put ten birds up in a year means an adversary can blind your space capabilities, if we’re taking the argument to absurd ends.

We Americans would be defensive about ULA, probably, if it weren’t for SpaceX. The problem is the EU has no plan B. If SpaceX cuts them off, Ariana or not, they’re crippled as a spacefaring enterprise.

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