Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

esa.int

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 403 posts

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

#341

Post by dotnet00 »

mort96 wrote: post #338
dotnet00 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We're still here because you seem to continue to misunderstand (assuming you're posting in good faith). "There's nothing you can say to convince me because you likely have nothing to say that is backed up by facts" is asking for something concrete that is a reason governments would view certain companies as too untrustworthy to work with. I specifically said that it doesn't matter if you like him, that's different from being so untrustworthy that their services shouldn't be used despite being the best option.

The only thing you've pointed to is an incident that obviously does not rise to the level of being a reason for a government to not work with a Musk-owned company. He responded to a guy who told him to shove his submarine up his ass by calling him a pedo, it was admittedly an incredibly dumb way to handle it, but obviously not a reason for a government to not work with him. The rest of what you've said is the usual thing where people make comments vaguely about an issue without ever saying anything specific so you can't be countered. Every thing I mentioned is backed up by articles:

The Starlink TOS mentions that it cannot be used in weaponry (ie drone control) because that brings it under ITAR export restrictions, which requires approval by the US government (and afaik the government has not authorized this): https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1041-35650-61

The report of the outages mentions itself that "The batch of terminals were also rotated out as concerns grew that service could be turned off, in order to minimize the impact, the source said." :https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/politics/spacex-ukraine-elon-...

The Crimea service activation correction: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/12/elon-musk-biog...

The DoD commenting on the difficulty of ensuring Russia can't use Starlink: https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/05/defense-departmen...

That said, I'll stop here, I think I've said enough that other open minded people will be able to form a less biased opinion even if you refuse to engage in good faith.

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

#342

Post by T-A »

snowpid wrote: post #213
T-A wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't know how seriously to take it, but this one really stands out from the crowd: https://www.sidereus.space/ https://europeanspaceflight.com/sidereus-space-dynamics-comp...

Now I found this one as well from Poland https://europeanspaceflight.com/ilr-33-amber-2k-makes-histor...

That's just a sounding rocket though, not all that different from the 1940s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobee

Sidereus' EOS is a miniature, reusable orbital launcher. Load it in a tuck, drive to a field outside town, launch it with your cubesat, then go pick it up at the local airport as it glides back down from space on its parafoil.

https://www.sidereus.space/eos/

SciFi stuff if it works.

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

#343

Post by pfdietz »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #146
christkv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main genius of SpaceX is the mass production. Hopefully they can replicate that in the future.

Well question is why would EU want mass production of rockets and for what purpose?

I guess the pride that requires them to have their own launcher has its limits.

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

#344

Post by pfdietz »

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…

> Ariane 6 uses cryogenic fuel.

Falcon 9's fuel is cooled slightly, if not cryogenic (RP-1 becomes denser when cold), and of course Starship uses cryogenic methane. And they both use liquid oxygen, although that's an oxidizer, not a fuel.

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

#345

Post by pfdietz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138
isodev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to start somewhere, right? We can't "just build" a NX-class starship without sciencing it out and R&D.

> needs to start somewhere, right? Not here. If you’re bootstrapping a modern navy you don’t start by building galleons. Ariane 6 is the prettiest space galleon there ever was. That doesn’t translate into meaningful R&D for a reusable booster. (For example, cryogenic fuels aren’t great for reuse. So dump the engine. Their production cycles are artisan versus assembly line. Et cetera .) This isn’t a story of European…

> cryogenic fuels aren’t great for reuse.

Which is why Starship doesn't... wait a second!

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

#346

Post by pfdietz »

ur-whale wrote: post #20
amelius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is that impressive anymore. We've been building rockets for decades. Making them return to Earth is peanuts compared to building a self driving car. You can even make a simulation that is 99% accurate without much effort. Also, rocket science is just Newtonian physics. Of course, building a rocket requires a shit-ton of resources, so if anything is impressive then it's the management of those resourc…

> 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…

There was no way to solve hypersonic retropropulsion without doing it.

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

#347

Post by chgs »

simiones wrote: post #80
chgs wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a thing which can get into orbit and deploy objects exists

A thing which can nearly get into orbit. It never quite reached it (probably intentionally). But more importantly, the recent Starship tests ran with no payload whatsoever, and they definitely didn't deploy anything into orbit.

It reached orbital velocity, just in a suborbital direction. Had they pointed it a different way it would have been in orbit.

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

#348

Post by chgs »

imtringued wrote: post #260
chgs wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s already deployed objects - tiles, paint etc.

The doors opened on IFT3. If it was life or death starship could put something into orbit right now. Obviously it’s not the best solution for that currently (compared to say an FH) - they want to get the reuse working, but that doesn’t negate the fact that starship has been to orbital height and speed (albeit on a suborbital trajectory)

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

#349

Post by protomolecule »

jcranmer wrote: post #268
protomolecule wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If your dream is to restore Russia to its imperial greatness, there's an awful lot of EU countries that need to be gobbled up along the way, so France is quite likely to be willing to help a Russian-Estonia war even without NATO. NATO is only a threat to Russia insofar as it poses an obstacle to Russia gobbling up its neighbors.

If.

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

#350

Post by protomolecule »

nick__m wrote: post #295
protomolecule wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

NATO is purely defensive, it won't invade Russia. It only threatens Putin's empire rebuilding dreams. Without NATO he is free to rebuild and expand Russia's empire.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN