Arianespace CEO: Europe won't have reusable rockets for another decade
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Ariane Group is going to be in for a rough time every year beyond ~2026 that they delay. By then most of Starship (SpaceX), New Glenn (Blue Origin), Terran R (Relativity), and Neutron (Rocket Lab) should be operational - all of which will at least reuse the 1st stage.
Of course, they'll be able to fall back on institutional payloads to maintain a minimum level of funding. But that's not a great place for the program to be in terms of funding. Or politics.
This whole situation is really tragic. The design of Ariane 6 was finalized in 2016 - after SpaceX had successfully landed a Falcon 9 for the first time. While I realize that that would have been quite late in the design process for the rocket, it really shows the weakness of Ariane Group when it comes to assessing the competitive landscape and making difficult decisions.
To be fair, it is hard on the king to wear the crown for too long. Europe and Russia had a long run; we'll see how well SpaceX carries the burden.
My understanding is that Ariane 6 was explicitly designed to reduce production costs compared to Ariane 5, in large part due to competitive pressure from SpaceX.
> With the new Ariane 6 slated to enter service in 2020, ArianeGroup promises to cut per-kilogram launch cost by 40 to 50 percent compared to Ariane 5.
https://spacenews.com/arianegroup-cfo-pierre-godart-on-arian... (2017)
I guess, we'll see if they achieve that goal. Although rocket pricing is notoriously opaque.
Much like the Toyota Camry which has been the best selling sedan in the US every single year since 2000.[1] It gets a slight incremental change each year, but no ground-breaking changes or utterly re-thinking what a car is.
Guess what sedan is now out-selling all other sedans? [2]
(Hint: not the one that has been getting incremental updates since well before 2000)
[1] https://alansfactoryoutlet.com/the-best-selling-car-model-ev...
[2] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
Once we stack all the non-Tesla sedans together, it paints a much different picture probably.
And that’s not mentioning that companies get big subsidies for electrification, and Tesla purchases themselves get credits on top of that (although I am unfamiliar if they stack).
I think Teslas are pretty great and Tesla as a company likely pushed electrification ahead by a decade or so, but people seriously need to stop drinking the kool-aid.
Have they changed the article? It's the Toyota Camry. The better selling vehicles are trucks and SUV/CUVs.
According to your article that's exactly what it is.
Did you mean to link something else?
The Ariane 6 is basically an evolved version of what was the Ariane 5 ME. Many of the things that are now Ariane 6 were developed for Ariane 5 upgrades.
The new upper and lower stage engines are both just upgraded Ariane 5 engines.
However they realized they could never compete with the Ariane 5 core against Falcon 9 (in 2014) they changed some political design processes and made the rockets more flexible.
The most relevant difference between Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 is that Ariane 5 always had to huge solid boosters, while the Ariane 6 has 2 or 4 depending on the mission.
That makes is possible for the Ariane 6 with 2 boosters to be in the competition for LEO missions. Something Ariane 5 wouldn't have been able to do.
But you are right, the 5 billion $ it cost to develop Ariane 6 will required it to fly for decades to make it worth doing compared to Ariane 5 ME.
Except that they used to. They certainly beat the pants off of ULA (nee Boeing/Lockheed Martin) when it came to competitive GEO/GTO launches.
> But does it really matter? If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
It's a lot nicer to have a European rocket program that happens to make lots of money on the commercial market so that the member states basically don't have to fund it.
The current situation, where ArianeSpace doesn't win that many contracts, so it has to be heavily subsidized by member states is much more difficult. When it comes to politics, there are always more hungry mouths than there is available bread.
If everybody is a fool, and you are the best of them you can be successful. But once the race really starts and its not just US govenrment funded monopoly against European government funded monopoly, its gone be difficult.
> The current situation
Ariane 5 had some commercial success but rocket development was always funded by member states.
Maybe then those organizations should admit that rather then lie about it. ArianeGroup always justified Ariane 6 early on by claiming with it they would be competitve with SpaceX.
Of course they thought about competitive with SpaceX in 2014, not 2024 when Falcon 9 flies weekly and Starship is deep in development.
> If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
Maybe then they should have had a clear strategy around achieving this goal effectively rather then deluding themselves.
Europe having Ariane 6 and Vega rocket for example make no sense. They could have one engine, for example Merlin 'European Version' and use it as the only engine one all their rockets.
However they have an incredibly complex bespoke first stage engine, and complex bespoke second stage engine. And lots of different solid rockets and so on.
If they had planned for making the most expensive possible thing to achieve independence they certainly managed it.
It absolutely makes sense, Vega is basically an Ariane 5 solid rocket booster that was turned into an actual rocket, both are/were made by Avio who now make the Ariane 6 boosters.
And then you keep reading and realize that Vega is not just a solid booster, but a 4 stage rocket.
I mean in that case, wouldn't the superior option be having a more cost competitive private launch provider in Europe? that way you'd get both European independence and lower prices. Surely there's a way to foster that situation, since that's what the US has.
I just don’t see how they would do this.
EU's strength is that diversification. They should lean into that and find a way (?) to benefit commercially. I don't know quite what that is, but someone needs to come up with something. Because the inefficiency is baked in.
This is somewhat like Nokia vs Apple, only worse because of the bureaucratic EU-wide red tape involved.
Yes, Europe should have its own space industry and be independent. But we should not accept rubbish or "paying a premium". We should demand more and aim at the top. Europe deserves it and can achieve it.
SpaceX has rocked the boat and thay should be an opportunity for drastic changes, especially in view of this fiasco.
Those were not plans, just one space agencies ideas.
> they were aiming for 2028
That was just political marketing, had nothing todo with reality and was never even remotely possible.
> To be fair, it is hard on the king to wear the crown for too long.
The were not really the king. For GEO missions yes, but for LEO Soyuz was always cheaper. And yes ArianeGroup was launching them, but its hardly their technical capabilities that made that possible.
Although, if actions speak louder than words, choosing to go ahead with Ariane 6 is pretty strong confirmation.
But they had been arguing that it wasn't worth pursuing for themselves, arguing that they didn't need to launch that often. That, to me, comes off as a bit more honest since they're not really saying anything positive about themselves.
China will in the next 1-3 years launch a reusable rocket. Bold prediction, but their combination of massive money, engineering howto and shameless industrial theft makes it a no-brainer.
In terms of other launchers, I can see whoever buys ULA launching something reusable in the next decade, as well as ariane space.
The writing has been on the wall for where rockets were going for ten years, policy makers absolutely have failed, but let's not pretend it's only Europe who have got it wrong.
Also, the negativity these sort of headlines bring to "tech" in Europe as a whole are also unhelpful. Europe is absolutely at the cutting edge of technology.
But yes, also that rover.
[Edit not sure what it's got to do with Jacinda though..]
Rocket Lab couldn’t even get enough funding in New Zealand, which is why they had to relocate to the USA.
Policy makers made it happen in the states through what they funded.
And doing it in a decade or two is actually fine. Tech will stabilize by then and there will be more skilled people to hire. Why the rush ?
> Michael Griffin. Griffin later estimated that SpaceX was around 85% funded by the federal government, mostly through his NASA awards, with the remaining 15% funding split between Elon Musk and other private investors. He felt the amount of government funding was "excessive in his view" compared with what he originally envisioned for the commercial space program.
From SpaceX's Wikipedia page. The Falcon 1 which was expandable, nothing special and cost ~$100 million was privately funded, the rest relied on very generous subsidies. (Regardless of Musk's posturing and outright lies)
On the contrary, outlandish and expensive (like aerospace) moonshot bets with uncertain financial benefits often happen due to government help, even in times of "unlimited money" which are far from the norm. For starters, Tesla and SpaceX both only happened due to US government subsidies; Airbus, the by far best civilian airplane manufacturer today, only exists because of European government pressure and funding. Bombardier only managed to design the C-series with Canadian government funds. All recent developments in renewables were off the back of massive subsidies for their adoption.
Spacex didn’t get money handed to them (unlike the corn and oil industries). It got orders to complete certain tasks that NASA thought it might do better than itself. Boeing and many others got these types of orders too. It explains nothing about why spacex succeeded.
This “Elon did spacex thanks to government” is a serious misrepresentation of what happened, and if it was true, why is the government funded EU space program struggling so much?
According to the WTO, those are overgenerous and the same as subsidies (check Airbus' cases against Boeing for illegal subsidies).
> It explains nothing about why spacex succeeded
Indeed, just money (even government money) is not sufficient. Never said it was, only that it is a flat out lie to say only private funding can innovate and that SpaceX/Tesla did it all on their own and Musk is a self-made man/billionaire.
SpaceX offers payloads to space at an order of magnitude lower price than its competitors.
Infinity times cheaper in the case of the CRS contract, where the competitor has to date delivered 0 kg of human mass to space
Interesting that you have to point to Boeing because no such case exists for SpaceX.
And all of those contracts for SpaceX were cheaper then what Arianespace could have offered, or any US competitor.
You are just parating lies that ArianeGroup has been spouting for a decade because they have no technical way to compete. Its literally just false propaganda.
The reality is ArianeGroup has and had subsidies far, far, far larger then what SpaceX had. The total cost of the original Falcon 9 was maybe 400M and maybe 300M of that was part of the governments program to get private supply for ISS (that the Europeans handed over to the US and SpaceX to do because they couldn't do it cheaply).
In comparison Ariane 6 is costing the government 4 billion $ minimum, likely more.
If anybody has grounds to complain with the WTO its SpaceX.
Also being in a position of 'up-and-comer' you definitely don't want to stay behind
But that being said, being reusable is great, but not a "be all, end all" objective. Sure, it can make launches cheaper, but not even Falcon 9 is reusable if they need to get to higher orbits (I believe the last F9H launch was fully expended)
Nothing special just the first privately funded rocket to make it to orbit. The first new rocket engine developed in the US for decades.
> (Regardless of Musk's posturing and outright lies)
Musk has always acknowledged and publicly called out for the COTS contracts as being incredibly important and even saving SpaceX.
> For starters, Tesla and SpaceX both only happened due to US government subsidies
Both of those are wrong. Tesla was almost 10 years in before they received a public loan, and the accepted it because it was a slightly better deal then they could have gotten privately but they had other funding options.
SpaceX Falcon 1 didn't happen because of the government. The governments contract did accelerate the Falcon 9 project however.
That would be Pegasus in 1990, though.
> The first new rocket engine developed in the US for decades.
There were plenty of engines developed in the US in that timeframe. Merlin in particular was a "spiritual successor" of the Fastrac, and Kestrel was implemented by the former Beal Aerospace engineers who worked on BA-2 before being hired by SpaceX.
(It's launched from underneath an airplane.)
Fair point.
> There were plenty of engines developed in the US in that timeframe.
Engines that actually flew or at least fully finished development. As far as I know there are none.
However, reduction of taxes and government intervention is a common talking point in internal politics. All things considered, the US has done a better job than, let's say, Europe and Asia in keeping the government out of economic affairs. No sane American libertarian would say, though, that the government has been successful at being "lean with minimum taxes", however it's doing better than most other major countries.
Having lived abroad and personally knowing many people living across the world, I can say that keeping taxes "low-ish" and the market "free-ish" is rarely a topic of conversation in the mainstream political debate outside the US.
It's true that in europe lower taxes are not a topic. Nobody really expects to pay less taxes. They expect better services and guarantees.
[Citation needed]
The only support NASA has given SpaceX for Starship is the HLS contract[1]. And that is a firm, fixed-price milestone based contract. NASA doesn't pay for any failures there.
---
1. Technically not true - there is a very minor fuel transfer demonstration contract. But that, too, only pays out on success.
It is nice that there are other players around this space (Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, etc...), but all of them are currently aiming at much smaller payloads (than Falcon 9), or sub-orbital payloads. Those are different spaces.
Of SpaceX's future competitors, almost all of them are aiming at larger payloads than Falcon 9.
* Vulcan: larger or smaller depending on how many SRBs
* New Glenn: larger
* Terran R: larger
* Neutron: smaller
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...
The government is paying half. And that only for the specialized Moon Lander version. And it requires SpaceX to do a whole lot of things to.
Government pay nothing for the infrastructure SpaceX developed, for the Raptor engine they have developed over the last decade and so on.
This 80% number is complete nonsense.
If you want to make grand statements, at least do a minimal amount of research.
Edit: And in case you are talking about Falcon 9 the claim is even more wrong.
While much of Rocket Lab’s team is still based in New Zealand, they are now a US-based company and their Neutron reusable medium-lift rocket will be built in the US and launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) in Virginia.
As far as I know they do not have any plans to launch reusable rockets from New Zealand.
Its latitude is really not optimal for anything other than polar orbits and it’s too far from any potential customers which would increase the cost considerably.
Not only do they have plans to, they have already launched multiple commercial missions on their Electron rocket from NZ!
> "Its latitude is really not optimal for anything other than polar orbits"
I don't think latitude is the major reason. Rocket Lab's Ahuriri Point launch site is at about 39.2 deg S, not that much different to the Wallops Island, Virginia site at 37.8 deg N. Baikonur Cosmodrome, by comparison, is at 46 deg N!
> "it’s too far from any potential customers which would increase the cost considerably."
Yeah, this is the real issue.
And the distance doesn't really matter much. Its not that expensive.
The reason to go the the US, is US military launch more then anything else.
Cutting edge of technology is industry creating or industry changing technologies. The US has dominated these since the 80s, but arguably even before that with railways, and after all the atom bomb was invented by immigrants in the US.
The web, social media, smartphones.
And now space industries and generative AI.
And why is this?
Lots of network effects, but also places like the EU have it completely backwards in terms of policy. Policy doesn’t create innovation. It might support it, but real innovation comes from freedom and letting innovative people roam free. The US government is doing it best to stop this but still hasn’t managed it luckily.
I just don’t see how europe is at the cutting edge of anything, any companies they lead their field are downstream of leading US industries.
I don’t know if it’s possible to recreate what the US does. Probably not. But what EU bureaucrats try and do basically fails every time.
Europe does have a lot of midtier industrial companies that do world-tier work. This includes Defense, Air transport (Airbus), Automotive, Pharmaceutical (BioNTech RNA vaccine coming from EU work) and I'm sure many other sectors.
Let's not pretend any administration got it right.
Just like the french administration had nothing to do with Pasteur creating the vaccine against rabies, the German administration has nothing to do Gutenberg creating the press and italian administration has nothing to do with Salvatore Sanfilippo creating redis.
At best, administrations from the past may be somewhat credited to foster an environment favorable for something like this to happen.
And even that is a stretch, given most administrations don't design anything, but rather react politically to whatever is the current situation.
Imagine a scenario where you start a company that solves a really difficult problem --taking years of hard work-- and then a VC who provided funding takes credit for the effort. Even worse, the news organizations give the VC credit for the results. That's what politicians do.
I feel that's a very important distinction. It's like taking credit for cooking a meal at a restaurant just because you paid for it.
The other side of it is what politicians do when things go wrong: They blame the people doing the work. Well, if they take credit for the success they should be equally liable for all failure. That, of course, will never happen.
Same thing with the economy. When things get better, they did it. When things are bad, the prior administration was at fault. They all do this, regardless of which political party they might align with. You know, just like three year old kids.
Recently I learned that the opposition to the idea was so harsh that an FBI investigation lasting 4 years was even kicked off based on a theory about how Obama, Musk and NASA's deputy admin Lori Garver were conspiring with foreign powers to destroy the US space program.
Well allowing and encouraging commercial space missions to unlock private sector was politically challenging and a huge win; not something you’d see in many other jurisdictions
That is exactly what they did and lots of politicians tried to prevent it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportat...
We need something similar in the EU... and we definitely need less France in the EU.
Seems that a lot of people want to see Elon destroyed over Twitter/politics. See the incredibly negative reaction to the Starship launch attempt compared to the much more positive reaction to previous test flights that ended with a boom.
And if they destroy our current best hope for the future of space exploration in the process of going after Elon, they don't care, it's 'a win for the environment', or acceptable collateral damage to take down an 'evil multibillionaire'
(Maybe Elon should even consider stepping away from SpaceX? - but then projects as ambitious/risky as Starship would likely be dropped)
By 'all-in' you mean make a few statements on twitter about his opinion? Because that is very different definition for 'all-in' then I have. Going 'all-in' would be to try to get elected president or some dumb shit like that.
I think we are living in different realities, which is the new normal I suppose. You missed one company he has recently purchased. You know, the one that is 100% political in nature? Jeez, just imagine the space telescopes or moon bases he could have invested in, but instead we got Twitter allowing self-described Nazis back on the platform. What a tragic waste of Musk's resources, both mental and financial.
What I meant by "all-in" was jumping headlong into the hyper-partisan political fray - and loudly choosing a side!
Musk 2021: Elon Musk said he prefers to stay out of politics [0]
Musk 2022: Elon Musk says he’ll vote Republican, bashes Democrats [1]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-spend...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/elon-musk-says-hell-vote-rep...
I believe Musk fought buying Twitter would be both good politically and he could lead the company more successfully. Hence he wanted to get out of it when it was clear that it was a huge as shares dropped.
> Musk 2022: Elon Musk says he’ll vote Republican, bashes Democrats [1]
I'm not disagreeing that Musk go more political, but calling it 'all-in' is LITERALLY wrong.
All-in would be doing politics as his primary occupation.
He's not running for office, but he's inserted himself part of the larger political narrative.
He is not doing a TV show on Fox News 5 days a weak, he isn't running for president.
He occasionally tweets something that is political or runs arguable runs Twitter in a political (not sure if its possible to run Twitter in a politically neutral way).
His actual job that he spends 95% of his time on is running SpaceX and Tesla, just like before he bought Twitter.
Ah, you're the "semantic guy". In this case it did mean exactly what I thought it meant, but not what you wanted it to mean. So I'll speak (nay, write) in literal terms instead of common parlance:
Elon Musk has used his more widely visible platform as the CEO of Twitter to advance authoritarian agenda, support and endorse authoritarian leaders (in the US and outside of it), make hate speech easier, make journalism harder, make knowledge generation harder by restricting access to data, and basically mock progressives exclusively. He's also endorsed conspiracy theories, and what I like most: he's adjusted the algorithm to ensure you see more content from himself and the people's he's "blessed".
> make journalism harder
Quite the opposite, as far as I can see.
- Banned journalists (among others he didn't care for)
- Discrediting journalism accounts with "state sponsored media" labels
- Require journalism organizations to pay to provide they are an actual source (I doubt they were targeted in the checkmark fiasco, but they were impacted)
- Elevating his own platform into your feed where posts half-truths and elevates authoritarian right-wing talking points and conspiracies. Speaking of...
- Publicly espousing conspiracy theories about globalists that need reining in (hear the dog whistle?)
- Literally mocking journalists
- Auto-replying to legitimate inquiries with a poop emoji
- Selectively using right-wing voices for his politically-laden "Twitter Files" disclosure
- Providing near-zero pushback to requests for content removal from authoritarian governments
But sure, see what you want to see. And before you turn around and tell me I'm doing the same, my opinion on Elon was positive as he was buying Twitter. I've observed him, I've read what he was to say. Either I never knew him (more likely) or buying Twitter has changed him substantially.
Edit: that’s not to say you need to treat these people as heroes - I’m reflexively suspicious of that because human nature will always be what it is, but I applaud their ability to give the finger to convention, that’s all.
They wouldn't get to Mars, though. Starship needs the 'recklessness' of being prepared to fail rapidly, repeatedly, dramatically, and incredibly publicly, while learning from each failure.
So far they've managed to ensure that no humans have been injured during launch/landing failures (although the delayed flight termination of the recent launch was worrying, and should probably be more of a concern than the launch site damage)
Sure, now that he's pushed them to where they are with his vision. Would we even be talking about landable rockets today without his involvement?
SpaceX plows all its profits into this goal. (Its shareholders aren't getting any returns, not for a long time. The SpaceX investors are playing an extremely long game.) And if you constantly use all your profits to improve your capability, you have a huge long-term advantage over companies that exist to make a profit for their shareholders.
Falcon is not fully reusable, there's a hard cost floor from the need to throw away a second stage for every launch, and there's no reasonable prospect to avoid doing so. The idea is that Starship will beat Falcon on launch costs long term. SpaceX itself is chomping at the bit getting Starlink to launch on Starship instead of Falcon, because it will be cheaper.
When I said 'reckless', I was referring more to the repeated WTFs in his handling of the twitter acquisition, including but not limited to the acquisition itself.
Maybe its more accurate to say that Musk is simply good at leading technical companies?
> feverish loyalty amongst his followers
You mean his employees? Most of them don't seem feverish.
And if you mean people that are not his employees how does that have anything to do with SpaceX?
Its simple a restructuring that was always gone happen after a while and had nothing to do with 'Gwynne' taking over management from Musk or whatever spin Musk-Haters wanted to put on it.
I'm sure you have source for that. And I'm sure she already did that when she was Head of Sales right?
And its funny how Tom Mueller, Hans Königsmann, Garrett Reisman and every other higher up in SpaceX talks about lots and lots direct interaction with Musk.
Funny how 'Liftoff' the book about SpaceX doesn't mention anything about that. And the author of this book is currently writing about the the Falcon 9 days, and I think that book will confirm the same thing again (and the author of those books interviewed literally 100s of current and former SpaceX people).
And again, pretty much every single person in leadership positions at SpaceX would disagree with you. But its great that you know so much more.
> to recognize what a shitty CEO he is
Ok, so how do you define a good CEO if not based on the company he leads are successful. Sure if its a short term success maybe you can point to other factors. Musk has been in his position longer then pretty much every other CEO in both the space and the car industry and both companies are absurdly successful.
Look, you personally dislike him and you don't like his style. But that is just irrelevant. By any actual objective measure Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in history. The results speak for themselves and its not even really debatable.
That you have to bring up individual practices that you dislike, shows that you can't actually point to any aggregate results to make your point.
> you only need to pay attention to the disaster that has been his Twitter acquisition
If you actually think that in a 30+ year career the only thing relevant is one acquisition then you are actually delusional. Any fair assessment takes into account a whole career and not one acquisition.
And in terms of Twitter, the results should be judged after 5-10 years and not the first year.
may not have that exactly right but hte point is Elon, at least in the early days of SpaceX, was definitely more than a salesman.
Yeah he was somehow able to start both Tesla, a wildly successful paradigm shifting hard tech company, and then go on to start SpaceX, an even more paradigm shifting, wildly successful hard tech company that has absolutely blown out every single competitor on earth to the point of embarrassment.
What does it take for people to just accept that he’s a genius? Is that seriously so difficult? Clearly he’s doing something and it isn’t sales.
It’s like you all forgot we just spent three years calling anyone who disagreed on an untested therapeutic that doesn’t even work a racist.
[1] https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607382645603704834
Please be more specific because I have no idea what you're referring to.
You are rewriting history. The same fucking thing happens everytime a rocket explodes. The same reaction happened with the earlier test flights again.
Some dumb idiots in the media and twitter right bullshit. A few dumb politicans try to cash in and do a bunch of saber rattling in congress.
Same game over and over, it doesn't matter and doesn't change anything.
SpaceX or Musk will not be destroyed by this nonsense.
every time i touch grass while talking about elon people are always amazed with him, why is that?
If you mean "every time I am smoking a joint and talking about Elon" I guess I'm not surprised. If you mean "every time I go outside and talk to people about Elon" I definitely am. There are large parts of my (quite liberal) state where a Tesla gets a pretty negative reaction.
if he was such a bad person, why is he doing so much good in the world?
1. How much actual knowledge people have of Elon. Speaking from personal experience there is very much a "familiarity breeds contempt" thing going on here, and I suspect the same is true more generally. People exposed only to his early (positive) press will likely like him. People exposed only to his later (negative) press will likely hate him.
2. What part of Elon's portfolio they care most about. No matter how a space nerd feels about Elon they are going to have some positive vibes about SpaceX. Even people at competitors felt their hearts flutter when they saw the first double F9 landing, or first saw Starlink high in the night sky. But people who love cars... not so much. Plenty of folks who would sooner key a Tesla than own one, and will tell you so to your face.
I also think that while lots of liberals are annoyed at Elon, the bulk of the hate comes from conservatives. Hard to erase a decade-long lead in pissing people off.
and for the cars, teslas are selling quite well, its the only profitable ev according to recent business report apparently.
thanks i didn't realize
With COTS NASA switched to contracting out for launch capacity without defining how it must be achieved. This allowed SpaceX the freedom to engineer their rockets as they saw fit.
What technology? Do you have any examples, especially enough to make such a broad statement?
https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems/twi...
Unless that technology is launch vehicles, in which case they'll whinge and whine and eventually contract someone else to do it for them and pretend they have a competent space program.
This has to be said over and over again. RocketLab is an US company.
And RocketLab large Neutron rocket will launch from the US and will be built in the US.
> Europe is absolutely at the cutting edge of technology.
Not in rocket technology.
Stop injecting nationalistic cheerleading into places it's not necessary.
Yes I know. But that is literally irrelevant.
> New Zealand headquarters
No its not.
The US is where their head quarters is, its where their engine production is, and lots of other subsystems too, it where much of its sat division is, its where they are developing the Neutron rocket. One if its two launch pads is in the US.
RocketLab is an American company that builds some structures in New Zealand and has a launch pad there.
I don't know why its so fucking hard for people to operate Wikipedia.
I am not saying this to discredit RocketLab, its a simple statement of fact.
Lolwut!?
Which technology? Certainly not space tech. Certainly not AI. To what, then, are you referring?
Top 10 most innovate countries: Europe takes 7 positions, including #1.
Machines for manufacturing: Europe. Machines to produce semiconductors: Europe. Healthtech (Siemens, Philips): Europe. Food tech and agriculture (Foodvalley): Europe. Water management, port management: Europe. Aviation: Europe.
Your world is built on leading Europe tech. Admittedly, the software isn't. Which is easy to tell because software is in a shit state.
I'd also like to remind that the reusability isn't limited to the SpaceX style VTVL. There are also potentially promising things like VTHL flyback boosters, but they are untested and nobody is currently positioned to throw money away to test smart solutions hypothesized in 60s, because the margins for the failure are non-existent in the industry.
Similarly, the only other company that has even tried to make a proven launch vehicle reusable is Rocketlab. So suggesting that others are struggling, when they either haven't even tried yet or are still working on getting to orbit, is ridiculous.
On top of that, the argument that reusability doesn't work for others for any reasons other than policy also doesn't really fit. Launch prices for all other rockets are higher, even the ones developed to better compete with F9 are only in the ballpark of its launch price and completely uncompetitive on launch cost and cadence.
I was referring to the original plan for the Falcon 9 to be fully reusable, which didn't work out for the second stage.
> others ... either haven't even tried yet or are still working on getting to orbit
That's exactly my point, though. They either didn't figure out how to make it work economically in their particular case, or spent too many years building a working system with a slow methodology. Sure, reusing the hardware provides clear benefits and everybody understands that, but only if you can pull it off and make the ends meet. Evidently not everybody can do that, even in the US where they have the same policy as others. So clearly the policy is not the only differentiator.
For non-US companies this is especially true - besides the good policy, you have to have the infra (supply chain closeness and quick turnarounds, quick transportation network which is a special pain point for Russian cosmodromes and the issue for French Guiana or any potential sea launch systems as well), good location (east-facing shore close to the equator with good trajectory options - Russia and Europe don't have that), access to the markets (Russia is cut off and China doesn't have the proper access to the global launch market). Russian launchers in particular also have different cost breakdown traditionally (expensive compact upper stages; that's why the IRDT mission was trying to return the upper stage in 2001-2004 to explore the reusability possibility; AFAIR the experiment partially succeeded, but they still weren't able to make the ends meet with that).
In fact, the only other country which has more or less everything in place for the SpaceX-style floating platform landing reusability (you can't compete in VTVL by only having the landing pad flyback) is Japan, but they're too heavily invested into "cheap" LH2 on the country level to make a mental switch to the reusable systems.
They never really tried. Second stage re-usability was in some of the very, very early animation videos, long before they were developing anything.
Then very quickly they said it wasn't really worth it.
The thought about bringing development back and did some more work on it for a while but quickly dropped the idea again.
So they didn't really try, they investigated the idea and dropped. Saying they failed suggest they were seriously trying it spending lots of money and then not being able to do it.
> Evidently not everybody can do that, even in the US where they have the same policy as others. So clearly the policy is not the only differentiator.
SpaceX is just first, the US has 4-5 other major rocket company working seriously on largish rockets (and may smaller ones). Europe has a few tiny rocket companies that are very questionable. Japan, India have nothing. China has some interesting private companies but they are far behind the US, and their state technology is also not comparable to SpaceX.
> In fact, the only other country which has more or less everything in place for the SpaceX-style floating platform landing reusability
Europe has everything needed in terms of infrastructure and supply chain. And so does China.
The only meaningfully reusable rocket right now is the Falcon 9, and while that significantly reduces the already cheap launch costs, it doesn't really change them by an order of magnitude, and with so many other costs, it doesn't make that much more possible that was previously impossible.
Arguably Starlink is possible now and wouldn't have been before, but there are other similar (fewer satellites) constellations not relying on F9 being that much cheaper. Also arguably there are more smallsats going into orbit, but I think RocketLab has done roughly as much for them as the F9 has so far.
As for other providers, ULA hasn't got a lot of re-usability built in, at least not to the extent that Starship (theoretically) or maybe even F9 has. RocketLab is starting reusability work, but is a way off anything good. Blue Origin are continuing to... well... who knows.
I don't think anyone other than SpaceX are going to have usefully reusable rockets for another decade. I'm also not sure SpaceX are going to be more than 8 years ahead anyway because I don't think Starship will be delivering on its promises for at least another few years.
SpaceX's charges around $1,200/lb to low earth orbit. Soyuz costs around $8,000/lb. The space shuttle was $30,0000/lb. Because of SpaceX's lower launch costs, they now put more mass into LEO than the rest of the world combined.
> so a year or two from how, they might have New Glenn rockets in regular operation and for most, that will seemingly come out from nowhere.
They will be lucky to have launched their rocket more then once in the next 2 years.
IMO SpaceX brought a lot of the production lessons learned from Tesla and applied it to rocket and engine production. That knowledge and wisdom from making Tesla production lines work isn't available at Blue Origin so I don't think a SpaceX rapid dev approach could work there.
BlueOrigin is a huge company already, and the basically make no money what so ever. 1 billion might cover labor cost. But given the infrastructure they are building and the actual rockets and so on, it has to be significantly more then 1 billion.
Well they are making slow progress on a hugely complex rocket, New Glenn. The might fly it in the next 2 years.
NASA gave contracts to BlueOrigin, ULA and others beside SpaceX. ULA was the only rocket provider to Pentagon for a long time before SpaceX come along. Jeff is as rich as Elon and he did pump money into BlueOrigin every year. if SpaceX did a better job then SpaceX deserved the market shares.
And notably, Blue Origin has been in business for two years longer than SpaceX, but has far less to show for it.
The government already is forced to have at least 2 providers and they want more not less.
Other governments, Europe, India and China will not simply give up.
And while talking about entities with absurd money, Bezos has spend a decade now funding Blue origin he will not just give up.
Venture capitalist are still funding many new rocket companies.
While they might be selling some EVs, they’re pretty far from what Tesla is doing as a business.
What is GM's cash cow? Pickups and the Tahoe/Yukon/Suburban/Escalade platform...pretty much the polar opposite of "environmentally conscious" products
Ford? Same thing, monster F150s
These companies aren't killing their cash cows
Indeed, I expect both companies to dramatically tone down the rhetoric on EVs soon and just refer to them as "alternatives"
Or even worse, start PR campaigns highlighting the inconveniences (charging times etc) of EVs
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/gm-overtakes-ford-in-us-ev-s...
2. https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-price-cuts-stock-euro...
Tesla could lower prices to undercut most of their competition and still make money.
> The 2023 Nissan Leaf has a base MSRP of $27,800
> Volkswagen e-Golf SE CVT, 5 seats: $31,895 (OTR)
> The 2022 Hyundai Ioniq hybrid has a $23,600 starting price, which is among the lowest in the Hybrid Cars class
> 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV should remain close to the current model that ranges from $28,795 to $33,295 (with destination).
> The price range for the Renault Zoe varies based on the trim level you choose. Starting at $33,990 and going to $40,480 for the latest year the model was manufactured.
> Currently, the Rear-Wheel Drive trim of the Tesla Model 3 starts at an MSRP of $40,240 with zero upgrades
Riiiight. Totally the lowest prices. Note that outside the US market they also tack on import/customs fees, making them even more overpriced.
They may be pretty good at not rolling over, but so is any other EV with a low mounted battery. As for the build quality, the panel line jokes are basically popular culture by now. I'm sure legacy manufacturers can at least build a car body to spec. And include things like dials and buttons, which apparently aren't cost effective enough to Tesla's liking for the Model 3.
Ford for example is losing 100s of millions on their EV business. This quarter they had a negative margin of 102% while selling 3% as many cars as Tesla.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
This was approved in 2014, and the rocket wont be really operational until 2024. So 10 years for a really simply upgrade. Some of the parts now on the Ariane 6 have been in development for 20+ years.
Even if right now, Europe decided to do a huge new rocket projects, it would be 10 years minimum. But this is not likely going to happen. Many didn't even want to spend the money for Ariane 6. An agreement on a real large reusable rocket is politically not feasible anytime soon, an no country, not even France is gone do it alone.
Of course a real reusable rocket is gone cost more the develop then the Ariane 6, a slight upgrade over Ariane 5. Ariane 6 cost 5 billion and that ignores a lot different costs for infrastructure and development of sub-components over the last decades.
So a decade is actually an incredibly optimistic prediction, 2 decades is more likely and that is far from certain.
And even if they do so, they will never have a large share of the market. They will battle a whole host of other companies, RocketLab, ULA, Relativity for things that SpaceX will be excluded from (Amazon and so on).
The EU having independent access to space is a point of pride, not a continental emergency.
The real problem is that there's no prototype path for Ariane. SpaceX had the grasshopper and others. The original space race was very incremental.
Hopefully the smaller companies will succeed with their more manageably sized rockets. Then they'll have to fight an uphill political battle against the big incumbents, just like SpaceX did.
Ariane could make prototypes too, but they probably won't.
The only really fundamentally new thing is the upper stage engine and that's hard to prototype launch.
Insane amount of talent is wasted because of "so called" european language and cultural racism.
Companies are still "national" instead of european and talent is not appreciated. Taxes are sky high and so is national, cultural racism. You think a brilliant bulgarian scientist is treated the same by his French colleagues?
Until this changes and europeans will start treat their fellow europeans fairly nothing will improve.
Just look at Germany, biggest economy in EU. It's treating it's migrant workers as slaves. Feeding failing pension system from them. Not giving any rights for innovation(you can't start business without German national cofounder) or even any motivation to innovate(high taxes, anti-success culture, strict residence laws).
When you mention any problems with Germany to Germans, they're so protective and unwilling to change that their only response is "go back home if you don't like it here".
That's an outright lie, you need a Visa though if you're not a citizen from a Schengen country.
> strict residence laws
Ever tried to get a Greencard? And if you have the financial backing, up until the start of the Ukraine war there were plenty of states with a golden visa program.
I think you're being too harsh on german and european policymakers. I agree, the climate for startups is abysmal and the room for improvement is huge, but in terms of being inclusive EU is leading over the US.
Ok, let me be clear. I have a temporary residence in Germany. Before, i had a worker visa. I'm not allowed to start my own business with temporary residence here. Only if i have a German co-founder.
> but in terms of being inclusive EU is leading over the US
I'm not 100% sure about US. Although, i have 3 friends there who don't experience problems that i have in Europe. But in Germany, specifically, banking and government bureaucracy machine became outright nationalistic. My bank account have been blocked because of my nationality. I had problems when i was changing my registration address, because of my nationality. No i'm struggling with tax office(changing my tax class) because of my nationality(specifically, i have some papers from my country).
And i heard similar complains about Spain and Poland(it's actually refusing to give worker visas to Russians, even if they already reside in EU). EU is pure nazi at this point. But majority of people ignore it, because it's, apparently, not nazi to be against Russians at this moment.
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/visa-service/buergerservi...
Not seeing any point here that forces you to have a german cofounder. It honestly sounds like you're experiencing difficulties working as a freelancer on a temporary residence permit, which I think is the case all around the world. I'd be glad for US natives to chime in, but from what I've read it's similar there.
From the remainder of your comment I take that you're russian/belarussian? If you have a permanent residence you're free to give up your citizenship, but yeah, it's not in the best interest for western states to make living amenable for you, due to state security. I'm pretty sure that regardless of my oppinion, you'd face similar difficulties in the US and elsewhere.
If germany is so hostile, why not migrate?
Now, you are right in a way that it is a choice to migrate there. My issue is with the weird belief that Europe is more inclusive when it is just false. It's like another manifestation of the quintessentially european inferiority complex that leads to comparisons with a weird, exaggerated caricature of what they think the US is. The truth is that Germany is less inclusive, provides less opportunities and is more xenophobic in almost all regards than America, unless I guess you are a white European migrant.
The remainder of you comment is a pretty one sided take. I think the US and EU don't give each other much if you want to migrate from outside the Schengen area.
I'm not a fan of my governments current policy on migration, nor that of the EU, but the truth is, until a large portion of voters dies, I'm limited in what I can do about it.
Lived in Germany for five years, 100% agree with this. The Germany Defense Squad is very real.
Germans are way pricklier about criticism of their country compared to Americans, which surprised me somewhat, given Americans' reputation for superpatriotism.
That's not to say you won't ever see the same kind response from some Americans (especially those further right), but what surprised me is that even centrist or center-left Germans of the kind you'll see on Reddit were so defensive, while centrist and center-left Americans are practically lashing themselves with a cat o' nine tails over how dumb the US is on many issues, and heartily agreeing with foreigners on criticism.
The French word to describe the culture I was exposed to at work would be "beauf". What kind of talented person would take a pay cut to work in such an environment?
Doing harmful jokes as well as dismissing, making fun and looking down at those that don't follow some abstract definition of "being normal" are deeply ingrained in the French culture (and also a source of pride - along with the whole french culture). Few are the people that understands and recognize this.
They sincerely see that as just humor and jokes, without realizing that it hurts. And I guess that being a foreigner there makes it worse, since you're even more unaware of it and different than their "norm" (whatever that is).
As a french, it took me an emigration to realize that this was - in fact - not normal, but actually a harmful and toxic behaviour that is not acceptable elsewhere.
If it's just humour and jokes, then why do all the jokes have to be about about not being a man or not being white?
The people making those jokes are simply intolerant and are biased against others at best, but using humour as a cover.
And as I said in another post, I'm French, my native language is French, the only difference between me and most of my French ex-coworkers is my skin.
I would not have looked for a job elsewhere if it wasn't for this situation because I didn't speak English very well. I had an awful accent during my first two years at Segment, and yet I felt so oddly accepted. I felt more accepted at a US. company working from my home in Europe with a terrible accent, than in my own country where I'm a native speaker working in the office.
I don't think the best way to fight intolerance is contributing to the brain drain, but that's the only solution we have for now.
As a Bulgarian who lives and works in France, yes. Ffs multiple very high profile French authors, thinkers, theatre directors are originally Bulgarian (Tzvetan Todorov, Galin Stoev come to mind, there's also a lady whose name I can't recall) so even in very conservative areas they're accepted, let alone in scientific areas.
Even just the casual dismissal of my attempts to ask to speak a common language (English) - them switching to German/French whenever there was at least one other speaker of the language - even though the firms declared the working language is English...
Where I live if a person who doesn't speak our language comes into the room we all switch to English so the person can feel welcome.
Stuff like credit cards issued in my country simply not working and them saying things like "yeah well we don't trust these eastern banks" with the typical "zomg another poor schmuck"-look...
That sounds like Germany and their obsolete banking system. No idea how things are there, but in France that hasn't been anything resembling my experience. Yeah I get the occasional "I detected a small accent there, where are you from? Oh cool, you speak very good French!" which doesn't bother me, but that's pretty much it. And for what it's worth, some Bulgarian banks are shit and don't work with French bank cards for whatever reason (naming and shaming: Unicredit Bulbank flat out told me they don't work with "some German banks" when my French card was not working on a POS terminal from them).
> Even just the casual dismissal of my attempts to ask to speak a common language (English) - them switching to German/French whenever there was at least one other speaker of the language - even though the firms declared the working language is English...
> Where I live if a person who doesn't speak our language comes into the room we all switch to English so the person can feel welcome.
Yep, French people have that bad habit. It's mostly out of shame in my view though - their English is usually not perfect, and they don't feel comfortable expressing themselves in it, running back to their comfort zone at any opportunity. It's shitty towards people who don't speak their language.
Even online in english spaces (big subreddits for example), I see french people switching back to french in the middle of a thread if they recognize each other, really rude IMO.
I don't know what you're basing this on, but I don't have the same perception.
In the US, there is an obsession with categorising people based on their skin colour and religion. Politicians talk about "people of skin colour X" as some homogeneous group that is all the same (we need to win the Latino vote so we'll say this and that). The financial and healthcare systems literally take into account your skin colour.
In France, people generally don't give a shit. It's illegal to categorise people by skin colour and religion, and it's illegal for your employer to ask about it. They can't discriminate based on anything like it, and it's taken seriously (not "oh just have money to sue" seriously, report them and they'll be in massive trouble seriously). In France, everyone naturalised is 100% French. There are tons of North African (Maghreb) descendants, including many muslims, and also lots of people from other parts of Africa, and South America, Asia, Europe. 1 in 4 French people has immigrant origins. Oh and also, the majority of France's population is not religious, which everyone is very accepting of alongside the religions. In the US there are states that forbid atheists from holding office ffs.
- small exceptions - populist racist politicians, the main ones of whom have literally been fined for their racist remarks, and mostly old folks who believe them. Once in the bus in Paris an old man said something vaguely racist (of course it's one like her, refering to a woman of African descent speaking loudly on the phone), and was loudly and agressively criticised by multiple other passengers. Not saying it happens generally, but most people are very open and don't care about others' religion/skin colour/origins.
Julia Kristeva? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva
All the "European success stories" are things that were created by what you call "loose cooperation between many countries", like Airbus, which is indeed the way to go.
The US is winning now because they hit the jackpot with Elon Musk and SpaceX. Without SpaceX Europe would still be winning against the US in terms of rockets.
Now granted, one can argue that Elon Musk and SpaceX wouldn't have been possible in Europe, and that is partly true as well.
But US still got lucky that SpaceX happened right when they wanted private supply of ISS.
In some ways this is exactly what "The Innovator's Dilemma" is about, isn't it?
Would it make sense for SpaceX to become like Boeing and sell/lease reusable rockets to others? Elon was well-known for always using the reusable airliner argument when explaining why reusable rockets were important.
Nevermind that the SLS programme assumes that Starship will succeed, otherwise they literally have no lander. So if SLS is to accomplish its goals it'll do so only in a world where it's obsolete.
Still an incredible company. Absolutely. But worth pointing out how strongly they were driven to sucess by external factors.
And also because the US gave them the EUV tech on a silver platter to disrupt the Japanese competition and prop-up a company with domestic presence on US soil.[1]
So, as much as it hurts EU fanboys and chip hipsters to hear this, ASML isn't the result of some magic tech formula developed on EU soil, but the result of a perfect storm of strategic acquisitions on exclusivity to the right tech and the right suppliers at the right time.
Then you don't know the full story.
Important is who has the IP and license for the EUV technology that has proven to produce the highest yields. The only reason ASML won EUV lithography and its competitors Canon and Nikon lost, is that US decided to license its domestic EUV tech developed by Sandia Labs to ASML, and denied it to Canon and Nikon, purely because ASML acquired Silicon Valley Group Inc, US's leading lithography supplier at the time, giving ASML a strategic US presence on US soil, versus their Japanese competitors.[1] Also, light sources are made by CYMER[2], another US supplier that ASML bought.
Nikon and Canon could also contrat Zeiss and Trumpf for the same parts that ASML gets but they don't have access to Sandia's and CYMER's EUV tech which is better than the EUV tech they developed in house.
So you see, ASML is not some European wonder as the chip hipsters would want to believe, since it wouldn't own the EUV market today if it weren't for strategic acquisitions on US soil that gave them the EUV monopoly they enjoy today.
But for some reasons all your posts seem to be intended to downplay anything coming from Europe. Which is fine, everyone needs a resident contrarian.
The US could have sold the EUV tech to Canon or Nikon and the Japanese would have owned the EUV industry, but the Dutch ASML played the political game better and won the deal but selling US tech doesn't make it an EU innovation.
And you can't compare licensed or bought tech to individual contributions from indvidual persons.
The US still owns the EUV tech ASML is using and has veto rights on what it can do with it and who it can sell it too. ASML would love to sell EUV steppers to China and make bank since China is desperate to ramp up its domestic fab industry, but US says "NO" and it must comply. The NL or the EU didn't veto the sale, the US did, and ASML complied because the US Gov have ASML by the balls since it's now also partly a US company monetizing US tech.
If the tech was so easy and America held all the cards, the machines would be made in America, end of story.
Yes it was developed by the US.
ASML also created the deals with Zeiss and other European companies which were critical in getting all the necessary components created to make EUV happen. None of this would have happened with Jos Benschop and Fred Bijkerk (in the Netherlands).
I agree that some research was done in Japan, Russia, and the US, but this is the case for basically every technology, it's never the case that only one country is responsible solely for something. I'm pointing out (correctly), that ASML kicked ass with EUV tech in a way that no other company did, including Intel, which shows they have something that no other company has. Again, if it was so easy, why isn't an American company making those machines which are critical for the entire worlds security and productivity?
[1] https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-to-...
Things Americans tell themselves ...
2. That's the truth. If you can't accept it and wish to stay ignorant, then I can't help you.
I posted the source here 3 times. Not my fault you don't read it.
>and clearly were not involved.
Did nearly a decade in the semi industry in Europe with stints in Israel, Singapore and the US.
But you keep taking the blue pill and believe whatever you want to believe, I don't have time to convince random nay-sayers online and I'm not doxing myself to win an argument with a troll.
You seem to go out of your way to do so anyway. Doesn't fit with the picture of the seasoned expert you're trying to paint of yourself.
I think you're doing disservice to the engineers and researchers at ASML suggesting they are only there because the US sent them money.
I think you live in some parallel universe EU
(Schengen provides visa-free travel and living intra-EU, but if you're from outwith the EU prepare for a mountain of paperwork)
People say this about every country. I think it's just that countries benefit the poor more than they "contribute" b/c they have the least ability to do so and people want their governments to be progressive. On the flipside, everything is always easy for the super-rich, because they have tons of resources to employ armies of people that enable them to benefit from every loophole possible.
There's a reason tens of thousands of European engineers, doctors, lawyers, developers, etc. are desperate to move to the US.
I've lived in both systems, if you're not working for FAANG you're better off in Europe, and if you're working for FAANG in Europe you're probably even better off tbh
Personally no ammount of money will buy my peace of mind, I wouldn't even take 3x my current salary to go to the US
The Internet and digitalization revolution enabled a few US companies to capture vast amounts of value worldwide simply by being first by having access to the first emerging market for the new tech (and being ruthlessly business savvy). The US being rich and an optimistic consumption culture made that happen. Some of that windfall has been redirected to fun things like boosting Rocket tech, or useful things like boosting EV tech.
Speaking of the latter, I remember a few years ago a lot of people on here were claiming that the US and specifically Tesla had an unassailable lead in Battery Tech. That didn't exactly last long, did it?
But the idea that the US is uniquely poised to dominate the tech landscape for the next decades is silly, doubly so based on some relatively niche tech like rockets. As a European I am worried about the strategic tech competition with China, not the US. And I am worried that the EU is not doing enough to tax the profits being generated here, (cough, Ireland, Luxembourg...).
... and btw, it's all built on Linux, which was given away for free by some European guy.
The problem with innovation here is extensive, both legal and cultural. Some countries are downright hostile to startups. In the US it takes what, $200 to open an LLC? In Germany you better have 25000€ ready for an equivalent entity. The amount of regulations one has to adhere to is far more extensive, taxes are borderline absurd, there's basically no venture capital to speak of, so any actually successful company is immediately absorbed by some American megacorp with fat stacks laying around (e.g. Wolt Delivery bought by DoorDash).
Most of the people who lived under socialist systems also grew up in a culture where entrepreneurship was the pinnacle of egoistic greed which probably doesn't really help.
https://spacenews.com/arianespace-and-oneweb-reach-settlemen...
Both Ariane 6 delay and Russia situation are leading to many launches moving to Falcon 9.
For polar launches Europe is positioned just fine.
It makes more sense to use French colonies in South America. Those are perfectly positioned.
The Themis program ("reusable space launcher demonstrator") will actually do some of their tests there.
I wonder how much of the "lag" in European space launcher innovation is due to the logistics of having to haul everything half a planet away to Kourou over an ocean for the actual launches. Hopefully having a mainland facility will improve things.
But it certainty no reason to think its holding them back all that much.
If SpaceX had a private launch site like that they would likely go crazy.
"Why the nut cracked is still a bit of a mystery. Musk said the "prevailing thought" among investigators, which included a mix of government and SpaceX personnel, is that the heat and humidity on Omelek Island was a factor. Though the nut was anodized to guard against corrosion, Musk said, it may have been scratched at some point, compromising its protection against the elements. "We had a series of countdowns [during which] the rocket was exposed for quite a bit of time," Musk said. "And the vehicle hangar for about three months was not climate controlled."
Another possible contributing factor, Musk said, is that there was an adverse reaction--so-called galvanic corrosion--between the aluminum nut and the pipe fitting itself, which was made of stainless steel.
Musk said SpaceX will replace the $5-a-piece aluminum nuts with less-expensive stainless steel nuts to avoid that problem in the future."
https://www.space.com/2643-falcon-1-failure-traced-busted-nu...
[1] - SpaceX Accuses Europe's Ariane Of Unfair Competition
[2] - Europe eyes Musk’s SpaceX to replace Russian rockets
I feel like EU's industry is being held back on purpose
Yet SpaceX benefits lot of subsidies from the US government, as well as Tesla, hmm, methinking
[1] - https://worldcrunch.com/business-finance/exclusive-spacex-ac...
[2] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/12/europe-eyes-musks-spacex-to-...
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/last-major-german-solar...
The comments here doesn't help
The current "rocket mix" appears to be healthy. Like a stock portfolio that keeps 40% of its value in bonds and only 60% in risky assets.
You can't drop the bonds and expect to get a better portfolio performance.
https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-cruelty-of-eu-austerity/
Meanwhile when you read e.g. some of the extremist opinions like mises.org blog posts, apparently Europe is infested with socialism and anti-capitalism and isn't doing enough.
I mean geez. Greece did the hardest austerity program in history, with possibly the fastest collapse of a growing economy. It used to grow 5% a year during the corruption years, during which people accused Greece of excessive borrowing to pay pension funds and other non productive spending. Now that they did the responsible thing GDP dropped by 50% and GDP growth has stagnated and the debt level is even higher than before as a percentage of GDP. This obviously makes "proper capitalism" look bad to citizens and now you can simply accuse them of being "socialists" who ruined their own country. Great track record.
It kind of reminds me of horseshoe theory. Extreme communists and capitalists are more alike to each other than to the center. Communists that fail to achieve their dreams go and hunt the capitalists. Capitalists that fail to achieve their dreams hunt socialists.
I don't know if you can call it pragmatism. It would be economic pragmatism if you try to take the best ideas and combine them into something that actually works.
AraineGroup spend like 5 years screaming about unfair competition and at some point SpaceX was sick of it and returned the favor [2]. But SpaceX never really cared much because they hardly see ArianeGroup as competition. They were just sick of their insesent public statements and lies that they were spouting about SpaceX.
There is a reason ArianeGroup never tried to bring any of this before WTO, because they knew they would lose and had no ground to stand on.
> I feel like EU's industry is being held back on purpose
Yes by incompetent ArianeGroup monopoly.
> Yet SpaceX benefits lot of subsidies from the US government
Government funding for Falcon 9, 300M$. Government funding for Ariane 6 5B$. How unfair of the US.
SpaceX isn't 'eyeing' to replace Russian rockets. They have been doing that for decades, first with Proton. Now with Soyuz. OneWeb launches have already flown on SpaceX multiple times and a few other will follow.
> Yes by incompetent ArianeGroup monopoly.
Incompetent? what kind of propaganda is that?
Shall i remind you who was scared to launch James Webb telescope? and who successfully did?
What about Artemis? NASA ain't candid either :)
Why would the US ban Chinese 5G, they don't have it themselves?
Sometimes it is about maintaining sovereignty and building your own industry
You can't just rely on foreigners, look what happens for the green transition, both the EU/US are stuck
Falcon 9? what about everything else? you are being disingenuous on purpose
Another one: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/will-the-ukraine-war...
Whos spreading propaganda?
You can call if 'PR' if you want to make yourself feel better. But its the same thing.
Its representatives of a company making lots of false public statements. To mislead people who don't know better.
> Shall i remind you who was scared to launch James Webb telescope?
LITERALLY NOBODY. All this comment does is reveal that you don't know anything about the space industry.
> and who successfully did?
Funding the launch was part of ESA investment into the James Webb project. NASA always partnered with other countries on big projects and they do different parts. In the case of James Webb Europe was to provide launch and therefore Europe picked the launch vehicle, obviously the picked Ariane 5.
NASA has certification for launch vehicles, and there are different levels. To launch the most expensive science mission, such as James Webb, you need the highest level of certification NASA has.
When a launch vehicle was started to be planned for both Atlas 5, Delta 4 and Delta 4 Heavy had the necessary certification. I assume only D4H would have the required power (but I'm not certain on that). So had launch not been assigned to ESA, James Webb would have been launched on Delta 4 Heavy. And ULA would of course not have been 'afraid' to launch it, as they have launched most major NASA missions of the last couple decades.
Falcon 9 has achieved this same certification, I don't remember when exactly, late 2010s. So SpaceX, if something like James Webb would be competing for that missions. In fact currently its the only rocket that is not sold out with that certification. Falcon Heavy also has this certification and will launch things like Europa Clipper.
The idea that SpaceX or ULA were to 'afraid' is so moronically dumb that I can't even fathom where you got this absurd idea from.
After that the rest of your post is just whataboutism that has nothing to with my correction to your original comment.
> Whos spreading propaganda?
Not me, almost everything I said is plain fact. The only thing that is questionable is if 'incompetent' is the right word to describe ArianeGroup. Maybe that word is to harsh, replace that word with 'noncompetitive'.