Europe's new rocket, Vega, launches in a few minutes; live stream | Hacker News Reader

Europe's new rocket, Vega, launches in a few minutes; live stream

esa.int

83 pointsjgrahamc28 comments

Note that Arianespace have recently also have had their first couple of launches using Soyuz rockets from Kourou:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/10/arianespace-soyuz-st-...

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/soyuz-st-launch-six-s...

Arianespace now have a fairly nice family of launchers - Ariane 5, Soyuz and now Vega.

Thanks! I found more information here: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/publications/europe-... (Particularly on "why such launchers?" Who takes part in which, and the re-entry vehicle.)

Here is the video of the launch, for those that missed it. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Vega/SEMJ8LYXHYG_0.html

Romania's first satellite is on that rocket. Congrats and good luck !

Polish first satellite is in it, too :)

http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/86192,Polands-first-ever-...

Hungarian first satellite is in it, too :)

hint: these are not really Romanian, Polish or Hungarian satellites...

ALMASat - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=... PW-Sat - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=... Xatcobeo - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=... Robusta - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=... e-st@r - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=... Goliat - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=... Masat-1 - http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/satInfo.php?satID=...

DIY some more:

http://www.cubesatkit.com/

http://www.pumpkininc.com/content/doc/forms/pricelist.pdf

This sounds like the start of a great joke.

"So a Romanian satellite, a Polish satellite, and a Hungarian satellite go into space..."

sorry if I'm dumb and don't get the hint: what do you mean by "this are not really romanian, polish or hungarian" ?

"romanian satellite", "polish satellite" or "hungarian satellite" would often (usually) be understood as a major piece fully designed and built by the country in question. CubeSats are academic projects (literally), and technically they're all from AMSAT so they're american :)

I'd assume that they are not researched, and developed by Romanians, Poles, or Hungarians. Can't access the links at the moment though, so the links might say something else.

Wikipedia: "Development began in 1998"

14 years to develop a 300-2000 kg rocket at an established player (Arianespace) sounds slow to me.

Unlike other "standard" space projects, the payload (consisting of two satellites, and seven picosatellites) was 100% designed and developed by students at various European universities. So even if the project began in 1998, do consider that both capital and technical resources are in no way comparable to those at NASA, ESA or JAXA; hence the timeframe of the project.

He's talking about the rocket, not the payload.

You are right that it refers to the rocket, but the length of the project is due to the purpose and goal of the payload, not the development of the rocket. If you look at the history of the VEGA programme, and why it was started, you will see that the development of the rocket has been designed for the sole purpose of putting into orbit a unique combination of (scientific) satellites and picosatellites. The development of the rocket has always gone hand in hand with that of the payload. The rocket technology used in VEGA already existed, as Avio was already a big contributor in the Ariane 5. The primary user of this rocket, and the those who promoted VEGA, were and still are, the scientific community at European universities.

As always with European things, it's quite complicated. I'm not even sure I fully understand myself.

Arianespace operates expendable launch systems, but doesn't manufacture them (anymore). So though Vega and Ariane 5 are both operated by Arianespace, they are actually designed and built by different companies.

- Ariane 5 is manufactured by EADS Astrium (French, German, British and Spanish).

- Vega is manufactured by Avio (Italian).

You can't really look at Astrium, and wonder why Avio took such a long time to develop the launcher. On the other hand there was definitely some cooperation going on, as for instance the first stage of Vega is derived from Ariane 5, and the improvements will most certainly make it back to Ariane...

Are you saying its behind schedule, or over budget, or under-delivering?

Are you saying you think it should have been rushed?

No, neither. I'm saying that compared to my recollections of rocketry history as well as news about recent activity in the commercial space, a timespan of 14 years until the first validation launch seems long considering the challenges the deliverable would seem to pose. I can of course readily speculate about many reasons about why this is so:

- They may be doing higher-quality work or proceeding more cautiously than other projects with similar goals.

- The rocket may have unique traits or capabilities that justify the development time despite the payload capacity being nothing eyebrow-raising.

- The definition of "start of development" used by the author of the Wikipedia statement may not match my expectation, i.e. there may have been a long market analysis and conception stage before engineers actually got to work.

- The project may not have enjoyed a steady level of activity for all of those 14 years.

- Funding may have been lower than for comparable projects.

- There could have been political, legal or financial problems ailing the project.

- I may simply be wrong and 14 years is not a long time at all for this kind of project.

And so on.

Basically, I'm hoping for someone who knows the actual answer to share their insight.

The Apollo program was announced in in 1961. The moon landing was in 1969.

Apollo was driven by politics. It had almost no budget limits. You really can't compare these two.

During the Apollo program NASA's budget was 5% of the federal budget. Today it is less than .4%.

And the cost was staggering and the technology was never truly debugged. (Fun fact, Apollo 13 nearly became famous for a completely different reason, as resonance caused the rocket to come within seconds of tearing itself to pieces during the launch, only prevented by sheer luck when the massive vibrations tripped a fuel sensor and shut off the offending engine.)

Amsat has a list of the cube-sats launched with Vega and their frequencies in the amateur radio bands: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/ (scroll down to the end of the page).

Thanks for posting this. I'd completely forgotten about it.

Good luck to all involved. It's nice to see a proper engineering project being tested, hopefully not to destruction!

Does anybody know what S in the onscreen graphics is, and what "dog" is an abbreviation of?

So, is it cheaper per kilogram to LEO than SpaceX Falcon 1e?

Is the Falcon 1e in commerical operation yet?

Falcon 1e seems to be pretty-much on hold at the moment. The Falcon 1 launch site on Kwajalein has been dismantled. As far as I can tell, SpaceX are focussing on deploying smallsats as secondary payloads on Falcon 9, rather than flying them as independent launches.

was awesome, thx for the link, just got in in time :)

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