Ariane 5 User’s Manual (2011) [pdf]
arianespace.com
arianespace.com
The inertial reference system (SRI) was derived from Ariane 4. Since 5 was faster, a numeric conversion overflowed, which was not physically possible on 4. Since overflow was ‘impossible’, there was no explicit handling. Since the code was written in a ‘safe’ language (Ada), an ‘unsafe’ undefined result was impossible, so the module panicked. The SRI operation at that point was not actually required on the 5, but they had not wanted to make ‘unnecessary’ changes to disable it. Finally, the flight computer interpreted the SRI crash diagnostic data as flight data, and sent the rocket wildly off course.
"The truly unacceptable part is the absence of any kind of precise specification associated with a reusable module."
Edit: I stand corrected - the MCO failure report [1] says that the software behavior was against the spec. So yeah, it's a software failure indeed.
Would you consider that a software failure or not?
As implied by the comment I’m replying to, the only reason to keep Ariane 5 flying would have been its good track record bringing business on the commercial market but that’s not going to happen because Falcon 9 gets all these customers now.
https://sscspace.com/the-world-watched-the-inauguration-of-s...
War is full of logistics challenges, and slipping a retrofitted container ship or tanker carrying an Ariane-sized rocket in between other innocent maritime traffic would be one of them.
Though the more common scenario in the last century or so seem to be harsh words, boycotts and proxy wars, not total war and sea blockades.
If you think the US would go so far as to block Europe from buying launches on US launchers, then the US could also easily blockade South America.
Certainty, blockade is another level to just cutting business ties but its certainty not comparable to WW2.
To a polar orbit. To geostationary it's not great (don't know would it even be possible).
It was actually meant to be retired a few years back.
As some have noted though it will still be an order of magnitude slower cadence than SpaceX is achieving and still not re-usable at all.
- BAF - Final Assembly Building - Bâtiment d’Assemblage Final
I knew about NATO/OTAN and such, but didn't know it's so universal.
They also had fun with some of them:
- PLANET - Payload Local Area Network
- SHOGUN - SHOck Generation UNit
It's very common because the order of adjectives and nouns is most of the time reversed between English and French (and Romance languages in general; it's the same with Spanish and Portuguese for example), but English retains so much French and latin roots that the initials are often the same. Other examples include
- IMF/FMI (international monetary fund/fonds monétaire international)
- EU/UE (European Union/union européenne)
- and before it EEC/CEE (European economic community/communauté économique européenne)
- SARS/SRAS (severe acute respiratory syndrome/syndrome respiratoire aigu sévère)
- HIV/VIH (human immunodeficiency virus/virus de l'immunodéficience humaine)
And many others I am sure, that's just what I could think off the top of my head.
Everyone else on the planet can use english based acronyms just fine in the local language, except the french :)
United Nations: FN (Danish), VN (German), ONU (Spanish), VN (Dutch)
European Economic Area: EØS, EWR, EEE, EER
And English does it too. The Deutsche Demokratische Republik — DDR — was the GDR in English. Содружество Независимых Государств (СНГ = CNG) is the CIS.
(Has anyone trained a neural networks to play Kerbal Space Program?)
Honestly though, the information isn't all that juicy. What most people would find interesting has been out there for a long time. The hardware in any rocket looks basically the same since Saturn V, and the only remarkable thing about the software is that it's organized.
Is there anything you'd like me to point you to?
A much, much (2 orders of magnitude) simpler system I'm familiar with has a set of manuals that is far over 20,000 pages and it's really not that good or comprehensive. It's really terrible actually. So this is off by about 4 orders of magnitude.
For a concrete example: one tech manual for a 2 1/2 truck is 1200 pages long (http://www.jatonkam35s.com/DeuceTechnicalManuals/TM9-2320-36...). But there are about 50 other manuals in the set (http://www.jatonkam35s.com/jatonkaM35sTMdownloadpage.htm). This is for a TRUCK, not a rocket.
I don't know what this thing is, but it's not the manual.
But yeah, Vega-C has been very unlucky with the nozzle throat insert on the second stage eroding away and failing, plus the general trouble with certain parts being made in Ukraine now during the war.
The more interesting question is what will happen after Ariane 6. SpaceX's lead continues to grow, and catching up would require changes to the development process not everyone seems comfortable with.
No-one’s trying to build a Starship at this point apart from SpaceX (leaving aside a couple of less credible Chinese attempts).
Oops.
The plans for the Long March 9 change every year or so. The last time they published a design, it was a Saturn V semi-clone (with many more 1st stage engines).
I'll take the Long March 9 seriously when they start showing off actual hardware.
New Glenn has lots of potential, but it's also really hard to get excited about.
To actually build a next generation Ariane rocket they will need a huge amount of political buy-in from the ESA memeber states. And they will not get that anytime soon. The barley got the Ariane 6 over the finish line.
It will be many, many years before they even seriously start an actual design process for Ariane Next.
"Sir, it's the intended outcome that it tastes like shit."
"Oh, I guess that must be ok then."
"Waiter, this soup tastes like shit."
"Sir, that is not your soup. It is a nutrient broth to satisfy another customer who has different priorities than you do."
"Oh, I guess that must be ok then."
"Waiter, this soup tastes like shit."
"Sir, that is not your soup. It is a nutrient broth to satisfy another customer who has different priorities than you do."
"Then their priorities are wrong, they should want a good tasting soup!"
"Sir, I must ask you to leave."
The goal is reliable independent launch capabilities. SpaceX is the furthest from what can be described as reliable.
That's a rationalization.
When the Ariane 5 was ruling the roost, ArianeSpace absolutely wanted to maintain their market position.
It's only after they've given up on that goal that the talking points have changed to "independent access to space".
> SpaceX is the furthest from what can be described as reliable.
Lol. The Falcon 9 has the longest streak of successful launches of any rocket in history.
You do understand that Starship is still in development, right? SpaceX is well known for their "hardware rich" development process. That doesn't seem to affect their operational reliability.
Not sure what you mean by "fast and loose with his security clearance". He says wacky stuff on Twitter. I'm not defending what Musk writes there, but it doesn't really have an effect on SpaceX's reliability.
> The FAA can halt launches for any reason.
Not sure how this is relevant.
> His allegiance to China and Russia certainly won't help.
I don't think I've seen anyone establish any links between him and Russia. He had that one Ukraine peace plan, which was never going to work, but that isn't really a tie to Russia.
Tesla does have a plant in China. But Boeing sells tons of planes in China; I don't ever hear people asking about ULA's ties to China. Same thing with Airbus and ArianeGroup.
The dude smokes weed on a podcast with Joe Rogan. However silly, that is grounds for revocation of his security clearance. So is his friendly attitude towards enemies of the US. His peace plan for Ukraine came straight from the propaganda department of the Kremlin. Most likely, they'll settle for him being forced to divest his part of SpaceX.
> his security clearance
One time a Boeing sponsored senator launched a fake investigation because Elon took a single (fake) hit from a joint in California. He has not played 'fast and loose' with security clearance.
> they can't be described in any way as reliable
Seems that the all the launch costumers, the military, NASA and the insurance industry disagree.
> The FAA can halt launches for any reason.
SpaceX has a really good relationship with the FAA. Thanks to SpaceX FAA is getting lots of money to expand and is reforming its internal organization.
> His allegiance to China and Russia certainly won't help.
Ah the fake allegiance you made up, sure.
So you moved from 'having some valid points' to 'I hate Musk so I have to shit on everything related' mode.
Launch reliability is one aspect. For Europe, the possibility of SpaceX or the US itself cutting them off from access to space is one to consider in the calculus.
Same reason the US is likely to still fund non-SpaceX launches/ventures, even if more expensive.
The same justification was used in the US after the Spanish American war to justify a massive expansion of US shipyard capabilities that was subsidized by contracts for US warships. It worked out well enough, by the end of WWII the US had the most capable navy in the world.
Given the reality of SpaceX's launch schedule, probably not. Unless someone in Europe wanted 40 extra launches a year or something. SpaceX has shown a willingness to sacrifice Starlink launches for paying customers.
But from a more philosophical standpoint, I do think that Europe is correct to maintain an independent launch capability.
Independent space launch capability isn’t an issue. Clinging to obsolete technologies is. Ariane 6 was still on the drawing board when F9 landed for the 1st time. Since then F9 has landed consecutively - yes landing - more times than consecutive launches of any other rockets. Almost twice the number for Ariane 5. All occurred in the last 7 years, compare to 30 years for Ariane 5. Yet Europe refuse to revise the design. Now they are looking at a design that wouldn’t be competitive with F9, a decade later.
>> Only in the sense that everyone isn’t competitive against SpaceX. They absolutely could have done better, but the role isn’t to produce the most price competitive launch, the role was securing Europe’s launch capability. If both could be done at the same time then that’s a win but it’s not the primary goal.
> You're just explaining the process by which they screwed up.
No, the problem is that you're acting like you define their success criteria, when you don't. You're a rando on the internet, quarterbacking from your armchair.
Europe has totally dropped the ball here. I think they'd be well advised to just give up. They don't look like they have the attitude or desire to actually deliver a world class competitive result.
"LOL." That kind of thinking is myopic and dated. Pretty much every year from 2020 onwards had yielded high-profile new lessons about its flaws. The market doesn't optimize for some pretty important things.
Agree on the launch capability, that is something strategic. I just hope those European initiatives continue. And Ariane still got paying customers, so their prices cannot be that outrageous, can they?
Competion is a good thing, it drives innovation.
In the early 2000s the Proton rocket was far cheaper, but increasingly became unreliable meaning that many costumers got away from it. The Proton insurance cost was getting way to big. The Proton program was just all around mismanaged.
Since with the launch monopoly in the US, the US was basically not in the market at all. There simply wasn't another option. If Soyuz was to small, then the Ariane 5 was the only game in town.
Basically the Russian and the US committed suicide by stupidity and the Europeans were the only game in town. China isn't really an option geopolitically. And India and Japan large vehicle have way to low production rates, only being used for domestic stuff.
Falcon 9 was already cheap but it took a while for Falcon 9 to get cadence up. And Falcon 9 was hopelessly overbooked with launches for many years ahead in most of the 2010s. So some costumers picked Ariane 5 as those were actually available.
This dual launching was also a huge cost on Arianespace and its costumers. Waiting for both sats to be ready was a huge problem.
And increasing as SpaceX came up, finding that set of costumers got harder and harder. So it wasn't a defend-able niche.
> And Ariane still got paying customers, so their prices cannot be that outrageous, can they?
Ariane has always launched more Sozus then Ariane 5. Vega is mostly used for non-commercial stuff.
Ariane 6 has received large commercial contract from Amazon. The reason for this is that Amazon needs basically every single available heavy launch vehicle in the next 5 years to be legally complaint for their sat internet.
Before that Ariane 6 did have lots of issue, already complaining that their manifast was not allowing them to set up the necessary production.
In a purely commercial competition, an Ariane 6 is like 50% more expensive compared to SpaceX Falcon 9. And likely more in many cases. That isn't 'outrageous' but it isn't good either. The Ariane 5 was 2-3x as expensive.
I also believe that on those prices Ariane Group isn't making much money, while SpaceX just set such as high price because they can.
Except that is of course what they promised when the Ariane 6 was authorized. The 'we need to be competitive with the Falcon 9 so we can use the international launch market to subsidize our space program' was very much a huge part why the Ariane 6 was picked over the Ariane 5 ME.
So in effect Ariane Group is getting 5 billion $ to slighly evolve the Ariane 5 (with mostly things that we planned for the Ariane 5 ME).
In effect, not having to relay on Sozus as much is actually closer to what Ariane 6 achieves. Having both the 62 and 64 variant will make it more flexible then Ariane 5.
And I don't know, maybe we should wait until Ariane 6 had its first launches, while also cutting them the same slack for failed early launches SpaceX gets?
SpaceX has definitively shown that there's a disconnect between delivering a great product and acting as a distribution mechanism for aerospace entitlement.
Did spaceX not receive significant "aerospace entitlement" funding through public contracts?
They did not. All SpaceX contracts with NASA are fixed price, not cost plus, paid when they can deliver. What is entitlement about them? Did you know that Boeing lost a substantial amount of money for Starliner with a similar contract? Despite being paid much more?
The answer is, pretty obviously, that NASA's contracts aim in part to secure a well-fed American space companies, and that they alone are enough to pay for SpaceX development costs, as they would for Ariane. I do think NASA funding is a good thing, but pretending SpaceX doesn't tap that manna is disingenuous.
Glad you asked.
First you have to ask, for what does Europe need independent access. Then you have to ask, how likely is that this capability is actually needed. And then, what can we do to achieve this goal with the effective use of resources.
For Europe to build a huge Ariane 6 while also having Vega, Vega C and also working on small launchers makes no sense.
One Sozuy sized rocket and some basic refueling tech could do everything Europe needs.
So if it really was about independent access, then making a plan that focuses on that would make mare sense.
I wonder if theres a similar manual (similar in that a non spcialist can follow and make some kind of sense from it) for SpaceX as well.
It's surprisingly affordable, starts at $330k USD for a 50 kg microsat (although unless you want to build and qualify your own separation system, it'll really be almost double that because you'll have to buy a separation system from SpaceX).