ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehearsal | Hacker News Reader

ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehearsal

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163 pointssbuttgereit190 comments

> which made Ariane 5 Europe's most successful launch system to date

Not for a holywar but to enhance my educatedness: in what sense Ariane 5 is the most succesful? Low failure rate?

What other launch systems does Europe have? Or had, in history? Oh, Soviet Union/Russia doesn't count as Europe in this context, just ESA countries. The author probably should have been more specific.

Ariane 4 and preceding versions? There was also the Tsyklon series (mix between Soviet and European tech).

> should have been more specific

Why? When someone says “America” without specifying anything it’s usually perfectly obvious they are talking about the US. Same applies to Europe and the EU(+associates) these days.

I worked on the Ariane 5 during the transition from Ariane 4 to 5. Back then many did not like the Ariane 5 design. The Ariane 5 was originally meant as a carrier for the European Space Shuttle competitor Hermes and repurposing it for commercial payload launches involved many compromises. When the last remaining Ariane 4 had launched I asked one of my senior colleagues why we wouldn't just build a couple more of them. I was told that this was not realistic because for one, parts were built in batches and you could not just produce a few and for another many of the companies that were involved did not even exist anymore.

Regardless if that is true, the last Ariane 4 launched 20 years ago so it is certainly a rocket of a long gone past.

In my opinion Ariane 5 was way overbuilt. This forced it into a niche and lead to it being not at all dominant. It speaks volumes how much ESA was reliant on Soyuz.

Europe should have built an Ariane 4 replacement, using Kerolox as the base fuel.

I always wonder what happened to that launch commander (?) of the initial A5 launch that blew up, anyone know?

The "Directeur des opérations" was Pierre RIBARDIERE, the launch failure had nothing to do with him, it was due to a software bug (overflow) in a component that was reused from Ariane 4, but bugged out in Ariane 5 due to the much greater accélération IIRC.

Oh I know, I just remember his look of utter despondence, and wondered if he'd get the old scapegoat treatment or something.

Vega https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_(rocket)

The keyword is Europe. Take Europe out of that sentence and it's completely false.

Ahh, I see. Thanks.

We didn't invest so much into launch systems but it's not super important anyway. It's important to have some capability for things like Galileo. But Europe doesn't have the ambition for its own space station etc so the number of launches are always going to be low.

Ariane 5 has done a lot of launches, including for the ISS.

> But Europe doesn't have the ambition for its own space station

Are you aware that the ISS is not a purely American project? Many other countries and organisations are involved, including ESA.

Another interpretation could be, we do not have ambitions to launch our very own space station.

ESA is not just Galileo. Sentinel is leading platform for Earth observation.

I agree, IF you change the perspective, so it's keep Europe able to fly stuff into space as needed, then Ariane 5 is a great program.

It's just not true that it's cheap at launching stuff into space, it's not true that it's the most successful, etc.

It's WAY cheaper than the SLS, so clearly Europe isn't as bad off as America is when it comes to a national/govt launch system.

I'm not trying to put Ariane 5/6 down, I'm merely saying, Ariane 5 is not the most successful program in the world to send stuff to space. Space X currently has that crown, but I'm sure eventually someone else will figure out how to do it better. Maybe not in my lifetime. NASA used to be the leader here, then ULA, now SpaceX. Maybe China or India will be next? I have no idea.

"completely false"

Yeah, 112 successful launches (including a couple for Nasa), but it is a complete failure

Sounds like the most optimistic Eastern European opinion

If the sentence replaces Europe with "is the" it would read "Ariane 5 is the most successful launch system to date"

That's not remotely true, see Falcon 9 for example. 282 successful missions so far and they are now running about 100 launches a year.

I'm not trying to put Ariane 5 down, it's great for what it's supposed to accomplish, much like SLS is good for what it is supposed to accomplish. A govt jobs program that occasionally launches stuff into space. If your goal is launch stuff into space as cheaply as possible, they are total failures.

If your goal is to create a jobs program and keep the local population capable of launching stuff to space, then they are obviously successful.

Just like Ariane 6.

I don't know about "most successful," but Ariane 5 flew 83 consecutive missions without a failure, and had a 95.7% success rate overall. It was used to launch the James Webb Space Telescope.

The fact that Ariane 5 was chosen to launch the $10 billion must-not-fail JWST says a lot about trust in the rocket. The particular rocket that launched Webb also got some extra TLC from the engineers:

> The Ariane 5 program also selected the best components for Webb based upon pre-flight testing. For example, for the Webb-designated rocket, the program used a main engine that had been especially precise during testing. "It was one of the best Vulcain engines that we've ever built," Albat said. "It has very precise performance. It would have been criminal not to do it."

From https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/all-hail-the-ariane-...

Importantly the precision means the orbit of JWST needed less fuel to correct, leaving more for future corrections and extending the lifetime.

> The launch was described by NASA as "flawless" and "perfect".[4] A NASA systems engineer said “the efficiency or the accuracy with which Ariane put us on orbit and our accuracy and effectiveness in implementing our mid-course corrections” meant that there is “quite a bit of fuel margin ... roughly speaking, it’s around 20 years of propellant.”[16][17]

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_VA256

When you have many satellites and want it cheap, go with SpaceX. If you have one priceless irreplaceable satellite hundreds of people spent decades building, go with Ariane. There is market for both.

I doubt achieving the same with SpaceX, especially given the amount of prep that went into this launch is somehow impossible. Perhaps has more to do that the launch vehicle was chosen before Falcon 9 has made its maiden flight.

This is the correct sentiment and although I absolutely love what SpaceX has acheived, whenever there is some news about a new (or old) rocket here on hn, here comes a bunch of folks stating that everybody should just stop everything they're doing and just hire SpaceX for everything forever. Very cultish imo.

This isn't really the case. The Ariane 5 was selected because ESA agree with NASA that ESA would pay for the launch. And of course ESA would use the Ariane 5.

Had NASA paid for the launch, both the Delta 4 (Heavy) and the Atlas 5 has the necessary NASA certification.

Did they have other options? I thought it’s the only one with a big enough fairing.

The US chose Ariane 5 to launch the James Webb Telescope, says it all, don't you think? ;)

And the orbit injection was so precise that they greatly increased the theoretical lifetime of the mission, from an expected minimum of 5 years to well beyond 10 years.

No it doesn't. Why do people keep repeating this? That not how anything works.

The US 'chose' Ariane 5 because guess what, ESA paid for the launch. Yes ESA contribution to the James Webb project was partly the launch. And if you pay for it you get to select the rocket. And because its ESA, they selected Ariane 5.

Had ESA not paid for it, an Atlas or a Delta vehicle had all the necessary NASA certifications to launch a payload of that class.

Lies

"We chose Ariane in the early 2000's for a combination of reliability (it was the only launch vehicle that met NASA's requirements for launching a mission like Webb) and for the value it brought via our international partnership."

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html#whyAriane5

“it was the only launch vehicle that met NASA's requirements for launching a mission like Webb”

The key word is “was”. Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon Heavy would all have been suitable for the job. They just didn’t exist or just debut at the time NASA went with Ariane 5. Keep in mind JWST was supposed to launch early in 2010s, not a decade later.

A big selling point for Ariane 5 is in the part that you left out:

European Space Agency provided us a launch vehicle and associated services on a no exchange of funds basis. In exchange, NASA guaranteed European scientists a fraction of observing time on Webb (roughly 15%). Since architectural realities of Webb and international technology restrictions (plus industrial capabilities and strategic technology interests) meant we couldn't have a spacecraft bus or a sunshield or telescope parts from Europe, we asked for the launch vehicle, launch services and science instruments instead.

Basically NASA got a launch vehicle without any money exchanged (as opposed to paying probably a billion dollar to ULA). This was crucial given the cost overrun of the program. Also NASA couldn’t use Europe’s technologies on the telescope itself for non-technical reasons, so a launch vehicle it was.

Ariane 5 is an extremely reliable and capable vehicle, nobody can refute that.

Why did they go with a hydrolox first stage when they’re not even using the same engines as the second stage? Same reason as the SLS?

One major reason is that they're a good fit with solid-rocket boosters. The Ariane rocket family SRB's have commonality with the French SLBM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M51_(missile)

- "The three-stage engine of the M51 is directly derived from the solid propellant boosters of Ariane 5."

> they're a good fit with solid-rocket boosters

What? Why/how?

Hydrolox engines have very high ISP, but lack thrust at liftoff. Due to the low density of hydrogen, they require huge tanks that are as wide as possible, to reduce surface area and thus boil off.

SRBs work well with wide first stages as that affords strong mounting points. And they provide significant thrust for liftoff.

Yeah I wonder how much "tying down" the test required, or if the engine alone is insufficient to make it fly (but still, if you make it too light it might wobble too much, etc).

The SRBs are certainly fire and forget but I'm not sure how the ratio of SRBs/Main engine thrust are compared with something like the Space Shuttle

Liquid hydrogen has better energy density by mass than alternatives. Density by volume isn't as good, which makes hydrocarbons a better choice usually. But if a lightweight fuel container can be made, it's the more optimal choice.

It's rather that it's more effective at converting energy to impulse, since the molecular weights of the combustion products are much lighter. LH2/LOx doesn't have a particularly large energy advantage over hydrocarbons, when you're also accounting the mass of the oxygen (as you do with non-airbreathing rockets).

Basically when Ariane 5 was designed, the Shuttle was all the hotness and the European were mostly copying the design.

And for the Ariane 6 they didn't have time to come up with anything new. Most of the Ariane 6 are just things that were already in development for the Ariane 5 ME.

It takes Europe 10+ years at least for a new engine. So Ariane 6 couldn't have used anything new.

As for why not using it on the second stage, its simple. Its to big.

Ariane 5/6 are late staging system. Meaning the boosters provide a lot of the load to get of the ground. The first stage flies was longer then in systems like the Falcon 9. So the hydrogen is bad for takeoff but if you stage late, hydrogen advantage matters more.

It’s unfortunate that Ariane 6 already has no realistic chance of being price competitive with Space X. However it’s great that they are doing something still as competition is what will push us forward.

there might be circumstances where it is price competitive in the market (certainly when launched from Kourou vs. the US).

I don't think so. ArianeSpace's best price for an Ariane 6 launch, with all the subsidies applied, is gonna be around $75 million, maybe more. SpaceX's sticker is $67 million for Falcon 9 and they've been known to come down $10 million or even more to win an important contract (while still preserving fairly healthy profit margins). I don't think there is a single case where a customer would pick Ariane 6 over Falcon 9 except for political reasons.

And your prices don’t even take into account the difference in payloads. (Favorable to Falcon)

The price/kg is 3-4x higher for Ariane.

There is also launch windows etc. Not everyone can or wants to wait forever.

And IIRC Ariane 6 can also bring up somewhat heavier payloads because they launch from closer to the equator?

That's not the point, even if they would like to of course.

The main point is for Europe to have launch capabilities and maintain their skills. That's also the reason why ESA is so inefficient, they are here mostly because of politics.

If it wasn't for that, they would have used US, Russian or Chinese rockets.

I suspect that the US gave a heavy push to SpaceX (they saved them from bankruptcy in the early days) because they were in the same situation with NASA. SpaceX was their chance, and they took it, they are also keeping an eye on Blue Origin, because who knows what will happen next.

The big difference is that ESA is essentially a government entity, much like NASA. To compare NASA and SpaceX would fail for much the same reasons, they are simply not the same kind of entity. As far as I know NASA currently doesn't have any launch capability of their own, it is all through commercial suppliers.

Also looking at the recent article about internal ESA issues, it seems that it is very corrupted by the lack of external control (being exteritorial corporation) and two tier "caste" system. I'm imagining a fossilized organization, where higher caste is busy engaged in the internal politics, securing their positions and preventing lower caste to gaining any benefits, suppressing any good ideas from the lower rank employees to prevent them showing you are not good enough. Not saying that all them are like that, but even some significant amount can grind whole company to a halt. Throw in malicious compliance, bureaucracy etc. and we have a picture.

Sounds quite a bit like the EU itself.

Unfortunately very similar, yes.

> The big difference is that ESA is essentially a government entity, much like NASA

The relationship between ESA and Arianespace is not necessarily that fundamentally different to that of NASA and SpaceX. Arianespace is only partially state owned (it's a join venture of two publicaclly traded companies) and in some ways it was the SpaceX of the 80s and 90s.Ariane 4 was very competitive and at some point had the majority of the commercial satellite launch market.

Of course like the rest of Europe stagnation has set in and it was left behind over the last 10-20 years.

Note that an approach similar to Arianespace has worked quite well in the past, you have probably heard of it: Airbus. Imagine a world without SpaceX: Arianespace would be considered quite successful. I wouldn't say that Arianespace is weak (relative to the rest of the competition) - it's just that SpaceX is very strong.

Note that they are with... some? success trying to greatly reduce costs as a response to SpaceX. Have you heard of any other launcher company trying that recently?

> Arianespace has worked quite well in the past, you have probably heard of it: Airbus

Airbus owns 50% of Arianespace so it makes sense.

> Have you heard of any other launcher company trying that recently?

I guess the issue is that it's such a big market and there isn't a lot of competition and everything is partially or mostly subsidized by governments (through NASA or ESA) how all have their own agendas which introduces a massive amount of inefficiencies. It's not like Ariane 6 would have ever been developed for entirely commercial purposes.

People regularly forget the distant second private rocket company after SpaceX is Rocket Lab, with no one else close.

Blue Origin is almost completely irrelevant. Jeff Bezos may buy United Launch Alliance, but it likely won't help given Blue Origin's abysmal track record.

Amazon's Project Kuiper (the Starlink competitor) has no affordable launch provider since they're avoiding SpaceX, so it's also dead in the water.

What happened at blue origin? Is it just a hobby and not a business?

While I can’t confirm since I haven’t worked there and am not in the industry, I’ve read that one of the biggest issues Blue Origin is dealing with is trouble with retaining talent. One article I read couple years back called it a revolving door if I recall correctly.

If that’s true there’s likely major managerial or structural issues that are gumming things up.

Sounds just like some of Jeff's other ventures

Lots of people aren’t aware that Blue Origin hasn’t had even one launch to orbit yet. Or even a failed attempt. They literally haven’t left the starting line yet.

And that they were founded before SpaceX. It really emphasizes that space remains an extremely difficult industry, which makes all the recent progress even more exciting.

There seems to be decent business in suborbital niche.

The current lame duck CEO, Bob Smith, was pretty unpopular and ineffective. We’ll see if his replacement is any better.

From [0]:

> As a space reporter, I have spoken with dozens of current and former Blue Origin employees, and virtually none of them have had anything positive to say about Smith's tenure as chief executive. I asked one current employee about the hiring of Limp on Monday afternoon, and their response was, "Anything is better than Bob."

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/bob-smith-is-finally-g...

I tend not to think of Rocket Lab as an American company as it was founded in New Zealand. But considering that its is mostly growing in the US now, maybe it is after all.

It's incorporated in the US, headquartered in CA, and traded on NASDAQ so it's definitely a US company, just one with a NZ heritage.

[Cries in UK at how great companies feel they have to move to America to succeed]

[Would like to cry in EU, but can't because Threads is blocked.]

Most folks don't realise that RocketLab is also more than just a launch provider. They have diversified into providing their own satellite platform, Photon. Which I think, in itself, is a innovative product for space.

It is the platform NASA is using for the upcoming ESCAPADE mission to Mars. And it was used for the CAPSTONE Lunar mission, for example.

Bezos has one advantage while the current regime in in place: he is not Musk, he is ideologically aligned and as such can get favours without much pressure on actually delivering.

As to whether Amazon's Spacelink competitor will be launched depends on whether BO can get their New Glenn rocket - a Falcon 9 competitor - up and running. If they do they should be able to 'launch their own dogfood' just like SpaceX is doing with Starlink on Falcon 9.

The US government keeps funding SpaceX through a number military and civilian contracts. Not to mention the in kind support that SpaceX receives from NASA. Arianespace does not get as many publicly funded contracts that would pay for expensive R&D programs.

Also, nobody outside of SpaceX really knows how much their reusable first stages really saves them. That’s especially true for the Falcon Heavy (which is comparable to the Ariane 6) where the center stage does not / cannot be reused.

It would be great to see the stats. The fact that they are actually reusing them (up to 18 times on their most used booster core!) probably says it makes economic sense.

> The US government keeps funding SpaceX through a number military and civilian contracts

The US government "funds" SpaceX in the same way you fund Apple when you buy an iPhone or Shell when you buy gas.

They are a customer, they pay for a product/service.

They are not giving money for free just to keep them afloat.

> The US government "funds" SpaceX in the same way you fund Apple when you buy an iPhone or Shell when you buy gas.

It's a bit different. Without the US gov as a early customer taking lots of risk, they company wouldn't exist. Apple or Shell wouldn't change even if 100,000 customers decided not to buy their products/service anymore.

> The first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the United States Department of Defense under a program that evaluates new US launch vehicles suitable for use by DARPA. The first three launches of the rocket, between 2006 and 2008, all resulted in failures, which almost ended the company. Financing for Tesla Motors had failed, as well, and consequently Tesla, SolarCity, and Musk personally were all nearly bankrupt at the same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_Falc...

That's not "keeps funding". Which is what GP was objecting to.

> Without the US gov as a early customer taking lots of risk, they company wouldn't exist

OK, it's like early Apple customers buying the Apple I.

Without those customers taking the risk Apple wouldn't exist today.

Still just a customer buying something, not "funding" in the way you make it sound.

If they pay more than the open-market price (and they were, in the early days - they were paying significantly more than any commercial customer would have paid such an unproven entity, explicitly because they saw strategic value in SpaceX's existence) then that's funding them.

I believe the CRS contracts carried a launch failure penalty and a no-insurance (mission assurance) clause like the LSP, which would’ve fetched a higher price.

Hmm? The center stage can definitely be reused, they just lost two (one on landing, one in transit on the drone ship) and had multiple missions that needed the extra performance from expending the core.

> Arianespace does not get as many publicly funded contracts that would pay for expensive R&D programs

Arianespace is a shitshow. Our Yankee analogs are Boeing and Lockheed. They could each absorb unlimited funding to design substandard packaging for peanuts.

> The US government keeps funding SpaceX through a number military and civilian contracts

The US government funds satellite/space stuff generally. Look at how much money has been spent on DoD polar orbit, MEO (GPS, etc) and geostationary orbit satellite development, construction, launch costs and associated earth station construction over the past 20 years. Mostly from traditional DoD contractors like Boeing and United Launch Alliance. Throwing some money at SpaceX is actually quite "new".

If you stop building any highly technical thing for a long period of time, you lose the institutional knowledge base and engineers/technicians who can do it. The UK had a great deal of trouble and delays when they re-started nuclear submarine construction after a 15+ year gap with the Astute class, because everyone who was involved in that industry had gone and done something else or retired. It's pretty logical from a national-security point of view that the Europeans and ESA want to maintain a minimum level of capability to launch stuff on their own, even if it's not as "good" as a re-usable Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy.

> The US government keeps funding SpaceX through a number military and civilian contracts.

The US government is a big customer if that’s what you mean. It does not overpay to use spacex (goes with lowest bidder between them an ULA).

You’re vaguely trying to imply that spacex is only kept alive by the government like Arianespace and that’s pretty dumb. It has at least one US competitor to beat on gov contracts and global competitors on non-gov contracts that it consistently takes the cake from on cost.

> Also, nobody outside of SpaceX really knows how much their reusable first stages really saves them.

The implication being what? It spends a fortune on barges and refurbishing as an elaborate hoax or fraud because its not a significant cost saver?

For heavy, as a sibling pointed out, the center stage is reusable. The recent launches paid extra to sacrifice it for orbital parameters. “At the customers request” on the webcast.

Look, I’m all for competition in the launch space because I don’t like monopoly players, but pretending spacex is like the others living on a government feeding tube is laughable.

Here’s the litmus test. Which company wins bids for non-government contracts?

> It does not overpay to use spacex (goes with lowest bidder between them an ULA)

If it was always going to the lowest bidder, SpaceX would beat ULA on price on most missions and ULA would likely no longer be viable. They make sure ULA wins enough contracts to remain viable, even if that costs more than giving them to SpaceX

Yes, that’s an argument against ULA. Not proof spacex is completely on the tit of the government in the same way.

Yes, I wasn’t disagreeing with the overall point of your comment, just that one thing you said in it

Falcon 9 has become the most advanced, most reliable, least expensive rocket over the course of a decade. NASA get those capabilities for less than the money that Europe will have spent on Arianne 6.

SpaceX only get paid as they can deliver. Europe cover the cost of Arianne 6 development, and will continue to do so.

Falcon 9 will likely have up to 100 launches in 2023. Arianne 6 is planned to have at most a dozen launch when it’s matured, which is still several years away

Strangely, spacex also pushed nasa to just pay for launches rather than doing the cost-plus thing the US government usually does for development. Either they wanted to show off, or dramatically increase the number of launches and become even more competitive with economies of scale.

>The US government keeps funding SpaceX through a number military and civilian contracts

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but to me it came across as the gov't giving money to SpaceX just to keep it alive instead of the US gov't actively doing business with a company successfully launching their assets into orbit.

NASA continuing to award Blue Origin contracts is funding BO since they haven't done anything.

It's both. Pretty much the same kind of dispute ended up for decades in a gridlock between the US and Europe with regards tobgiverbment subsidies between Boeing and Airbus. That one ended with a settlement.

> I suspect that the US gave a heavy push to SpaceX

I think they just gave contracts, not any grants or funding. And they got contract after successful test flight of falcon 9 afaik. I would hardly consider this heavy.

It was the Falcon 1, a small rocket with a single Merlin engine on its first stage. The Falcon 9 is a serious rocket with 9 on the same engine (hence the name) which came later.

As for the contract, it was a $1.6B contract, not small. And sure, it wasn't a grant, something was expected in return, but in practice, it was essentially the same, SpaceX wouldn't have been able to survive without it, and grant or contract, had they missed the chance, it would have been the end. Also, the US regularly gives new contracts to SpaceX, and I suspect at an inflated price compared to purely commercial launches. In theory, these are not subsidies, but in practice, I can't imagine NASA and the US government not do anything in their power to keep SpaceX healthy as they don't have anything better by far.

I am not saying SpaceX would definitely have survived without government, but just disagreeing on the "heavy push" part if it just done for mutual benefit. Government only works with SpaceX because it is cheaper or better, not because they want SpaceX to succeed.

Would they be as eager to work with a non American company which could offer the same price etc.? Even an European one? Highly unlikely..

They used to use Russian rockets as well just few years back because it was cheaper[1], even though US has an more expensive replacement. I don't see any reason why US won't opt for europe's rocket if it means better cost.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/2014/5/5/5674744/how-nasa-became-utterly...

> Russian rockets as well just few years back because it was cheaper

Your link says that US had no homegrown option, when it used russian rockets.

The only part that matches “because cheaper”, was atlas rockets using soviet engines, but that also had additional reasoning of keeping russian rocket engineers away from iran and north Korea.

So overall, US definitely will subsidise a US company. (If not spacex, then other company which demonstrates competence) Strategically it is a must have capability. If you depend on others, you open your self up for bunch of risks.

US had space shuttle which was the better in most of the metrics compared to Russia except cost. They knowingly discarded it because Russian rockets were cheaper.

That not what we’re talking about though. I’m sure they might use their rockets but they wouldn’t support their manufacturer the way they do SpaceX.

Even if there were superior foreign options NASA/etc. would rather work with an American company as long as it’s not hopelessly behind.

Did you even read my comment? NASA was ahead with Space Shuttle in terms of technology(at least not hopelessly behind) but still selected Russian rockets because of lower price. And working with Europe is definitely better for NASA in terms of PR than working with Russia.

> and I suspect at an inflated price compared to purely commercial launches

They do cost more than commercial launches, but that is because they have extra requirements that commercial customers don't, and that adds a bunch to the total cost to fly those missions.

https://spacenews.com/40006spacex-says-requirements-not-mark...

That $1.6B contract was not free, they had to do a whole lot of work for it. In fact, this was an incredible cheap price for what SpaceX had to provide. So cheap in fact that SpaceX lost money on this contract. And they didn't just get $1.6B in cash, the had to clear many milestones and actually fly missions before they got the money.

Had Arianespace been required to actually do the same thing, it would likely have cost the government 4+ billion $.

So this 'not small' contract was actually an incredible hart to fulfill and incredibly risky gamble by SpaceX.

spacex is the DoD. that is why russia has such a hard time competing

There was quite a bit of technology and know-how transfer in the field of rocket engine design. The did not start from scratch.

Yeah

SpaceX is the exception here

The other US competitors are kinda behind as well, see the ULA Vulcan, or non-existent

So yeah it's not about being the cheapest, it's about having the capability

Politics on a very fundamental level is creating this competition. That’s even the whole premise of “All of Mankind” and the historic Space Race. It’s irrelevant if it’s for political reasons or capitalistic ones, competition beats no competition.

After checking the Falcon rockets stats… that's really impressive.

They had more successful launches in 7 years than Ariane in its whole history.

It seems that this rocket is not yet out and operational but already “obsolete”.

I guess this is the price for independence. Or wrong incentives.

Or payload size ?

Why haven't they started working on reusable rockets the second SpaceX showed us it could be done?

I think they did. But that does not mean they drop everything they already have much further in the pipeline as if launch capability between now and whenever they have caught up wasn't part of what they are paid for.

They did not. Ariane 6 started mid 2010s timeframe, when Falcon 9 had became successfully reusable. They continued to spout nonsense such as reusability would keep rocket factory idle. Europe won’t have reusable rocket until 2030s at the earliest, almost 20 years after SpaceX

https://europeanspaceflight.com/europe-will-introduce-a-reus...

I really, really shoupd have kept that study offline somewhere...

Back the day, before SpaceX came along a serious launch provider, ESA conducted a study on the financial viability of reuseable rockets. The conclusion was, that they are viabke, technically feasible but only financially interestung with a number of launches per year for which there was no demand.

SpaceX for sure is launching a lot of their own Starlink satellites...

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/syal5p/about_...

> Breakeven in 2 to 3 flights

But then, 7 days ago he posted on https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/17wos9u/tory_bruno_ceo...

> As I have said before, propulsive fly-back generally requires an average reuse of 10x per booster, which has been achieved.

So maybe it is difference between SMART (catch by helicopter) re-use and propulsive landing

But he does acknowledge in comments that reuse can improve launch cadence.

Which mirrors what I remember from said ESA study (which for love of the universe cannot find online anymore, and I didn't download it back the day). The big question I took from that study was, which was also the point of it, was whether or not if there is enough demand to get over that threshold (whatever the ESA number was) to justify the development of a reusable booster. The answer back then was, back when Starlink wasn't a thing yet and the Russians were still in the market, was no, there isn't enough demand.

Today, it seems, a lot of the launch volume comes from Starlink, which is basically SpaceX in-house demand for something we have no clue about its financial viability or profitability. Hence, I am quite sceptic about a lot of the space launch stuff. We have quite reliable numbers for SpaceX competitors (launch costs, development...) while SpaceX is somewhat of a black box. That alone makes comparing claims from SpaceX (which might well be true, but we cannot tell either way) to verifiable numbers from others dubious at best.

> SpaceX in-house demand for something we have no clue about its financial viability or profitability

Starlink achieved cash-flow breakeven it seems: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-starlink-h...

But the journalism... that statement is only in the title.

"Elon Musk (or any other person for that matter) says..." and "last quarters results show that" are not even in the same universe so.

Edit: This is the first time I hear the term "Cash-Flow Break-even"... Is this metric from the same set as "Cash-flow before outside investment" and "Community adjusted EBITDA"?

Cash flow positive is simple. In a given time period your income is more than your expenses. It doesn't cover what you've spent in the past

I know. It isn't called break-even so, that is profits. And cash-flow and profits live on different axis.

True, but profits are limited to financial years. The real question is when they'll have made more than they've spent lifetime. For Tesla it's happened, same for Falcon 9 and Dragon.

What's questionable is starlink, starship and Falcon Heavy

Yeah a problem we were talking about a lot a few years back, before Starlink, was that SpaceX could not find enough market for the amount of launch they needed.

Starlink has been their solution to that but it is still an open question how well that makes money and for how long...

And we have not really seen a space market exploding behind it.

SpaceX first landed rocket on Dec, 2015. Then people were like: ok, you landed, let's see if it will fly or has any economical impact.

Sure, now no-one questions whether landing a rocket is possible at all and whether it is worth it.

There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper. Even independent reports cite "a potential of 30% cost savings".

> There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper.

What a ridiculous statement...

This just in, blowing up your car is cheaper than refilling the tank, wow!

There's proof right now btw, in SpaceX's Falcon prices vs others.

Plus the common sense that remaking something is more expensive than not.

That's not ridiculous the Space shuttle is the proof that reusable can be tricky… however for falcon 9 there is few doubt that it must be cheaper.

I'm talking about cheapest overall.

Done properly, reusable will always be cheaper, inheritly.

There is a mathematical equation, a function of variables, on whether the reuse business case closes. The variables are, off the top of my head (I might have missed some) the base carrying cost of all the people necessary to run the space-ship factory, the incremental cost of refurbishing the rocket and the incremental cost of building a new one, plus the overhead both in payload and engineering effort to get that reusability. The result of the equation is how many flights per year is necessary for re-usability to pay off.

So for the Space Shuttle reusability did not pay off, because it had a low flight rate and a very high cost of refurbishment (the Solid Rocket Boosters in particular probably never paid off- due to the landing into the ocean and the salt-water dunking they had to be fully taken apart after every flight, inspected, and put back together, and that meant that you actually had labor costs of twice the work of just assembling a new one- the materials cost savings was simply not worth that). This is one reason that SpaceX ended up abandoning their original plan of recovering engines from the ocean, though they were trying to do it much harder with liquid fuel engines rather than the simple solids that STS used.

One interesting thing about SpaceX (a privately held company, which does not publish useful financials) is that they have also claimed they invested a lot into the factory for churning out engines with many fewer man-hours than their western competitors. That investment might not make sense if you are counting on reusing all your engines many times before they are replaced- unless you are looking at many many launches of Falcon Heavy, which I will be curious to see if they actually do (the market for super heavy rockets like that has never really existed at more than 5ish a year, and I'm personally uncertain if satellite internet can get there).

Before SpaceX came along, the (Russian) Progress company was the cheapest in the world, with their R7 Semyorka (Soyuz 2 is the modern version) rocket family. That was because the Soviet Union had invested in a very heavily automated, highly productive launch factory (they launched a bucket-dropping spy satellite every two weeks, plus manned launches, Progress resupply flights, Molniya commsats, etc. so they had a very high flight rate) that needed very little in the way of manpower to make their engines and rockets- and that investment definitely paid off, the R-7 family has flown into space more than any other rocket in human history. But making it reusable and investing heavily in highly automated production tend to cut against each other as solutions to the cost problem until you get to extremely high flight rates.

Whether you think that at current flight rates the numbers point to re-usability comes down to how much you trust Musk the businessman (personally not very much), and how much you trust Shotwell to manage Musk and bring the company to a good place in spite of Musk's random perturbations (personally I have great faith in Gwynne, but your mileage may vary).

Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, China, all plan to have reusable rockets. Europe too at a much later date. Are you saying they all plan that because of SpaceX envy?

> There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper.

there is no proof that re-using something expensive instead of throwing it away every single time is more economical?

You might want to reconsider that opinion

You can overdo it with skepticism...

It takes about three weeks to reuse a Falcon 9 first stage and no major parts are exchanged. Which indicates that, unlike with the Space Shuttle, the refurbishment is pretty straightforward.

New parts and work of qualified humans are two biggest cost items and if both are obviously not that high, the total cost of reuse cannot be that high.

Because Europeans are waaaay more risk averse. Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years.

We have completely lost visionary people ever since the fall of the USSR. Our politicians are mere managers (and often enough, they're extremely bad even in that role), our economy leaders largely only care about their own bottom line, and while our universities generally churn out decent graduates, they completely dropped the ball on innovation, research and actually retaining staff - made more difficult by the fact that we don't have absurd amounts of money sloshing around from donations, estates and other sources.

Please take a look around ESA endeavours before making such cynical claims. For one, take a look at ESO.

Comparing private companies to public funded ones is such a ill founded idea... I can't even begin to comprehend the optics of most in this thread, if I'm being honest.

> Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years

"Non-response". Renault had electric vehicles on the market in 2012 (Zoe), same year as the Tesla Model S. The BMW i3 came out in 2013. Different focus, slightly slower research for some groups to get a common platform (e.g. VW), but it's not like there was absolutely nothing and it took 10 years for European car manufacturers to realise EVs can work.

Tbf, i was working at one at the time. Finding the space in the chassis for the battery and adapting it and suspension to the weight of an EV meant they had to develop platforms for EV nearly from scratch.

Without any idea of the market demand. At the current cost of developing new Platforms (a few billions), you could understand being risk adverse. Low sales would have killed the whole companies.

Especially for companies such as Renault who could share some R&D costs with Nissan, but are still quite small and a wrong bet can bankrupt them.

Considering what happened when Renault announced massive layoffs, I'd not be too happy jeopardising the company either.

because they are not even trying to be competitive.

> Ariane 6

At this stage Ariane is just a money-burning program to create jobs that are supported only for political purposes. makes no financial sense at all, it's all obsolete tech.

But how will Europe be independent of its adversaries like the US, Russia or China without it ? It's like, yeah it's not bleeding edge, but to deploy our military satellites it's better than nothing, isn't it ?

Why spit on it, imagine the situation was reversed, you'd be happy NASA had some sort of alternative to China to launch stuff no ?

> imagine the situation was reversed

I find that the exact same people who place free market above all social concerns, will happily give up quite a lot for national security, but sneer when others do the same.

Since when has Europe been independent militarily speaking? Ever heard of NATO?

But you're talking very generally: we are independent militarily: if the US attack us, we can attempt a defense. If Afghanistan could free itself eventually, I'm sure we can find a way as well. My country has nukes (and owns the territory launching Ariane rockets) and NATO can't tell us what to do with them.

NATO is not a US-controlled army defending Europe. It's a collaborative alliance to scare a bit anyone trying to invade us, but it's not gonna do us any good if the US decide to become crazy or if one of their critical allies attack us and they don't want to risk it.

France has a policy of not being 100% dependant on USA when it comes to important matters of state, defence, etc.

Notably it allowed them to stay out of folly like the Iraq war.

Looks like it did not work too well when it came to Ukraine

Ukraine is not at all comparable to Iraq.

> It’s unfortunate that Ariane 6 already has no realistic chance of being price competitive with Space X

The difference between the two looks a lot smaller when one considers the total price including the payload.

800M satellite + 75M for an Ariane 6 versus 800M satellite + 65M for a Falcon is, well, not quite a rounding error, but probably within the acceptable margin for keeping it in the European family for many projects.

Falcon 9 payload is way more than that of Ariane 6. Ariane 62 (smaller variant, the one which costs 75M) has an LEO delivery capacity of ~10,000kg. Falcon 9 has a fully expended capacity of ~23,000kg and a reusable capacity of ~19,000 kg.

Cost per kg on Ariane is unfortunately going to be more than double Falcon 9.

Shouldn't we be comparing Ariane 6 with Starship not falcon 9?

Starship is in similar stage of development and by the time A6 comes online it will compete with Starship not falcon .

That's difficult since I don't think anyone at SpaceX has talked about Starship launch costs and it's even more difficult because the comparison will be even worse for Ariane.

Well, Elon has been making crazy claims, of course. "Orders of magnitude" and so on.

For Falcon 9, the costs and payloads aren't just claims. You can go to SpaceX today and buy a flight.

For Starship, it's an in-development rocket with a focus on novel technology as well as cost engineering. Orders of magnitude cheaper is a great goal but it's impossible to know if or when SpaceX can achieve it.

$800mm is going to be a very hyperspecialized satellite. Normal weather or comms satellite is more like $200-$300mm.

it is price competitive with SLS

So SpaceX is in the blacks? Last time i checked they still lose money and rely on gov subsidies / contracts... Ofc, then it is easy to say a corp is cost-competetive.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/08/27/despite-rare-profi...

Cost-competitiveness isn't about your total profit, or about whether your customers include governments. It's about how much it costs to launch a rocket.

They are spending money to make more money later.

> subsidies

e.g. the government giving them free money just so they can continue to exist? SpaceX does not survive on subsidies.

> contracts

Doing work in exchange for money? Yes, that's how SpaceX survives. That's the way any rocket company is supposed to survive, yet you're construing this as somehow a bad thing. Seems like a sad case of EDS.

Is there a video?

Yes there is!

Ariane 6 full stage engine hot-fire test

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HGoQhepVUio

Yes. https://x.com/esa/status/1727773869702856901?s=46&t=xvVku2nN...

Congratulations! Hope they manage to land it as well.

Good backup plan for the Europeans, maybe also good as a competition. But is it really a competition? In what areas?

But how many more decades until ESA finally has a launch vehicle stack with a fully reusable first stage? It’s like theyre still living in the 70s.

Many more. ESA is still stuck in the dark ages where anything space is primarily used as pork to distribute funds across the EU.

When pork distribution is the purpose inefficiency is a feature not a bug.

ESA has made some amazing contributions to probe and robotic missions. I really wish Europeans weren't always so cynical about the agency; some positive attention might do a lot to light the fire, too.

Thats a good point and it would be nice if humanity could divide and conquer responsibilitys in a more effective way. I mean It would be nice if Europe would specialize in deep space vehicles if this is what their best at.

They could allow SpaceX and the Chinese to compete for the Earth/Mars ship & cycler market, while Europe could step one step further distant. and become the king of ultra-long-haul journeys such as between Jupiter’s moons, the asteroids, etc.

Eventually this could culminate in Europe leading the creation of modern, state of the art new vehicles to run the Grand Tour and go so fast they outrace the Voyagers.

..Somewhere in these paragraphs I totaly forgot to make a good pun about ruling Europa

> and become the king of ultra-long-haul journeys

In terms of "looking far away", Euclid is pretty amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(spacecraft)

Incredible

> I really wish Europeans weren't always so cynical about the agency

It's hard to be anything else but that given the colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects. So much inefficiency and waste just because we can't get our shit together.

We try to be a second USA, but we lack the willpower to do so - we have no clear, democratically backed European leadership (just look into how von der Leyen got into office!), the leadership that we do have is 90% incompetent duds that were shifted off to Brussels because their host countries wanted to get rid of them, the parliament can't even submit own proposals for laws, and the EU barely has any federal tax income so its budget is almost exclusively member state contributions and debt. On top of that, many countries choose to propose highly unpopular laws in Brussels, get them passed there, and blame "the EU" when local voters get enraged.

Well when you want to look at the absolute maximum waste of resources just look at SLS. It's just government space that's inefficient. This is not limited to Europe.

And I personally don't want us to be a second USA. I don't want that high level of crime and social inequality, low level of social welfare etc. Extreme prices of medical care in the US. Ubiquitous firearms. Here we do care about the climate, about privacy, work-life balance (holidays) and so many other things the US doesn't care about. The US measures everything in money. We don't. Quality of life is not about who produces the most billionaires.

The EU is not a great institution I have to admit but I wouldn't trade it for the US. Here I just go to the doctor when I'm sick and I don't have to even whip out my wallet.

Von der Leyen is not the sharpest tool but EU presidents are chosen to be the least offensive to everyone's national interests, not to be some strongman leader. I'd much rather have her in that position than someone like Trump. We don't have a political system trying to tear itself apart.

We're doing just great and launch capability is a tiny rounding error in the equation of what being in the EU means to citizens. It's like Africa laughing at us because we're so inefficient at producing bananas. Sure if you ignore literally everything else it looks like they're better.

I thought von der leyen was picked to be the most offensive to all of southern europe?

Anyway, there is no such thing as president of the eu.

> Here I just go to the doctor when I'm sick and I don't have to even whip out my wallet.

Except when your state provided healthcare ends up inadequate and you find out there are no other options.

Except when your family member ends up uninsured and you find out insurance is actually tied to employment, just like in the US.

Except when you need dental care which costs as much as in the US, but your salary is 4x lower and taxes 2x higher.

What are you talking about? The insurance is not tied to the job, it is tied to the income. No income = free insurance.

> No income = free insurance

Depends on the location and various factors. It's not universal.

SLS already did a successful moon orbit last year. Starship hasn't even made it into orbit so far.

> colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects

This is simply fiction.

EU is mules better than USA at building infrastructure, cost per mile is 4 to 9 times lower for bridges / roads / tonnels than USA/UK. The financial times has a report on it.

The EU is / has built like 5 record holding tonnels in the past five years, the base tonnel in the alps, the underwater tonnel in scandinavia, etc.

Each of those projects is in the same sort of scale as the much beleaguered Californian rail, or HighSpeed 2 in UK, and is completed 4 times faster and cheaper per mile, with less political in-fighting and sabotage.

I would argue that civil infrastructure is actually one of the most important things for an average joe

https://youtu.be/kc29axOAzRs?si=8YBTIhKqM0jtOoIW

https://youtu.be/QiYvXKQksgI?si=41sQX-rYW38iW1x7

https://youtu.be/30foJiPUrBA?si=UTkoMR_ZlrVCnzkp

> It's hard to be anything else but that given the colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects. So much inefficiency and waste just because we can't get our shit together.

I'm seriously wondering what kind of brainwashing are you reading to think that - and why are you ignorring all the "colossal" successes many of the projects also are.

Maybe cut out on american media a bit?

China already ditched their plans for expendable super heavy lift and doubled down on copying Starship after the success of Falcon Heavy. At least long term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_9

I guess there’s still a lot of legacy gov backed ones with full sunk cost dynamics in the short term. Although I admittedly don’t have much knowledge of the business side.

Nobody except SpaceX has developed reusable rocket stages, including other US-based aerospace companies. And it is very unclear how much SpaceX really saves in launch costs.

SpaceX has already reused some Falcons 16 times. They're aiming for 20 and Elon, being Elon, thinks they can do 100x. At this point, the biggest expense will be fuel.

How much cost is there to get a reused stage ready for the next flight? E.g. where does it land on the scale from "replace 30% of the parts due to wear and tear, and do a full disassembly reassembly, saving only 5% of the cost of the booster" to "full up the gas tank like a car and yolo the next ride"?

All I know if is the one tweet from musk years ago that said 90% savings. But ... musk tweets a lot of bullshit so idk

For all we know, SpaceX could be taking a page of out Amazon's book and undercutting competitors while losing money and sustaining it long enough to monopolize the market. Then they raise prices.

Almost all of spaceXs launches are to launch their own sats. Simply put if their costs were as high as other providers they couldn't afford to do it. Other providers costs are out of control.

That story had been told forever. First time over heard it about Amazon.

Amazon lost money for nine years after its founding. <https://www.computerworld.com/article/2575106/amazon-records...>

And it undercut its sellers <https://www.npr.org/2023/10/11/1204264632/amazon-sellers-pri...>

The money has to come from somewhere. Where's this place?

Intesa Sanpaolo banking and Saudi Arabia, among others. $9.8B in funding over 31 rounds, and 84 different investors.

They didn't invest until recently and 9.8 billion isn't enough to cover what SpaceX has done and still cover selling launches at a loss

SpaceX has a median turnaround time between landing and re-launch of about 8 weeks, with some as low as 3 weeks. That includes time for returning the landing platform to port, unloading, payload integration of the new payload, etc, so refurbishment is some fraction of that.

There's no way they're stripping the whole thing down and replacing 30% of parts in that short of a timeframe. Especially given they do it in Florida, and don't bring them back to the factory. So it's hard to say for sure, but the time can give us some sense of what they must be doing.

Right, those were two extreme ends of a spectrum I presented, both of which are obviously not true. What I don't know is where on the spectrum their savings are.

It’s hard to compare because the rocket is designed to be reusable, but as someone that is both a fan of launch of vehicles and in/adjacent to the industry: 30-85%, and I’d bet it’s the high end. Falcon 9 is a really, really big deal in launch capability and affordability.

If you're only saving 5% you just let it burn up on the way down since you lose the much in landing fuel weight and legs. While Musks numbers are likely over optimistic the saving are large enough that it's worth the weight.

This booster, designated with the serial number B1058, has now flown 18 times

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/a-historic-falcon-9-is...

I suppose the biggest expense is going to be not fuel (methane and LOX are cheap commodities), but the time of the spaceport, of all the people doing the integration and testing of the stack, which takes weeks if not months with trickier payloads.

> But how many more decades until ESA finally has a launch vehicle stack with a fully reusable first stage? It’s like theyre still living in the 70s.

Note that NASA also doesn't have one: It only has SpaceX'.

Europe has a fair number of private rocket startups, e.g. Isar, Orbex, RFA ... some have seen government investments. We'll see if/when ESA becomes one of their customers.

> Note that NASA also doesn't have one: It only has SpaceX'.

Another way of saying this is that SpaceX is a contractor; which means that both NASA and the ESA 'own' the same # of reusable rockets (zero), and have the ability to purchase the same number of reusable rockets from the industry (one, from spaceX).

Arianespace cannot afford to experiment like SpaceX can, hence they take their time to make sure the first launch will be a customer launch that has a high likelihood of being successful.

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