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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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.

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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