-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
The penultimate (second to last) launch of Ariane 5 happened today. It was successful. Ariane 5 has a very good history with 116 launches (3 partial failures and 2 complete failures) for the rocket.
Coming up soon is the similar looking Ariane 6. This new rocket has more than 40 launches booked in the coming years.
Coming up soon is the similar looking Ariane 6. This new rocket has more than 40 launches booked in the coming years.
Europe continues to fall behind on Ariane 6 development, and way behind in the ongoing shift to reusable rockets.
Eric Berger: Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket is turning into a space policy disaster
Politico: EU turns to Elon Musk to replace stalled French rocket
Ouch.
Eric Berger: Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket is turning into a space policy disaster
Politico: EU turns to Elon Musk to replace stalled French rocket
Ouch.
SpaceX has already launched a few EU sats (I think) and just like NG needing to get a new Antares up and running, they are both using SpaceX in the interim. So this is not really too surprising.
Yep. And worth pointing out that the EU isn’t looking at F9 exclusively. Vulcan is a mentioned path forward as well. (Though given Vulcan maturity and their Kuiper stacked manifest, it doesn’t make sense to go to Vulcan as a backup for a delayed A6…)
It’s also worth pointing out that A6 delays really aren’t a function of the technical concept or generally not making a rocket The SpaceX Way. Folks who have done work with either A or B can attest that Ariane 6—being both A) a major project undertaken by a major European conglomerate and B) a major state funded project subject to fiscal rebalancing—was always going to be a recipe for disaster from a schedule/get-to-market perspective.
Even still, near as makes no difference they’re looking at 10 years from conception to service which isn’t completely crazy for a legacy evolution. Vulcan is trending to 9 years. For reference F9 was 5 years for a white paper to service (though if we’re apples-to-applesing, probably more like 7-8…hence the ‘not completely crazy’ from above).
It’s also also worth pointing out that pricing isn’t quite as cut and dry as Berger implies. F9 is definitely upwards of ~20% cheaper than A6’s entry/non-evolved price performance and obviously that’s a win for a cost conscious customer, but the way the rockets are typically used is also different and if one takes that into account the value landscape is a bit different. A5 historically has done a lot of dual manifest flights to GTO and A6 certainly was conceived with that in mind—if we do the maths on current day pricing, A6 ends up being ~5% cheaper than F9 for customers to GTO. (Of course there’s other upsides to F9 and room for F9 to get into price wars, but the main point is that it’s not simply a slam dunk for customers to choose F9 on price.)
Technical problem postpones final Ariane 5 launch
Arianespace has postponed the final launch of the Ariane 5, potentially for several weeks, after discovering a potential problem with the rocket.
spacenews.com
The hits keep coming for everyone. This is about Vega, the small launch rocket for the ESU. Delayed until next year. So no Ariane 5, 6, the Soyuz they bought from Russia, and now the new Vega. So as a commenter points out, the ESU is stuck with ISRO and SpaceX for getting payloads to orbit.
spacenews.com
Vega C suffers setback in return to flight effort
A solid rocket motor for Europe’s Vega C rocket malfunctioned during a static-fire test June 28, likely pushing back the vehicle’s return to flight to 2024.
spacenews.com
Scott’s latest video doesn’t pull any punches; the ESA rocket program is in disarray.
My opinion is that by the time the Ariane 6 starts launching it will be so overpriced compared to F9 and Starship and various other commercial rocket companies that it will have to subsist on EU government launches and in a few years will be cancelled.
My opinion is that by the time the Ariane 6 starts launching it will be so overpriced compared to F9 and Starship and various other commercial rocket companies that it will have to subsist on EU government launches and in a few years will be cancelled.
Not likely. F9's will be cheaper but, as bxr140 has pointed out, the importance of getting it into position in the best way can supersede pricing. Starship is just a game changer and its disruption will be strongly felt five to ten years after it starts launching regularly. Possibly sooner, it is such a wild card. F9 showcased reuse in 2015. It wasn't until 2020 that the impact from reuse really began affecting the launch market.
ESA confirms Ariane 6 debut to slip to 2024
The European Space Agency acknowledged Aug. 8 what most of the space industry had long expected: the first flight of the Ariane 6 will not happen this year.
spacenews.com
ESA postpones Ariane 6 hot-fire test again
The European Space Agency says a test-firing of an Ariane 6 core stage has been postponed again, this time because of issues with ground equipment.
spacenews.com
ESA to set target for first Ariane 6 launch after upcoming tests
ESA plans to set a target launch period for the first Ariane 6 in October, with the hopes that vehicle can finally take flight “not too late” into 2024.
spacenews.com
Ariane 6 completes short-duration engine test
ESA and ArianeGroup announced a successful hot-fire test of the core stage of the Ariane 6 rocket Sept. 5, the first of two such tests.
spacenews.com
Eric Berger: Ariane 6 cost and delays bring European launch industry to a breaking point
The sunk costs fallacy; while watching a cheaper reusable rocket take over the launch business in the past decade, ESA kept pouring money into building a completely non-reusable rocket and now that Ariane 6 is finally getting close to its first launch it is economically unsustainable (just like another rocket that starts with an A).
Ariane 6 should have been cancelled 5 years ago and been re-designed as a reusable vehicle. After all, the model for how to do that was self-evident…
…and no cost savings. What a bloody fiasco.
The sunk costs fallacy; while watching a cheaper reusable rocket take over the launch business in the past decade, ESA kept pouring money into building a completely non-reusable rocket and now that Ariane 6 is finally getting close to its first launch it is economically unsustainable (just like another rocket that starts with an A).
Ariane 6 should have been cancelled 5 years ago and been re-designed as a reusable vehicle. After all, the model for how to do that was self-evident…
It was never going to happen. Ariane has been attracting people for decades who are steeped in expendable rockets that launch at long intervals as part of a national prestige program. Those are not the people that you need to tackle rapidly-reusable rockets. Worse, they won't step aside to let others do the job. It's their job, their paycheck, their prestige, etc. They just aren't capable of thinking in terms of this new paradigm.
It's the same as legacy auto pivoting to electric cars; the foundations of the gasoline car industry extend too deep to be able to just pull up stakes and do something else.
Not really.
The lifecycle of an Ariane rocket is a function of a mega sized, heavily state funded European conglomerate, all within that conglomerate trying to achieve a singular goal that isn'y really the priority for anyone except for perhaps Arianespace (all 200 employees...). The nobody walks away happy compromise decisions leaders of the various direct entities come to on overall direction are simply the most informed they can be when they're made and are heavily based on a) funding and b) demand. Comparing to the Falcon 9 lifecycle, its most important to recognize that falcon had both a) a backstop of effectively unlimited funding PLUS the absence of any other competing corporate interests and b) the internal need to huck an unprecedented amount of *sugar* into space.
a) ArianeGroup, very much like ULA, is a merger of two mega A&D corporations (its a relatively new entity FTR, but near as makes no difference the history is consistent with the point). Like Boeing and LM, Airbus and Safran are also publicly traded and have plenty of other priorities besides trying to design and launch rockets, and so internal funding is always a competition with other much more lucrative business units...not to mention shareholder demands. The state monies coming into the program--very much like various state funded activities in the US and around the world--come with some pretty specific expectations that aren't overly concerned with the commercial profitability (or not) of the product.
In other words, there's not a lot of opportunity for the decision-making leadership within Ariane to act on Big Think. It is in fact NOT at ALL that those people aren't capable of a new paradigm (in fact if you talk to them they all have aspired for A6 to be more than simply a better/upgraded A5), its that they simply aren't given the runway to execute on said paradigm.
b) Its worth reminding that there's an inflection point at which reusable rockets actually become a more cost effective idea than expendable. Much like everything ever in the history of volume anything, one needs to rightsize supply and demand. Just as there's no point in McLaren Automotive building a Toyota Corolla sized production line, there's actually not a lot of value in Ariane dumping $B's into significant reusability based on their and the global launch rates. It's worth highlighting again that, beyond Starlink, there really HASN'T been massive growth in global launch demand. F9 has been (more or less) continually growing, but largely at the expense of their competitors (A5 and to a degree Proton) declining.
Bottom line, Ariane simply doesn't have the ability to offset today's R&D with future launch cost savings of an internal mega constellation like SpaceX could, and that's the volume that's really needed to push their expendable/reusable inflection point to "duh, reusable". Beating the horse, finding mega dollar investors for mega space constellations is REALLY REALLY hard, because rich people out there whose job it is to make money on their investments have a hard time convincing themselves space is profitable.
Anyway, obviously Ariane is still in a bad way and especially given the decline of the GEO (where they're still reasonably competitive with Falcon) will likely be relegated to state funded launches...as it seems to be the future of a post-Kuiper ULA. It's fair to criticize their corporate structure for getting them to this place...and perhaps the point is that's the inevitable conclusion of such a conglomerate? But to not only blame it on the lack of "the people" within Ariane to lean into the future but to actually accuse them of sabotaging growth? No. It's not anywhere that easy.
What's going to be most interesting is to compare this Ariane story to what Rocket Lab and Relativity can do with their 5m vehicles. Both are small [mostly] singularly focused entities--exactly the opposite of Airbus and Safran. Both are relatively well funded and can certainly spend money much more efficiently than Ariane's bureaucracy hierarchy. Both have the upside (to some customers) of "they're not SX", so there's more than just price as a selling point. Rocket lab IS publicly traded, which could be a hiccup, though Pete has generally spent his windfall pretty wisely so there's some shareholder confidence there. Most importantly though, neither have internal demand for mass to orbit, and so they're going to have to be HYPER efficient on spending getting to market to have any chance at being financially sustainable.
They need to hire one of the YouTube channels to cover their stuff. It's great that they provided English commentary, but rocketry can be so much more interesting than that. Drying paint can be made more interesting than that.
Congratulations on the successful test.
Similar threads
