Oops–It looks like the Ariane 6 rocket may not offer Europe any launch savings
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Let's be fair: it provides a fully-European system for subsidizing Jeff Bezos independent of and not reliant on the American system.
Compared to NASA's Senate Launch System, Ariane 6 is shaping up to be a paragon of on-time, under-budget aerospace engineering excellence.
Prior to SpaceX disrupting the market by surprisingly making what was widely regarded as a bad idea actually work, this was the way to go and I would be surprised, maybe angry, if a government backed effort went with a very costly high-risk/high-return project.
A bit like the Alcubierre-White warp drive: I'm fine with a relatively small budget funding research on it, but no sane person would approve "investing" one SLS worth of money in that.
I have no doubt Ariane 7 will be reusable.
So really that 40% even outside of development cost isnt substainable.
> Prior to SpaceX disrupting the market by surprisingly making what was widely regarded as a bad idea actually work, this was the way to go
Well the whole point of the Arine 6 was to compete with SpaceX. Ariane 6 would never have been approved if not for the pressure of SpaceX.
This target price the targed barly even competed with non reusable SpaceX. And SpaceX was already deep in development of reuse tech whem Ariane 6 was approved.
> if a government backed effort went with a very costly high-risk/high-return project.
Instead they went with a very costly low return project.
The odds were never for SpaceX succeeding.
> Instead they went with a very costly low return project.
And while they did it, they developed new motors, new structures and new technology. Even if A6 is not at all cheaper than A5, it kept the engineers employed and sharp. That's more or less the same return NASA gets for SLS - it keeps local industry happy and lowers the likelihood of anyone with relevant knowledge defecting to North Korea.
Cynical rejoinder: The point of Ariane 6 was to give the credible impression of competing with SpaceX. For 5-or-so years. While keeping the government-funding gravy flowing, bureaucratic careers moving forward, and politicians winning elections.
Kinda, but that's also somewhat beside the point. The true differentiator is that the US didn't ONLY go for SLS, it also (in a fortunate, far from guaranteed happy turn of events) funded Commercial Cargo and Crew in a very serious way. So now in 2023 whatever happens with SLS in the end, it no longer actually matters that much strategically. SpaceX is there, and indeed is the big reason why SLS will likely ultimately get killed in the end. The EU in contrast has stuck to its big government pork guns, even right up to this year! "European launch chief insists there be no competition with Ariane rockets" [0] from January for example. And while there are at last some minimal halting steps towards getting a commercial market going, again it's still absolute pocket change compared to what NASA did ("Nearly two decades after NASA, China and Europe eye commercial cargo plans" [1]), it's not the serious accelerator Europe really needs.
Europe absolutely has the population, economy, technology and manufacturing chops to support a serious space effort, but it's not going to come purely from existing institutions anymore than it did in the US. The EU really needs to at least get a serious parallel track going.
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0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/european-launch-chie...
1: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/china-and-europe-both-...
There are countless interviews with ESA and Ariane people where the smug superiority just drips of them.
"Yes SpaceX is cheap but totally unreliable and low launch cadence, once Ariane 6 is out we will be much cheaper then SpaceX"
That was basically the attidude they had.
The whole Falcon program, including new engines, Falcon Heavy, reusability, human rating, multible launch sites all in all cost considerably less then 4 billion $.
The Ariane 6 alone cost 5 billion and likely the total cost until it launched is gone be quite a bit more.
But what people dont understand is that lots of parts of the Ariane 6 arent in its own budget. The upper stage engine has been in development for 20 years. The solid booster tech is its own thing. The core engine is a minimal evolution over the earlier version.
A lot of institutions involved in the development have their own seperate government funding.
If it takes you 5$ billion to do a minimal evolutionary update of the Ariane 5 (with parts already developed for the Ariane 5 ME). Then what would it have cost to develop a totally new reusable booster? 10 billion? 20 billion?
Europe also talks about crew vehicles, but that gone also cost them 7-12 billion the way they develop, and thus it will never happen.
No shame if so, and they are doing good work, just that might be a better point if comparison.
Unless you consider any contract from the government = "subsidies", no.
I knew a guy who worked at the Boeing Osprey plant in Philly and he said it was a job factory, not a helicopter factory.
For a long time SpaceX looked very touch-and-go at best, but could keep up the momentum with promises of government contracts.
Ariane will instead achieve the cost "savings" by receiving some cash, then charging its clients (often governments) a lower price.
Either way, I'm not taking away from SpaceXs achievements.
SpaceX contracts were very contested, and while it helped them borrow money against the CRS contract, they ended up bidding so low that they basically didn't make any money from it.
For your standard NASA launch, there is also competition and you have to bid. Granted there aren't that many competitors but you can't just set a incredibly high cost.
But its important to recognize that Ariane also gets government contract launches. Not as many, but they still get quite a few. That is in addition to the gigantic amount they get for new development, far, far more then SpaceX got. And in addition to that they ALSO get a direct subsidy.
So when comparing to apples to apples, Ariane is dipping in government money pool for basically everything, development, operations and contracts. SpaceX for rockets only got very limited funds for development, non for operation but gets contracts.
So to my mind, SpaceX getting 300M for Falcon 9 and nothing Falcon Heavy, while Ariane is getting 5 billion $ for a inferior rocket that is mostly based on stuff that was already in development and is only iterative improvement over the Ariane 5.
Its patently ridiculous for Ariane bureaucrats to claim SpaceX is getting subsidies, while they literally just received 5 billion $ for a rocket upgrade. SpaceX didn't get 5 billion $ for development of cargo and human capsule plus Falcon rocket. We are talking a whole different dimension in terms of direct subsidy here.
That is also why Ariane bureaucrats just talk about how unfair everything is and have not actually entered anything into the WTO. Because they know they would get laughed out of the room. So its really just them lying and hoping nationalists and depended politicians will eat it up.
I'm just not sure how much help they got from the US or how many Nazi they could grab at the end of the war.
Now in the 21st century, the fact that Arianespace and the entire EU can't really figure out in two decades how to half the cost of it's launcher is worrisome. Clearly those organisations, ability to coordinate or culture have dangerously deteriorated.
Not that small. France was about 48M people in 1965, the US 195M; a factor 4. And the US satellite effort was a rushed, uncoordinated affair split between competing projects by Army and Navy, so the effective factor was more like 2.