Um...yeah? Did anyone familiar with the ESA actually expect otherwise?
Compared to NASA's Senate Launch System, Ariane 6 is shaping up to be a paragon of on-time, under-budget aerospace engineering excellence.
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.
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.
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.
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.