"I am impatiently waiting to understand what reasons could have led Eumetsat to such a decision."
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Mere days before its debut, the Ariane 6 rocket loses a key customer to SpaceX
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Part of the reason is the cadence. Part of the reason is the architectural design.
SpaceX is now hardly amortizing their Falcon 9 development costs. After 350 launches one can consider their investment paid off. The earliest rockets paid the most in amortization. At a goal of 12 per year and a realistic launch rate of 6 or 8 per year, it will take a long time to pay off those costs.
And, of course, amortization can only happen after direct costs have been paid for. Solids are expensive. liquid hydrogen is expensive to handle. Launching from South America is expensive. And not reusing any of the rocket is expensive. So after you're done with all your expensive bits, there just isn't a lot of room to pay off development.
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Hence my comment about getting Antares (or another Kistler-like failure).
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In fact, ESA ended up getting a screaming good deal on their in-kind offering to the JWST program. The cost of an A5 launch was a known and essentially fixed quantity. ESA put it in as their contribution to the program and got a certain percentage of the viewing time in exchange.
Then the US went all James-Webb on the program and the total cost ballooned to an unimaginable number. The cost of the A5 ended up being a much smaller fraction of the overall program cost, but the viewing time assigned to ESA did not change.
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It's a bigger picture than that. The EU (institution) is making repeated power grabs, overstepping their remit. These fines are kept centrally and permit them to build a parallel government without permission (as in elections and treaties). Already being done in defense (lol), foreign affairs and other areas.
It was one of the reasons Brexit happened as the UK population didn't like it. It's going to be a bump ride in europe for a few years.
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Just think if the telescope have a much higher mass and volume constraint without resorting to the Rubes Goldberg folding mechanism. Sun-Earth L2 would be more crowded with all sorts of instruments. (Starship with refueling can't come soon enough).
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You mean like a like a launch vehicle built in Ukraine, using old refurbished Soviet engines? At best, maybe they required it be a US prime contractor.
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You don't make these sorts of decisions on a whim. This was a contract months if not years in the making. Ariane 6 was recently supposed to launch mid-June, and the delay to early July was only announced three weeks ago. It's entirely possible they had planned to make this announcement after the first launch, but Arianespace got in the way.
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Yes. It was still necessary then too. Ariane 6 isn't an Ariane 5 replacement, it's a Soyuz replacement, designed in such a way that they would only need to maintain one common architecture for both missions.
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Ariane 62 is roughly comparable to Falcon 9 1.0, which had already been retired by 2014. It really exists to replace Soyuz on missions that aren't "worthy" of an Ariane 5. Ariane 64 was supposed to replace Ariane 5 with something that shared a common architecture with Ariane 62. The higher staging energy of the "sustainer" design means they scale favorably to high energy launches like GTO and GEO, and Ariane 64 offers much higher performance to GTO than Falcon 9, even expended.
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Ovalwingnut
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Right on! (can I still say that?) Rob.. I did almost the same thing but it wasn't coffee j8Oo"Turd in the punch bowl" -- nearly sprayed my monitor with a mouthful of Coffee.
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Baptiste posted on linkedin. People hate on Twitter. LinkedIn is it's own special kind of bore.
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Also Chinese, back when that was legal. Dish Network (Echostar) has, in the past, launched its GEO sats with every capable launcher out there, including Long March, Proton, and SeaLaunch, especially if Charlie Ergen could get a good deal. These days they stick mostly with SpaceX.
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That "if cost isn't prohibitive" is carrying a lot of weight, there. While it's true that the end user doesn't care if the delivery vehicle is reusable, it factors hugely into the cost, which the user does care about. There are very few "price is no object" payloads.
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As someone that has worked in the industry at the NRO and Aerospace Corp this article is nothing but euro drama.
Facts seem to be ignored and instead somehow it's all about supporting Europe. Let's talk facts. SpaceX has the most reliable and also best pricing of any option. They talk of wanting to force European satalites to require launch on European rockets, that is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Even Nasa learned that requiring everything to be NASA was a bad move and by using available 3rd party solutions has become much more reliable, flexible and has saved money.
In a few year after successful launches proving reliability and if they can match costs with other providers I am sure they will choose European launches over the competition if it's competitive. Might as well stop having European astronauts since they are flying on US or russian rockets.
But even if it's reliable that is only a small part of the equation. If a competitive rocket can get it up in your time frame vs using European rocket that might be much later to launch how can you make the argument to force European launches? (Honestly the EU should be ashamed if they tried to require European launches I mean after all they are the ones that try to sue everyone as a monopoly to force competition and that's pretty much what they would be trying to accomplish forcing launches). I mean are they going to force all European airlines to only buy airbus planes?
Might as well also put a stop to any European countries buying US military equipment as well.
Facts seem to be ignored and instead somehow it's all about supporting Europe. Let's talk facts. SpaceX has the most reliable and also best pricing of any option. They talk of wanting to force European satalites to require launch on European rockets, that is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Even Nasa learned that requiring everything to be NASA was a bad move and by using available 3rd party solutions has become much more reliable, flexible and has saved money.
In a few year after successful launches proving reliability and if they can match costs with other providers I am sure they will choose European launches over the competition if it's competitive. Might as well stop having European astronauts since they are flying on US or russian rockets.
But even if it's reliable that is only a small part of the equation. If a competitive rocket can get it up in your time frame vs using European rocket that might be much later to launch how can you make the argument to force European launches? (Honestly the EU should be ashamed if they tried to require European launches I mean after all they are the ones that try to sue everyone as a monopoly to force competition and that's pretty much what they would be trying to accomplish forcing launches). I mean are they going to force all European airlines to only buy airbus planes?
Might as well also put a stop to any European countries buying US military equipment as well.
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It's also due to the fact that when they were designing it Falcon 9 was mostly poaching the smaller payloads from the dual manifest Ariane 5 missions which are limited to about 4.5 tons, so they figured that at 4.5 tons to GTO which is GTO 1500 vs 1800 from the cape they'd be able to compete against F9 for those payloads, and 64 version would still be able to get dual payloads while charging more for the 5 plus ton upper berth that F9 couldn't lift. Problem of course being they aimed for where F9 was not where it went. It wasn't long before 1.1 was lifting 4.8 ton birds and FT and later block 5 was lofting 5.5 ton birds meaning Ariane no longer could charge a premium for that larger berth as they had before and now 62 wouldn't compete at all with F9. Mostly as you stated 62 just became a way to phase out Soyuz and be able to lift those payloads domestically. Commercially I don't think 62 will do a lot of business, it'll all be government missions. 64 outside of constellation business will struggle to fill both berths for a competitive price hence the increased subsidies they've asked for. There is only one dual berth mission so far booked, a dual Intelsat payload for next year, lots of single payloads for 64 with the rest either being rideshares or Kuiper, but the big GTO and small GTO business that was their bread and butter for years is mostly gone now.
Given the performance increase they are supposedly planning for Kuiper perhaps that will get the 62 version up a bit to help it compete a tiny bit better?
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Actually, as governmental specified, designed to perfection before first test, politically assigned work share rockets go, Ariane 6 is actually fairly cheap.
If it was competing in a world where Atlas V and Delta IV were the competition, it would be ahead. Against Vulcan - a level fight.
It’s just that the world changed around them.
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But that change was clearly visible while they were still planning.
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You could say the same thing about Vulcan. If compared only to Delta IV and Atlas V, it is a substantial improvement. If Falcon 9 did not exist, we would regard the switch from Atlas V to Vulcan as a good upgrade. But as you said, the world changed around them.
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post fugam alterius
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Arianespace leadership, and ESA leadership for that matter can handle it. They are big girls and boys, even if they probably forgot the failure of Ariane 5's maiden voyage and loss of the four Cluster spacecraft payload. Just like the Eumetsat consortium I'd also take a solid manifest on a 10-0 vehicle over schedule risk of Arianne 6 glitches.
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Vulcan has to make money. Atlas V has to make money. Delta IV had to make money, but it was ridiculously expensive in doing so. Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 are sold at a significant loss.
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Keeping Avio fed with Ariane cash was a political necessity to maintain full Italian backing for Arianespace. Hence, honkin' fat SRBs. Which naturally play well with a hydrolox sustainer architecture.
It should have been obvious at the time, and it's definitely obvious now, that a much better way to get government money into Avio would have been to pay them to make a few tens of thousands of low-unit-cost missile motors for the NATO allies to use in defence of Europe's eastern front. That would have freed up Snecma & Safran to develop restartable, reusable cryogenic liquid fuelled engines that could be clustered to power a reusable first stage. And both the Euro militaries and the Euro space industry would have been better off for it.
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Yup. Like I said also:
Arianespace strikes me as an organization suffering from monopoly fever. It does not understand a competitive market, nor is it able to recognize that launch services have become one.
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With such a bleeding-edge, valuable payload, it makes sense to launch on a rocket with an extremely good record, rather than, essentially, a new player (as far as the rocket goes).
How bad would it be if Ariane 6 was used, and the launch failed?
[Of course, it's not impossible that an F9 will fail. But, the odds seem much lower, and no one will ask "why did you risk using an F9?".]
How bad would it be if Ariane 6 was used, and the launch failed?
[Of course, it's not impossible that an F9 will fail. But, the odds seem much lower, and no one will ask "why did you risk using an F9?".]
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I think the requirement was that it be 51% domestic, hence the use of solid fuel upper stages, which were made in the US.
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51% by mass, and you’re including the solid propellant mass because it’s inseparable from the rocket? Smokey Yunick would be proud.
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That’s what I said - Vulcan vs Ariane 6 would a fairly level fight.
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The issue was that the change was not something Ariane could address.
They have to share the work according to the dictates of the investing governments. SRBs were mandatory. As a government funded design it had to be designed to perfection before first flight….. The rest of the design flows from that.
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When you allow for the fact that Ariane 6 starts out with essential no debt to repay, and is still priced well below cost, requiring an ongoing stipend from ESA just to keep Arianespace in the black, then I guess they’re a fairly even fight.
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Which is why there are already approved plans to stretch the boosters and upper stage… because the rocket as-is is already perfection.
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theradicalmoderate
Ars Tribunus Militum
This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but these heavily government-entangled entities exist in a purchasing infrastructure, and that infrastructure is usually based on late-twentieth-century "waterfall" development models. For companies to get the advantages of iterative development, the government purchasing infrastructure needs to be overhauled, which is insanely difficult.
That's why the Boeing-LockMart-NorGrumm-Raytheon-etc. industrial complex in the US moves so slow compared to SpaceX. SpaceX's product lines naturally have smaller interaction surfaces with NASA and the DoD, which lets them leverage iterative development as much as possible. (This may change if things proceed with Space Force and the point-to-point logistics contract, which is about as close as SpaceX will come to providing a full-up weapons system.)
Hopefully the government acquisitions folks--both in the US and Europe--are working this problem hard. There have been a few experiments in the US on how to administer contracts using iterative development; I'm not sure how extensive they are and how well they've worked out.
Getting this fixed is the key to increasing both military and civil space innovation. Other countries, especially China, developed their purchasing and administration infrastructure later than the US and Europe, and therefore can innovate faster. This makes fixing this a major national security problem.
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Seriously take 5 billion over 20 years plus the cost of money and then another 300 mil per year on 4-6 launches, that's on the order of (if not a bit more) a 100% per launch price subsidy. Which I guess to be fair is probably on the order of what ULA was getting pre SpaceX vs today.
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The B21 bomber program may be something along these lines. It's basically an upgraded and slimmed down B2. Seemingly under budget and on time. If this really does work out then maybe pigs can fly....
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