Adeline concept for Ariane 6

[StarStreak2109]

37 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

You don't see Boeing or Airbus operating airlines.

And actually, ArianeGroup (ex-Airbus Safran Launchers) and Arianespace are both private companies (like SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed, and ULA)

With ESA being its prime client and calling the shots on launcher development and where parts are being built....

[magnemoe]

38 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

You don't see Boeing or Airbus operating airlines.

And actually, ArianeGroup (ex-Airbus Safran Launchers) and Arianespace are both private companies (like SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed, and ULA)

Different markets. In the start main marked was military planes then post. 
Many countries wanted this so they bought planes. Airlines back then was national or regional. This is true even today, Airlines also want an mix of planes.

Orbital rockets is an much smaller marked, the rocket require an launchpad designed for it, often some changes to rocket like number of srb depending on payload. 
 

[tater]

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Glass cups are cheaper in the long run, but there is still a market for disposable paper cups.

I don't disagree, and certainly when they started this project, the success of landing boosters was not at all obvious.

I still see this as increasingly hopeless, however, as reuse becomes more mature. The only numbers we've heard has been Musk saying that assuming they can recover fairings, and even possibly S2, they could get F9 marginal launch costs down in the Falcon 1 range. Then you start seeing disposable rockets as only useful in the Electron size class.

[Cassel]

8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

How many ways are there to propulsively land a booster ?

 

many

[cfds]

15 minutes ago, Cassel said:

many

Name two...

[Tullius]

5 hours ago, tater said:

I don't disagree, and certainly when they started this project, the success of landing boosters was not at all obvious.

I still see this as increasingly hopeless, however, as reuse becomes more mature. The only numbers we've heard has been Musk saying that assuming they can recover fairings, and even possibly S2, they could get F9 marginal launch costs down in the Falcon 1 range. Then you start seeing disposable rockets as only useful in the Electron size class.

Even if recovery is easy, it is also a problem of cost.

Arianespace was expecting at the start of development of Ariane 6 a launch cadence of 10-20 per year. If one rocket can fly 10 times, it means you only need to produce 1-2 rockets per year, i.e. you need to keep production lines open for a ridiculously low number of products produced. Therefore, instead of developing booster recovery, Arianespace decided to put their development money into designing the booster to be as cheap as possible.

It is only now becoming clear that these launch cadence estimates were way too low, as extremely large satellite constellations have been announced (OneWeb wants to launch nearly 700 satellites for a single constellation and SpaceX wants to launch as many as 12000, which need dozens or hundreds of launches themselves).

[tater]

32 minutes ago, Tullius said:

Even if recovery is easy, it is also a problem of cost.

Arianespace was expecting at the start of development of Ariane 6 a launch cadence of 10-20 per year. If one rocket can fly 10 times, it means you only need to produce 1-2 rockets per year, i.e. you need to keep production lines open for a ridiculously low number of products produced. Therefore, instead of developing booster recovery, Arianespace decided to put their development money into designing the booster to be as cheap as possible.

It is only now becoming clear that these launch cadence estimates were way too low, as extremely large satellite constellations have been announced (OneWeb wants to launch nearly 700 satellites for a single constellation and SpaceX wants to launch as many as 12000, which need dozens or hundreds of launches themselves).

Very true.

Take F9 at their face value claims about it. 10 reuses, with more after some refurbishment. Once they build a stock of such vehicles (assuming S2 and fairing reuse to match), they stop making stages altogether. Then the workforce has to make something else, or get laid off.

SpaceX has their (somewhat kooky, I'll admit) underlying goal of humans to Mars (to live), so assuming that the market can make payroll (lower marginal costs, even with lower cadence can mean profit if they don't leave money on the table), they can work towards making crazy big rockets. Arianespace doesn't really have that luxury, their goal is providing service to customers, not generating new markets.

[Nibb31]

22 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

With ESA being its prime client and calling the shots on launcher development and where parts are being built....

Sure, which is the same for NASA, JAXA, CNSA, Roskosmos, and pretty much every space agency out there. Are you suggesting that we get rid of government space agencies ?

[StarStreak2109]

No, you misunderstood me. What I am getting at is that IMHO you cannot compare the likes of Arianespace (or ULA for that matter) to companies like SpaceX. Whereas the latter companies are moving into opportunities the market presents, Arianespace and other like them are seemingly virtual appendices to the space agencies, driven by national politics, who tell them where to create value by procurement and production. This was pointed out for instance in the article I quote in an earlier post, where politics dictated that tanks made out of carbon fibres where to be built by a German company, which clearly was not skilled in this kind of carbon fibre product (this kind of production seem to be a strong point of some Italian company). That's what I am getting at: who gets to build what is not governed by expertise, but rather by lobbyism. Companies like SpaceX (or any other medium-sized company for that matter) base procurement / production decisions on financial / technological / entrepreneurial considerations (ideally).

In an ideal world, ESA would concentrate on designing missions and payloads for these missions, getting them built and tender launch services. Then it still can be in the best interest of the European nations that these launch services remain in the hands of European launch service providers. But these launch service providers should be able to design, procure and build launch vehicles as is the most efficient way. Only this way prices can come down and innovation take place. Right now the innovation driver are medium-sized companies like SpaceX, with the elephants of the industry tagging along.

[MajorTomtom]

The main problem is that you don't really make money selling rockets, because the development cost is huge. Ariane 6 development is hugely funded by ESA, and for Space X the money came from their government contracts (at 3-5 times the normal commercial price) and their NASA partnerships contracts.

If ArianeGroup wanted to develop a whole new rocket by themselves with an intelligent approach regarding work breakdown / procurement etc, they simply couldn't because they would have to invest a tremendous amount of money, for a very low return on investment (and not a quick one moreover). Plus, European countries sometime choose foreign rockets to lift their government satellites, so you could imagine what it would be like if the rocket wasn't even produced partly in their country...

[StarStreak2109]

I don't mind a government funded development process. But the company should be able to select subcontractors on their own and not be told that the engines should be built in Germany, the tanks in France and the guidance systems in Italy (just made that up...), just to satisfy the lobbyists.

[MajorTomtom]

Well the governments won't fund the development if the rocket is not at least partially built in their country. It's the same I believe with NASA's SLS being built and using parts made in a lot of different states to satisfy the congress...

[Wjolcz]

2 hours ago, MajorTomtom said:

Well the governments won't fund the development if the rocket is not at least partially built in their country. It's the same I believe with NASA's SLS being built and using parts made in a lot of different states to satisfy the congress...

Isn't this pretty much how any other NASA rocket is built?

Space agencies' job is to keep the engineers in the country and provide work for them.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Wjolcz

[StarStreak2109]

On 6/5/2018 at 1:23 PM, Wjolcz said:

Isn't this pretty much how any other NASA rocket is built?

Space agencies' job is to keep the engineers in the country and provide work for them.

True, and in case of NASA it also makes perfect sense. In case of ESA, we're talking of a procurement / production process that is spread out over many companies and countries. Now all this wouldn't be so bad, if related decisions would be made on a commercial basis, but effectively they are not... Add to that the (in)famous ESA powers of administration, and you get an apparatus that rivals NASA in sluggishness. Back to the original statement, if there was a European SpaceX analog, I believe this would benefit space utilization and exploration on a global scale as SpaceX had a competitor, with which he had to match launch prices. And the competition would spur innovation on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Wjolcz]

5 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

True, and in case of NASA it also makes perfect sense. In case of ESA, we're talking of a procurement / production process that is spread out over many companies and countries. Now all this wouldn't be so bad, if related decisions would be made on a commercial basis, but effectively they are not... Add to that the (in)famous ESA powers of administration, and you get an apparatus that rivals NASA in sluggishness. Back to the original statement, if there was a European SpaceX analog, I believe this would benefit space utilization and exploration on a global scale as SpaceX had a competitor, with which he had to match launch prices. And the competition would spur innovation on both sides of the Atlantic.

True. As a citizen of Europe I think having European SpaceX would be amazing.

[wumpus]

5 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

True, and in case of NASA it also makes perfect sense. In case of ESA, we're talking of a procurement / production process that is spread out over many companies and countries. Now all this wouldn't be so bad, if related decisions would be made on a commercial basis, but effectively they are not... Add to that the (in)famous ESA powers of administration, and you get an apparatus that rivals NASA in sluggishness. Back to the original statement, if there was a European SpaceX analog, I believe this would benefit space utilization and exploration on a global scale as SpaceX had a competitor, with which he had to match launch prices. And the competition would spur innovation on both sides of the Atlantic.

NASA has to answer to Congressmen from 50 states and 435 congressional districts, each one wanting special treatment.  While the money may be spent on companies efficiently, often the "wrong" company is in the right location to get the job.  I've heard that Thiokol's contract to build the shuttle boosters only made sense politically.  I suppose it is slightly easier for an American company to build anywhere in America (see Blue Origin's Mobile, Alabama plant) for political reasons than an EU company to build anywhere in the EU (presumably because the EU hasn't been around long enough to make this happen).

Is ESA directly funded by the EU?  Last I heard it was funded by individual countries who thus had a lot more say in where the money was spent.  If the funds came out of the EU general fund, I'd assume it could eventually look a lot more like NASA.

[Nibb31]

If ESA was funded by the EU instead of individual countries, then the list of participating countries would be completely different. Norway, Switzerland and Canada for example are ESA members but not in the EU and not all members of the EU contribute to ESA.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Nibb31

[monophonic]

Actually EU gives the single biggest contribution to the ESA budget as an institutional partner. In 2016 EU provided 1.3 billion € out of 5.25 billion € total. Member states of both EU and ESA still do give direct funding too. Perhaps because they can ear-mark that money towards their pet projects?

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, wumpus said:

NASA has to answer to Congressmen from 50 states and 435 congressional districts, each one wanting special treatment.  While the money may be spent on companies efficiently, often the "wrong" company is in the right location to get the job.  I've heard that Thiokol's contract to build the shuttle boosters only made sense politically.  I suppose it is slightly easier for an American company to build anywhere in America (see Blue Origin's Mobile, Alabama plant) for political reasons than an EU company to build anywhere in the EU (presumably because the EU hasn't been around long enough to make this happen).

Is ESA directly funded by the EU?  Last I heard it was funded by individual countries who thus had a lot more say in where the money was spent.  If the funds came out of the EU general fund, I'd assume it could eventually look a lot more like NASA.

You has the B1 bomber, as I understand it was build with parts from over 40 states to get it past congress. 
B2 was an secret program

On the other hand the large SRB is much of the same technology as solid fuel ICBM, if you have solid fueled ICBM you need the solid fuel facility running anyway as the cores has an lifetime. See why France want to use SRB, they has a few ICBM who they has to keep refurbish so making SRB is very cheap. 
Its an pretty common military issue, US keeps an tank factory running even if it has more than enough tanks. Closing it and you loose the skill of making tanks and has to re-learn it later then you want an new.