Arianespace launch thread

[Exoscientist]

  ArianeSpace is asking for a 150% increase in subsidies to operate Ariane 6 otherwise it’ll go bankrupt:

https://europeanspaceflight.substack.com/p/arianegroup-wants-210m-per-year-more

The solution is obvious. The only thing ESA has to acknowledge is the cost of large solid side boosters is prohibitive. Eliminating them entirely and using instead multiple Vulcains on the Ariane 6 core would result in launchers cheaper than the Falcon 9, able to be made reusable like the Falcon 9, and capable of manned spaceflight like the Falcon 9:

Monday, October 9, 2023
Towards return of Europe to dominance of the launch market.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/10/towards-return-of-europe-to-dominance.html

 

   Robert Clark

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Exoscientist

[Meecrob]

I think ArianeSpace is in the position they are in because it is a jobs program and not a commercial for-profit organization. The point of Ariane 6 isn't to compete with Falcon 9, it is to maintain a knowledge base for rocketry in Europe.

I'd venture a guess that if you make a rocket reusable from the get go, it will be cheaper than Ariane 6 no matter what engine choices they make.

 

Also, you cannot use your own blog as a reference. "According to me, I am correct" is not how science works.

[sevenperforce]

23 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

The solution is obvious...using instead multiple Vulcains on the Ariane 6 core would result in launchers cheaper than the Falcon 9, able to be made reusable like the Falcon 9....

...but, unlike the Falcon 9, incapable of reaching orbit with meaningful payload.

[darthgently]

17 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

  ArianeSpace is asking for a 150% increase in subsidies to operate Ariane 6 otherwise it’ll go bankrupt:

https://europeanspaceflight.substack.com/p/arianegroup-wants-210m-per-year-more

The solution is obvious. The only thing ESA has to acknowledge is the cost of large solid side boosters is prohibitive. Eliminating them entirely and using instead multiple Vulcains on the Ariane 6 core would result in launchers cheaper than the Falcon 9, able to be made reusable like the Falcon 9, and capable of manned spaceflight like the Falcon 9:

Monday, October 9, 2023
Towards return of Europe to dominance of the launch market.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/10/towards-return-of-europe-to-dominance.html

 

   Robert Clark

 

Government programs tend to be much less first principles based in the economic sense than private industry.  What I mean by economic first principles is simply the consideration of efficiency in converting funds to results.  No natural organism can survive if it burns more calories than it consumes.  But government is an organism that harvests "calories" from a captive base and when it wants to burn more than it can harvest, it prints IOUs to  the hypothetical future captive base.  There is no real limiting factor from their viewpoint and  so no strong motivation to be efficient.  It is not always this way, just a trend

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

Also, you cannot use your own blog as a reference. "According to me, I am correct" is not how science works.

He’s sharing his opinion and wanted to show off his blog, not claiming the blog proves his point.

[tater]

1 hour ago, Exoscientist said:

Towards return of Europe to dominance of the launch market.

Europe was dominant in the launch market?

 

Europe (excluding the CCCP/Russia) was a player in the launch market, but hardly dominant. Note that this year SpaceX likely equals (what're they at now, 70? More?) all launches on this chart on the most recent year (2016?) combined.

 

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

He’s sharing his opinion and wanted to show off his blog, not claiming the blog proves his point.

Nah, he presents it as if it is a third party. He never says "I've expanded upon my opinion, link here," he slides it in like its someone else came up with his hypotheses, and he is just relaying information.

Also:

3 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

and capable of manned spaceflight like the Falcon 9

Dude, what? They need more money and you suggest they blow the bank on a manned program? You realize they can't just "Lego" an existing capsule to Ariane 6, right?

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

Government programs tend to be much less first principles based in the economic sense than private industry.

Exactly. The government thinks something is worth throwing money at. The point is not immediate commercialized ROI at all. Europe wants the ability to toss up satellites and not have to tell anyone what their business is. That costs money, and even though they are probably kicking themselves for not developing reusable tech, they are willing to maintain the capability no matter the cost.

 

Its a government organization. Expect them to make moves when the commercial players prove or disprove reusable methods in the near future.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Meecrob

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Nah, he presents it as if it is a third party. He never says "I've expanded upon my opinion, link here," he slides it in like its someone else came up with his hypotheses, and he is just relaying information.

In what way?

He also never says “someone came up with this hypothesis and I am just relaying information”.

All I see is a link. If one is in a pretty hostile state of mind towards the post, I guess one could frame it like that. But there is nothing actually indicating he tried to pass it off as a third party apart from a pure accusation.

He does this everytime he posts, whether it he in the SpaceX or Artemis threads, or here, and no one has ever had a problem with it.

[Meecrob]

I don't want to cause an argument. Have a great day.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Meecrob

[Exoscientist]

  The ArianeSpace Vega solid rocket launcher is also having trouble competing with SpaceX:

The Accidental Monopoly
How SpaceX became (just about) the only game in town
Jeff Foust
October 13, 2023
SpaceX came with these Transporter missions, which have been really disrupting,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. They have been a boon for smallsat developers, he acknowledged, offering low-cost access to space. “But at the same time, they have created a big problem in terms of the business case for all of the other players.”
He accused SpaceX of, in effect, predatory pricing, willing to lose money on Transporter missions to drive out competition. He noted that past Vega smallsat rideshare missions sold payloads at $25,000 per kilogram, whereas SpaceX has sold Transporter launches for one-fifth that price. “It’s crazy.”
https://spacenews.com/the-accidental-monopoly/

 This has been warned about for several years now:

Europe is starting to freak out about the launch dominance of SpaceX
The Falcon 9 has come to dominate commercial satellite launches.
ERIC BERGER - 3/22/2021, 11:24 AM
However, there now appears to be increasing concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets will not be competitive in the launch market of the near future. This is important, because while member states of the European Space Agency pay for development of the rockets, after reaching operational status, these launch programs are expected to become self-sufficient by attracting commercial satellite launches to help pay the bills.
Economic ministers in France and Italy have now concluded that the launch market has changed dramatically since 2014, when the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets were first designed. According to a report in Le Figaro newspaper, the ministers believe the ability of these new European rockets to compete for commercial launch contracts has significantly deteriorated since then.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/european-leaders-say-an-immediate-response-needed-to-the-rise-of-spacex/

 The leadership of the Vega team can not acknowledge the same issue as the Ariane 6 team, large solid rockets are not price competitive. Like with the Ariane 6, to be price competitive the solid rocket launcher Vega needs to be replaced by an all-liquid rocket:

Saturday, November 29, 2014
A half-size Ariane for manned spaceflight.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-half-size-ariane-for-manned.html

 

  Robert Clark

[tater]

5 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

 The leadership of the Vega team can not acknowledge the same issue as the Ariane 6 team, large solid rockets are not price competitive. Like with the Ariane 6, to be price competitive the solid rocket launcher Vega needs to be replaced by an all-liquid rocket:

A bit late for them, though they are already working on Vega E, which is methalox. By the time they fly, they will have an expendable rocket. Very 20^th century of them. It will be uncompetitive out of the box.

[sevenperforce]

16 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

The leadership of the Vega team can not acknowledge the same issue as the Ariane 6 team, large solid rockets are not price competitive. Like with the Ariane 6, to be price competitive the solid rocket launcher Vega needs to be replaced by an all-liquid rocket:

Saturday, November 29, 2014
A half-size Ariane for manned spaceflight.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-half-size-ariane-for-manned.html

Your blog post at that link contains assumptions and calculations that are not representative of reality.

As previously discussed, the Ariane 5G hydrogen tank is a hyper-thin balloon tank that is "hung" from the JAVE element; it is supported by tension rather than compression when it is under regular Earth gravity. If you remove the JAVE element then you'd need to strengthen the balloon tank by at least half the weight of the JAVE if not more. 

This completely newly-designed first stage you're contemplating would have a dry mass of at least 8525 kg. With your contemplated ~2500 kg payload and 79 tonnes of hydrolox propellant, gross liftoff weight is just a hair over 90 tonnes. At sea level, the Vulcain 2 developed 318 seconds of specific impulse and 0.99 MN of thrust; in vacuum it developed 431 seconds of specific impulse and 1.34 MN of thrust. With a 90-tonne GLOW, that's a liftoff T/W ratio of 1.1, which is too sluggish for an SSTO design that needs high initial acceleration to avoid gravity drag penalties. Compared to a more typical launch vehicle we are talking about an additional 300-400 m/s of gravity drag.

Plugging the wrong numbers into the launch performance calculator will produce fictitious results. If you give it the wrong specific impulse then it's going to overestimate, particularly with an SSTO concept where specific impulse has such a high impact. Additionally, because the Vulcain 2 is highly underexpanded at sea level, the calculator will be using too high of a sea level specific impulse and too high of a sea level thrust, so it will underestimate gravity drag. Using the actual dry mass and actual vacuum specific impulse, the calculator gives just 1539 kg of estimated payload, and that's using too generous of a sea level specific impulse and ignoring that extra gravity drag.

Your blog post also speculates that 2,500 kg is enough for a 3-person crew capsule. It is not. Your example, Cygnus, has a mass of 3,300 kg in its smallest configuration, BEFORE a heat shield, aeroshell, life support, parachutes, seats, or actual passengers. Using the two-person Gemini capsule as an example, the heat shield alone needs to be on the order of 7-10% of the total re-entry vehicle weight. Even setting aside the need for a new aeroshell, a Cygnus-based capsule would be on the order of 4,700 kg (339 kg heat shield, 230 kg for chutes, 133 kg integrated RCS, 78 kg RCS propellant, 350 kg crew seats and provisions, 270 kg crew). We haven't even talked about a launch escape system, which adds extra weight for the first few minutes of launch.

You then suggest that altitude compensation can raise the vacuum specific impulse of Vulcain 2 to 466 seconds. It cannot. It is thermodynamically impossible for a gas-generator hydrolox engine to achieve 466 seconds of vacuum specific impulse. The reality: as a sustainer architecture, Vulcain 2 is already an altitude-compensated nozzle akin to the RS-25. Adding a more complex altitude-compensating nozzle might help with sea level thrust and thus counteract some of the gravity drag issues, but it would decrease vacuum specific impulse. So putting those fictitious numbers into the calculator will produce fictitious results (and even the fictitious 4,544 kg isn't enough to get a Cygnus-based capsule into space). 

Subsequent calculations merely compound the error.

[Exoscientist]

21 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Your blog post also speculates that 2,500 kg is enough for a 3-person crew capsule. It is not. Your example, Cygnus, has a mass of 3,300 kg in its smallest configuration, BEFORE a heat shield, aeroshell, life support, parachutes, seats, or actual passengers. Using the two-person Gemini capsule as an example, the heat shield alone needs to be on the order of 7-10% of the total re-entry vehicle weight. Even setting aside the need for a new aeroshell, a Cygnus-based capsule would be on the order of 4,700 kg (339 kg heat shield, 230 kg for chutes, 133 kg integrated RCS, 78 kg RCS propellant, 350 kg crew seats and provisions, 270 kg crew). We haven't even talked about a launch escape system, which adds extra weight for the first few minutes of launch.

 Actually, the relevant scenario is the two-stage case of a half-size Ariane core with a ca. 10 ton upper stage, so it is loftable by a single Vulcain. That can get ca. 5 tons to LEO.  This compared to the ca. 2 tons to LEO payload of the Vega. This half-sized Ariane while being able to launch more than twice that of the Vega would only cost half as much. Again, the high cost of the Vega is solely due to high cost of the large SRB used as its first stage:

Monday, October 9, 2023
Towards return of Europe to dominance of the launch market.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/10/towards-return-of-europe-to-dominance.html

 This would turn out to be a pretty cool all-hydrolox launch architecture for the ESA: a half-size Ariane powered by a single Vulcain at ca. 5 tons to LEO, a two Vulcain version at ca. 12 tons to LEO and a three Vulcain version at ca. 20 tons to LEO. 

 All would be reusable and manned-flight capable. A manned capsule of a size loftable by a 5 ton launcher is certainly doable as the Gemini capsule massed ca. 3,800 kg:

Gemini.
http://www.braeunig.us/space/specs/gemini.htm

 

  Robert Clark

 

Edited October 17, 2023 by Exoscientist

[tater]

Given that designing, then building a new crew vehicle would probably take them 10 years (at least), they should simply go for full or at least partial reuse.

They are already plugging along (slowly) on Themis, dunno if Susie is just a powerpoint.

 

[Exoscientist]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

Given that designing, then building a new crew vehicle would probably take them 10 years (at least), they should simply go for full or at least partial reuse.

They are already plugging along (slowly) on Themis, dunno if Susie is just a powerpoint.

 

  A dense-propellant, methane, reusable stage certainly would be welcome. But its not scheduled to come into service until the 2030’s. ArianeSpace might be bankrupt by then.

  Robert Clark

[tater]

8 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

  A dense-propellant, methane, reusable stage certainly would be welcome. But its not scheduled to come into service until the 2030’s. ArianeSpace might be bankrupt by then.

There is no reality where they make a new vehicle any faster, unless they simply accelerate designs already planned.

Work double shifts on Themis/Susie, and maybe do them faster. In terms of "bankrupt," it's what they can do with only ESA revenue, with maybe some EU contracts for entities not fiscally responsible enough to buy a best price launch (or those beholden to political pressure who don't need to buy things at good prices). There is zero probability they can come up with something in a timely way to compete with Falcon 9. Falcon 9... a rocket SpaceX is at a full run to make obsolete. Never mind New Glenn, slow as it has been, it flies before any Arianespace alternate. Or Neutron. They also now have to beat Nova (Stoke). All that ignoring the elephant on the pad right now.

The time to have started the project of a modern launcher in earnest, even being highly conservative, was the day SpaceX landed the first F9 booster (Dec 15, 2015).

[Meecrob]

16 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

Actually, the relevant scenario is the two-stage case of a half-size Ariane core with a ca. 10 ton upper stage

No, its not. If you were running ArianeSpace, it might be, but you aren't. Their goals are not your goals. Simple as that. Everyone tells you what reality is and you reject it. That's fine in a fantasy world, but we are talking about reality. And reality is that ArianeSpace doesn't want to do what you want them to do...and I think that's fair.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Meecrob

[Exoscientist]

Oops—It looks like the Ariane 6 rocket may not offer Europe any launch savings
Europe is subsidizing the launch of Internet satellites for Jeff Bezos.
ERIC BERGER - 10/12/2023, 11:26 AM
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/oops-it-looks-like-the-ariane-6-rocket-may-not-offer-europe-any-launch-savings/

 The recent news is ArianeSpace will be asking for a €350 million($380 million) a year subsidy to keep the Ariane 6 launches going. Berger notes in this article that at a launch cadence of 5 launches per year this is a subsidy of $75 million per launch. This means European tax payers will be paying over a billion dollars for the 18 launches on the Ariane 6 of the commercial venture the Kuiper satellite system of Jeff Bezo’s, the second richest man in the world.

 European tax payers have the right to ask where the great expense of the Ariane 6 launcher is deriving from.

 No one in European space community is willing to ask or answer the question, “How much just to add a second Vulcain to the Ariane 5/6 core?”

 Then can someone, anyone in the European space community at least ask the question, “Does a single P120 solid rocket used for the Ariane 6 SRB’s and the Vega-C first stage really cost €20 million?”
 “So that the two SRB’s on the Ariane 62 cost €40 million, and the four on the Ariane 64 cost €80 million?”

 

  Robert Clark

[.50calBMG]

We did answer that question, it just seems like you didn't listen to the answer. With all the structural changes you would have to make, a twin vulcain Ariane 6 would no longer be an Ariane 6. It would be especially wasteful since Themis is already in the early stages of production IIRC, and offers better performance than the actual capabilities your idea would have.

[sevenperforce]

On 10/17/2023 at 1:49 AM, Exoscientist said:

On 10/16/2023 at 11:01 AM, sevenperforce said:

Your blog post also speculates that 2,500 kg is enough for a 3-person crew capsule. It is not. Your example, Cygnus, has a mass of 3,300 kg in its smallest configuration, BEFORE a heat shield, aeroshell, life support, parachutes, seats, or actual passengers. Using the two-person Gemini capsule as an example, the heat shield alone needs to be on the order of 7-10% of the total re-entry vehicle weight. Even setting aside the need for a new aeroshell, a Cygnus-based capsule would be on the order of 4,700 kg (339 kg heat shield, 230 kg for chutes, 133 kg integrated RCS, 78 kg RCS propellant, 350 kg crew seats and provisions, 270 kg crew). We haven't even talked about a launch escape system, which adds extra weight for the first few minutes of launch.

 Actually, the relevant scenario is the two-stage case of a half-size Ariane core with a ca. 10 ton upper stage, so it is loftable by a single Vulcain.

Your post is the one that said 2,500 kg is enough for a 3-person crew capsule, which is not correct.

As for this other proposed vehicle...

Quote

 

We can get a higher payload manned launcher by making it TSTO. We'll use the cryogenic upper stage the Ariane H10-3. The Astronautix page gives it a gross mass of 12,310 kg and dry mass of 1,570 kg, for a propellant mass of 10,740 kg. The Isp is listed as 446 s with a vacuum thrust of 62.70 kN. However, this extra mass for the upper stage would mean the single Vulcain II on the core could not loft it.

Then we'll reduce the propellant load in the core stage. It might also work to run the Vulcain at some percentage above the rated thrust, or use a varied mixture ratio at launch compared to high altitude. But using a reduction of the propellant load method, we'll lessen the propellant in the first stage by the mass of the upper stage, so by 12,310 kg. This brings the propellant load of the first stage to 66,690 kg. There is about a 35 to 1 ratio of propellant to tank mass so this will reduce the tank mass of the first stage by 12,310 kg/35 =350 kg. Then the dry mass of the core becomes 7,750 kg.

Per my notes above, the dry mass of this core would actually be 8,175 kg, taking the rest of your new numbers as assumptively correct (which I think is a generous assumption). For a crew launch vehicle you're also going to need an LAS, which I will ballpark at 2,030 kg for a notional 2,900 kg command module (the weight of the Cygnus-based capsule described above less the 1,800 kg service module) based on weight ratios of the Orion and other abort systems. I will set it to jettison 10 seconds after booster burnout to give time for separation and second stage engine startup.

1.34 MN divided by 431 seconds of specific impulse gives a propellant flow rate of 316.9 kg/s, so those 66.7 tonnes of propellant will be burned through in 210 seconds. Thus LAS jettison takes place at 220 seconds.

Finally, to try and begin to account for the extra 300-400 m/s of gravity drag, I'm going to set the destination orbit to 185x1300 km, which is the equivalent of burning into a 185x185 orbit and then adding 300 m/s of additional dV. All told, this results in an estimated payload of 3,834 kg, still about a tonne shy of what is actually needed.

On 10/17/2023 at 1:49 AM, Exoscientist said:

All would be reusable and manned-flight capable.

Such a first stage would not in any way be reusable. 

12 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

No one in European space community is willing to ask or answer the question, “How much just to add a second Vulcain to the Ariane 5/6 core?”

No matter how cheap it is to add a second Vulcain to the Ariane core, it's still too expensive if the resulting vehicle can't reach orbit.

[tater]

 

[Exoscientist]

  “Angry Astronaut” discusses the high expense of the Ariane 6:

  Once again he takes no prisoners. He notes the €350 million a year subsidy ArianeSpace wants to keep Ariane 6 flying means European tax payers would be paying a billion euros for the 18 launches of the Ariane 6 contracted for Jeff Bezos’ Kuiper satellite system. In effect, European tax payers would be paying a billion euro subsidy to Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world. 

 But he notes, all is not lost. ArianeSpace is researching new approaches. Most notably the Prometheus reusable engine. 

 I had heard of the Prometheus, but I only thought it was a methane engine. “Angry” notes ArianeSpace is also researching a hydrogen-fueled version. This would use 2 hydrogen-fueled Prometheus engines on an Ariane core to double the thrust of a single Vulcain. But if two are doubling a Vulcain then they are doing the same as just using two Vulcains! But that is the point I’ve been making:

Towards return of Europe to dominance of the launch market.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/10/towards-return-of-europe-to-dominance.html

 Here’s the video that still above is taken from:

 

 

  Bob Clark

Edited October 31, 2023 by Exoscientist

[RCgothic]

I'd be very interested to know more about the hydrogen-fuelled Prometheus. Until now everything we know about it says methane.

[darthgently]

Personally, I don't understand the fascination with trying to save ESA, ArianneSpace, etc from their own broken model that they repeatedly choose to cling to.  It's a "pick your battles" kind of thing from my view.  It would be great if they switched gears but Relativity, Stoke, SpaceX, and NASA's wise focus on increasingly outsourcing to competing innovative, rather than dinosaur, outfits, is far more fascinating

[tater]

They don't really have a path to compete unless given a bolus of cash by the governments involved.

The "new space" outfits were first started with disposable money by billionaires. This created some amount of VC money for smaller companies to stick a foot in the door, but most of those will fail.

Large corporations can't innovate in this space because the launch market is so small, ROI will be hard to come by, and it would be fiscally irresponsible for them to spend a lot of money to chase some % of a small launch market. As has been said before, the more price competition there is, the smaller the pie is. It's a race to  the bottom, with the only way to grow total revenue being a state change where lower prices grows demand. I'm not sure how demand could increase by that much. Half the cost per kg to LEO, and you need to double the demand to keep the same tiny annual revenue.

European governments would need to decide it was a security issue and throw billions at Arianespace if they want modern capabilities.

Edited October 25, 2023 by tater