It's interesting to see them say 2030s now. When the plans for "Ariane Next" first came out, they were aiming for 2028. Sounds like the program has already slipped quite a bit.
Ariane Group is going to be in for a rough time every year beyond ~2026 that they delay. By then most of Starship (SpaceX), New Glenn (Blue Origin), Terran R (Relativity), and Neutron (Rocket Lab) should be operational - all of which will at least reuse the 1st stage.
Of course, they'll be able to fall back on institutional payloads to maintain a minimum level of funding. But that's not a great place for the program to be in terms of funding. Or politics.
This whole situation is really tragic. The design of Ariane 6 was finalized in 2016 - after SpaceX had successfully landed a Falcon 9 for the first time. While I realize that that would have been quite late in the design process for the rocket, it really shows the weakness of Ariane Group when it comes to assessing the competitive landscape and making difficult decisions.
To be fair, it is hard on the king to wear the crown for too long. Europe and Russia had a long run; we'll see how well SpaceX carries the burden.
Those were not plans, just one space agencies ideas.
> they were aiming for 2028
That was just political marketing, had nothing todo with reality and was never even remotely possible.
> To be fair, it is hard on the king to wear the crown for too long.
The were not really the king. For GEO missions yes, but for LEO Soyuz was always cheaper. And yes ArianeGroup was launching them, but its hardly their technical capabilities that made that possible.
It's worth remembering that when F9 had successfully demonstrated reusability, they were still running from reality and arguing that reusability wasn't worth pursuing. Kind of like with ULA, they aren't merely bad at assessing the competitive landscape, they actively blind themselves to it.
I think I would agree that they might've been doing something else internally if they were simply saying that F9 wasn't effective to reuse (like ULA had said at one point).
But they had been arguing that it wasn't worth pursuing for themselves, arguing that they didn't need to launch that often. That, to me, comes off as a bit more honest since they're not really saying anything positive about themselves.
I think it's unrealistic to expect a multi-national government funded organisation to offer a commodity service at a competitive price. With all the conflicting national interests and bureaucracy that come with this funding model, how should they compete with much leaner, commercial organisations that are only responsible to their shareholders? But does it really matter? If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
> it's unrealistic to expect a multi-national government funded organisation
Maybe then those organizations should admit that rather then lie about it. ArianeGroup always justified Ariane 6 early on by claiming with it they would be competitve with SpaceX.
Of course they thought about competitive with SpaceX in 2014, not 2024 when Falcon 9 flies weekly and Starship is deep in development.
> If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
Maybe then they should have had a clear strategy around achieving this goal effectively rather then deluding themselves.
Europe having Ariane 6 and Vega rocket for example make no sense. They could have one engine, for example Merlin 'European Version' and use it as the only engine one all their rockets.
However they have an incredibly complex bespoke first stage engine, and complex bespoke second stage engine. And lots of different solid rockets and so on.
If they had planned for making the most expensive possible thing to achieve independence they certainly managed it.
> Europe having Ariane 6 and Vega rocket for example make no sense. They could have one engine...
It absolutely makes sense, Vega is basically an Ariane 5 solid rocket booster that was turned into an actual rocket, both are/were made by Avio who now make the Ariane 6 boosters.
And yet if you actually go and look at the cost of the Vega series of rockets its very expensive. Just using the same expensive stuff multiple times doesn't make it a good policy.
And then you keep reading and realize that Vega is not just a solid booster, but a 4 stage rocket.
They should’ve skipped Ariane 6 and do Ariane 5ME instead and make the next vehicle a reusable one. Ariane 6 doesn’t really buy them anything more than Ariane 5ME, just buys more risk and more development cost (this latter thing may actually have been the unstated INTENT of some stakeholders…).
> I think it's unrealistic to expect a multi-national government funded organisation to offer a commodity service at a competitive price.
Except that they used to. They certainly beat the pants off of ULA (nee Boeing/Lockheed Martin) when it came to competitive GEO/GTO launches.
> But does it really matter? If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
It's a lot nicer to have a European rocket program that happens to make lots of money on the commercial market so that the member states basically don't have to fund it.
The current situation, where ArianeSpace doesn't win that many contracts, so it has to be heavily subsidized by member states is much more difficult. When it comes to politics, there are always more hungry mouths than there is available bread.
If everybody is a fool, and you are the best of them you can be successful. But once the race really starts and its not just US govenrment funded monopoly against European government funded monopoly, its gone be difficult.
> The current situation
Ariane 5 had some commercial success but rocket development was always funded by member states.
> If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
I mean in that case, wouldn't the superior option be having a more cost competitive private launch provider in Europe? that way you'd get both European independence and lower prices. Surely there's a way to foster that situation, since that's what the US has.
Having the EU work this out would be hard since pork barrel is kind of part of the way the whole thing is done. You need to have multiple production points, factories etc in order for the EU to do anything like this.
Exactly this. The diversity of interests means EU will never be as operationally efficient, and therefore as low cost, as SpaceX.
EU's strength is that diversification. They should lean into that and find a way (?) to benefit commercially. I don't know quite what that is, but someone needs to come up with something. Because the inefficiency is baked in.
We should demand more and should not accept subpar performance.
This is somewhat like Nokia vs Apple, only worse because of the bureaucratic EU-wide red tape involved.
Yes, Europe should have its own space industry and be independent. But we should not accept rubbish or "paying a premium". We should demand more and aim at the top. Europe deserves it and can achieve it.
SpaceX has rocked the boat and thay should be an opportunity for drastic changes, especially in view of this fiasco.
Don’t forget Firefly’s MLV/Antares300 (F9 style, kerolox reusable first stage), and Stoke’s full RLV (smaller, mere medium class a bit more payload than Vega/Vega-C, but still potentially important). These companies have hardware in testing now as well.
Admittedly I don't know much about the economics of rocketry, but the Ariane 6 doesn't seem much different from the Ariane 5 and I can't imagine it actually brings much to the table in terms of performance or cost savings, especially in light of how involved the development of it was.
This is true, read my top level post for more information.
The Ariane 6 is basically an evolved version of what was the Ariane 5 ME. Many of the things that are now Ariane 6 were developed for Ariane 5 upgrades.
The new upper and lower stage engines are both just upgraded Ariane 5 engines.
However they realized they could never compete with the Ariane 5 core against Falcon 9 (in 2014) they changed some political design processes and made the rockets more flexible.
The most relevant difference between Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 is that Ariane 5 always had to huge solid boosters, while the Ariane 6 has 2 or 4 depending on the mission.
That makes is possible for the Ariane 6 with 2 boosters to be in the competition for LEO missions. Something Ariane 5 wouldn't have been able to do.
But you are right, the 5 billion $ it cost to develop Ariane 6 will required it to fly for decades to make it worth doing compared to Ariane 5 ME.
That's just it, for decades the "new" version of a rocket only had very small incremental changes and didn't raise the bar much at all. That's how commercial aerospace has worked for a very long time.
Much like the Toyota Camry which has been the best selling sedan in the US every single year since 2000.[1] It gets a slight incremental change each year, but no ground-breaking changes or utterly re-thinking what a car is.
Guess what sedan is now out-selling all other sedans? [2]
(Hint: not the one that has been getting incremental updates since well before 2000)
The article even says "We think hell will freeze over before the Toyota Camry relinquishes its spot as the bestselling non-SUV in the country. It maintained its place with a 7 percent increase over last year."
That’s a pretty disingenuous comparison. It’s like taking a single Android manufacturer’s sales, putting it up against the iPhone and saying “look how hard the iPhones outsell it!”.
Once we stack all the non-Tesla sedans together, it paints a much different picture probably.
And that’s not mentioning that companies get big subsidies for electrification, and Tesla purchases themselves get credits on top of that (although I am unfamiliar if they stack).
I think Teslas are pretty great and Tesla as a company likely pushed electrification ahead by a decade or so, but people seriously need to stop drinking the kool-aid.
> the Ariane 6 doesn't seem much different from the Ariane 5 and I can't imagine it actually brings much to the table in terms of performance or cost savings, especially in light of how involved the development of it was.
My understanding is that Ariane 6 was explicitly designed to reduce production costs compared to Ariane 5, in large part due to competitive pressure from SpaceX.
> With the new Ariane 6 slated to enter service in 2020, ArianeGroup promises to cut per-kilogram launch cost by 40 to 50 percent compared to Ariane 5.
I don't have much faith in anything beyond Starship and New Glenn. I've been hearing things at Rocket Lab are a mess right now, and relativity and rocket lab basically both are pivoting because SpaceX has made their original launch plans moot.
China will in the next 1-3 years launch a reusable rocket. Bold prediction, but their combination of massive money, engineering howto and shameless industrial theft makes it a no-brainer.
In terms of other launchers, I can see whoever buys ULA launching something reusable in the next decade, as well as ariane space.
Ariane Group is going to be in for a rough time every year beyond ~2026 that they delay. By then most of Starship (SpaceX), New Glenn (Blue Origin), Terran R (Relativity), and Neutron (Rocket Lab) should be operational - all of which will at least reuse the 1st stage.
Of course, they'll be able to fall back on institutional payloads to maintain a minimum level of funding. But that's not a great place for the program to be in terms of funding. Or politics.
This whole situation is really tragic. The design of Ariane 6 was finalized in 2016 - after SpaceX had successfully landed a Falcon 9 for the first time. While I realize that that would have been quite late in the design process for the rocket, it really shows the weakness of Ariane Group when it comes to assessing the competitive landscape and making difficult decisions.
To be fair, it is hard on the king to wear the crown for too long. Europe and Russia had a long run; we'll see how well SpaceX carries the burden.