arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/mere-days-before-its-debut-the-ariane-6-rocket-loses-a-key-customer-to-spacex/
Mere days before its debut, the Ariane 6 rocket loses a key customer to SpaceX
The article also says this satellite would have been launching on a new variant of the Ariane 6.
So, while it would have been the third flight of Ariane 6, it would have been the first flight of the kind of variant necessitated by the payload. And I'm guessing the satellite operator has visibility into that variant's development schedule.
Well falcon is also far more reliable. Arriane 6 is relatively untested and unreliable.
Yesterday's technology tomorrow.
Reusability is a passing fad. Expendable systems are where it’s at.
Nope cause money matters These disposable rockets will never get cheaper and hence Ariane will rust up waiting on the pad for a customer with money to throw away
You do understand that I was being facetious, right?
That article has a couple of great lines it but this comment was just perfect
“Sounds like it's time for Europe to declare SpaceX a gatekeeper and fine them 10% of their global profit.”
My personal favorite was,
"the European satellite officials have thrown a massive turd into the punchbowl at festivities for the debut of the Ariane 6 rocket."
In the past week, I've had at least one comment removed from r/SpacexLounge for lesser (literal) bad taste than the above quoted line from a reputable outlet.
None of their business and assets are even in Europe.
It's still in France though
None of their business and assets are even in Europe / It's still in France though.
In France but not in Europe? How I vote in tomorrow's parliamentary election here will help determine whether France is truly in Europe. Uncertain times as seen by an Anglo-French like myself.
However, because this 4-ton satellite is going to geostationary orbit, it would have been the first mission to require the use of a more powerful version of the Ariane 6 rocket. Instead of using two solid-rocket boosters, this "64" version of the rocket uses four solid-rocket boosters.
So, will this be an expendable Falcon 9 launch, then? Or is Eumetsat taking a performance hit to guarantee a sooner/cheaper launch (although even expendable center core FH should be cheaper than A64)? The former seems more likely, given the latter would shorten the lifetime of this key weather satellite.
A 4t (let alone a more precisely 3.76t according to this) satellite should not require A64 to reach GTO. Ariane 62 is supposed to be capable of 4.5t to GTO-1500 (1500 m/s from GEO). (Falcon 9 ASDS is 5.5t to GTO-1800, but much closer to 4.5t to GTO-1500 because of the Cape's higher latitude.) A64 would be required for direct GEO or a higher energy GTO (i.e., much closer to GEO). But for direct GEO, Falcon Heavy would be required. A fully recoverable FH, or to some extent an expended F9, would be able to get to a high energy GTO, e.g. the GTO-566 of the heavier (5t) GOES-U.
Perhaps Eumetsat has very flexible requirements, and someone was paying tens of millions extra for 2 boosters to demo the full A64, and Eumetsat is switching to a recoverable F9 to a normal GTO. That doesn't seem likely, though, since it would shorten the life of the satellite. Or (more likely, IMO) the F9 will be expended, and the deployment GTO is somewhere in the range where that should beat A62 without requiring FH.
Does anyone have a guess... Which does SpaceX charge more for, a fully recovered FH or an expended F9?
It is definitely launching on an F9. The question is whether the F9 will be expended or not. And as an (inter)govenrmental organization that was buying an Ariane 64 launch, cost shouldn't be a sudden major concern.
That said, the prices are very similar, with maybe a slight preference for expendable F9. The starting price for Falcon Heavy is $97 million (or at least it was as of 2022). The expendable Falcon 9 contract for Galileo was 180 million euro (~$193 million) for two launches. SpaceX may encourage expending an old F9 booster over the complication of flying FH.
SpaceX may encourage expending an old F9 booster over the complication of flying FH.
Very likely. Only 39A can launch FH and it takes weeks(?) to reconfigure the pad and infrastructure to switch rocket types.
Didn't they just launch an FH?
Yes and it was detrimental to their launch cadence. There was nothing launching from 39A for one month while preparing for the GOES-U mission.
LC-39A is the slower of their Florida pads but it can still launch 3-4 Falcon 9 per month. A single FH launch and the conversion between F9 and FH blocks the pad for at least a month for a single launch.
Thanks for the info
FH is probably a lot more expensive, the center core is almost always expended and then there's 2 boosters to refurbish. If you can get what you need with 1 expended F9 then that's probably a lot simpler.
There is no fully recovered FH; all of the recent ones expend the center core and typically try to land the boosters at the launch site.
There is no fully recovered FH;
There is the option, as there's a performance window for it.
However, yes, that option has never been used.
The first three FH launches attempted to recover all three boosters. The second one had a successful core landing.
I read there is suppose to be an FH full recovery attempt in the next few launches.
Probably the performance was too marginal for A62 flight. Or some other limitations of A62 flight profile got in the way.
F9 is obviously a better choice for, well, anyone without close ties to ESA member state governments. It isn't just about cost anymore, F9 has proven itself to be the safest launch vehicle in the world, and FH the safest SHLV available. One thing I don't know is if there is a lead-time discrepancy and how much that matters to the average customer?
F9 can do 5.5T to GTO while maintaining reusability with landing out to ASDS. Which means that they can launch this for $63M and recover the booster. That's got to absolutely sting Ariane.
Even a non reusable version of starship should be cheaper than the big Ariane 6. With at least 10x payload. Those companies had their chance. Instead they chose to do nothing. Government funding can only do so much. They are the next Kodak and Nokia.
Why do you think any of these launch companies compete on price or that the price matters to the buyers? SpaceX doesn't compete on price..
Why? Ariane price tag is $77M and there's no chance SpaceX would charge less than Ariane because they don't need to. They could charge $50m more and still get the job if that's what the customer wants.
If Airbus Space €400m write off is anything to go by the launch is a $50 taxi ride to your $20k cruise holiday. You don't blink about the price, but you make sure you arrive in one piece and in time.
I definetly don't see EUMESAT skimping on launch cost of one of the three most important satellites constelations (and the oldest) the EU has. And it is the second of the last generation, so its absence would be felt, there are many meteorological agencies waiting for their new fancy data.
It's worth noting that Eumetsat, the organization that is building the satellite is based in Darmstadt. Germany, which invented rocketry in the first place, doesn't stand to gain anything from France having a monopoly on European space.
it's silly to say that germany "invented rocketry in the first place". certainly they got out ahead of everyone else circa world war 2 but they stood on the shoulders of a variety of figures from the centuries prior.
I guess "invented" rocketry isn't quite true. But it's probably fair to say they invented "modern rocketry." The V2 rocket was vastly larger and more advanced than anything that came before, and was the starting point for both American and Soviet space programs.
stood on the shoulders of a variety of figures from the centuries prior
Centuries prior? A little bit, I guess. While small, simple solid fuel rockets did exist prior to the 20th century... I'm not sure there was too much there that was directly applicable to large liquid fueled rockets.
Going back much farther than Robert Goddard in the 1910's, there's nothing too earth shattering.
I guess you could argue, aerodynamic stability? How to make a rocket passively stable so it flies straight, using fins?
But even for that, it's hard to argue we had a good grasp on it before the 20th century... since even Goddard himself fell victim to the "pendulum rocket fallacy," in the 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket#Pendulum_rocket_fallacy
A proper understanding of aerodynamic stability probably came more out of the airplane world, the Wright brothers, and their contemporaries. And was then applied to figure out rockets
To say that Germany invented rocketry is of course not true. Germany has, however, invented the prelude to the launch vehicles and ballistic missiles we know today, which is what the original commenter is talking about. To say that they just got a head start during WW2 is an understatement. You'll be shocked by how many of our current day rockets are based on that same revolutionary design the V-2 had.
I also think that saying that they stood on the shoulders of giants is a big overstatement. Rocketry from the 1200s to the early 1900s barely developed at all. Meanwhile, Germany went from small rocket artillery to massive ballistic missiles in the span of about 20 years, which is not exactly standing on the shoulders of giants.
As an example, Merlin is fundamentally very similar to the v-2 engine. The main difference being the pre-burner is powered by a separate fuel and oxidizer source opposed to using the same tanks for both preburner and main combustion.
Ariane isn't (just) French. The German federal and state governments own a big stake in Airbus, half-owner of Ariane. The Ariane 6 upper stage is made in Bremen. (The upper stage engine is made in France, but with some German components. The boosters are mainly made in Italy, and fueled in French Guiana.)
Edit: To be clear, Bremen is in Germany.
Interesting. The Germans are paying for it. Now let's see where it's manufactured and launched.
Ariane is the Boeing old space of Europe.
Learn Chinese and tell that to soldiers in 1232 lmao.
CNES is not happy about it, reiterating demands that "all European institutional satellites are launched on small and large European launchers.”
Enforcing a monopoly to save its own skin is ironically counter to EU's usual claims of opening up services to ensure fair competition.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ASDS | Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (landing platform) |
| CNES | Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, space agency of France |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| GTO | Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit |
| LC-39A | Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy (SpaceX F9/Heavy) |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| SHLV | Super-Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (over 50 tons to LEO) |
NOTE: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.
[Thread #12988 for this sub, first seen 28th Jun 2024, 22:07]
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The whole project costs 3.3 billion. No way choosing spacex is a question of schedule and even less costs.
Reading between the lines, there are two aspects to this:
- Ariane 6 is late and being the first launch of a different variant of the rocket is more risk than most would accept for such an expensive satellite ($billions). By this alone, SpaceX would be the chosen supplier.
- There is a LOT of politics in EU cooperative ventures, and ESA has been held in thrall to french desires for far too long. The daft statement from Toni Tolker-Nielsen was on 24th June, and this decision was 26-27th June. Basically there was obvious infighting going on between france and germany as to the direction of ESA. The french contingent wants to force the EU to be their tame customers, and the germans think they have lost the plot, and the race, and its about time to redirect the funding.
Don't be surprised if there are more announcements and spats - the role of ESA in relation to the EU is an ongoing bone of contention. Probable outcome is Germany (who effectively fund most of the EU) wanting to rest control of the launch side of ESA from france eventually, and taking a more 'cost-effective' mindset.
It's a miracle what the European space program achieved despite all the politics.
one has to wonder when they will wake up from their dream, or is it nightmare?
the EU space program needs to die and i am sure they know it, someone has to just take the ariane program behind the shed and put out of its misery.
1 missing reply
Before reading the article, I assumed that launching on a Falcon 9 would be quicker for Eumetsat than waiting for the Ariane 6. But apparently, launching on the Falcon 9 will actually result in a later launch date - assuming that Ariane 6 stays on schedule. It would seem that the confidence level for no schedule slippage occurring wasn't all that high.