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I'm not sure Stephane Israël's warning is directed at governments. It's more of a warning call for all European industrials who should increase their efforts t

I'm not sure Stephane Israël's warning is directed at governments. It's more of a warning call for all European industrials who should increase their efforts to prepare for the present and upcoming US competition. I mean it's not as if Ariane 6 is being built entirely by government money. It's more complicated than that. As a matter of fact, a new company Airbus Safran Launches[1] has recently been created out of the two big aerospace companies and is working mostly on Ariane 6. As I understand it, the CEO of Arianespace is calling for more initiatives like these. It's a bit like with aerospace, when Boeing started building big airlines, European companies gathered and formed Airbus. They were not government owned but I supposed the government did intervene some way or an other considering it was a strategically crucial economic sector. Also, whether the government funds an aerospace company is a bit blurry. SpaceX is privately owned but its major client is the government and, as Stephane Israël often complains about, they get extremely advantageous and arguably unfair contracts notably with the US military. It's kind of a government funding in disguise. That being said, money is not the only issue here. The big thing SpaceX has is passion : since those guys think they're basically saving the world or something, they work much harder than anyone in Europe. I mean it's surely much easier for an engineer to keep working late at night when he thinks that his work will allow man to walk on mars and save the human race from extinction. That's the only way I can explain the extreme speed at which they're making progress when compared to what is done in Europe. 1. http://www.airbusafran-launchers.com/ http://www.airbusafran-launchers.com/

nickik 10y ago
As far as I can tell Arian 6 will get tons of government money, almost 3 billion, while private share is only about 0.5 billion. Even with this massive investment the estimated costs are per launch are still quite high. SpaceX actually has to do a lot of work for those government contracts, and they will lose that money if they can not diliver the capability in the required amount of time. They had to carry most devlopment cost themself and they were also always flighing comercial launches. Governemnts are 70% of the launch market, so I don't think any space company can or will live totally without government contracts. If they can make the Ariane 6 compete within a decent price, I am not against some government contracts going to them. It makes sense not to give all contracts to one company, but Arianspace (or whoever) has to first devlop a rocket without massiv governemnt investment and show that they are in the 20% range of price. If they can not do that, their are other companies who you can go to. Sure its not fair if the rockets from china or russia are subsidised (not saying the are or ar not) but thats good for Europe because we get cheaper launches that are payed for by other governments.
stupidcar 10y ago
Are engineers in Europe really less passionate about their job than those in the US? Personally, I'm skeptical. For sure, having a mission to go to Mars is cool, but just working on rockets alone seems like it should be exciting enough to inspire passion and hard work. I would guess that European rocket engineers are, or could be, just as passionate, and work just as hard as those in the US. But what saps the passion of engineers is bureaucracy, inefficiency and mismanagement that slows them down and interferes with their work, and by most accounts, these problems infest the aeronautical industry, on both sides of the Atlantic. SpaceX has managed to build a company that doesn't seem to suffer from these problems. From reading Elon Musk's biography, it doesn't sound to me like the SpaceX engineers are driven by some dream of landing on Mars, even if that's Musk's goal. Rather, they just have a no-nonsense, "get stuff done" attitude. They don't spend weeks doing tests when they can get them all done in one day. They don't spend millions of dollars buying outsourced components when they can build them better and cheaper themselves. They don't thoughtlessly replicate inefficient processes because that's how it's always been done, or it's done everywhere else in the industry. Put Elon Musk and his management staff in charge of the ESA and I bet they'd install the same no-nonsense attitude in European engineers, and it would be Ariane that was delivering reusability before everyone else. As it is, let's just hope that the example SpaceX sets eventually pays off in changes to the way NASA, the ESA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. are run. Although I think that the big US defense contractors would rather get out of spaceflight completely than match SpaceX's costs. Because if they can, then it proves they could have done it all along, and that they've been hugely overcharging the US government for years. And if they've been overcharging for access to space, it might make congress ask questions about all the other pork-barrel military contracts they get, and why they can't deliver those cheaper as well?

nickik 10y ago

As far as I can tell Arian 6 will get tons of government money, almost 3 billion, while private share is only about 0.5 billion. Even with this massive investment the estimated costs are per launch are still quite high. SpaceX actually has to do a lot of work for those government contracts, and they will lose that money if they can not diliver the capability in the required amount of time. They had to carry most devlopment cost themself and they were also always flighing comercial launches. Governemnts are 70% of the launch market, so I don't think any space company can or will live totally without government contracts. If they can make the Ariane 6 compete within a decent price, I am not against some government contracts going to them. It makes sense not to give all contracts to one company, but Arianspace (or whoever) has to first devlop a rocket without massiv governemnt investment and show that they are in the 20% range of price. If they can not do that, their are other companies who you can go to. Sure its not fair if the rockets from china or russia are subsidised (not saying the are or ar not) but thats good for Europe because we get cheaper launches that are payed for by other governments.

stupidcar 10y ago

Are engineers in Europe really less passionate about their job than those in the US? Personally, I'm skeptical. For sure, having a mission to go to Mars is cool, but just working on rockets alone seems like it should be exciting enough to inspire passion and hard work. I would guess that European rocket engineers are, or could be, just as passionate, and work just as hard as those in the US. But what saps the passion of engineers is bureaucracy, inefficiency and mismanagement that slows them down and interferes with their work, and by most accounts, these problems infest the aeronautical industry, on both sides of the Atlantic. SpaceX has managed to build a company that doesn't seem to suffer from these problems. From reading Elon Musk's biography, it doesn't sound to me like the SpaceX engineers are driven by some dream of landing on Mars, even if that's Musk's goal. Rather, they just have a no-nonsense, "get stuff done" attitude. They don't spend weeks doing tests when they can get them all done in one day. They don't spend millions of dollars buying outsourced components when they can build them better and cheaper themselves. They don't thoughtlessly replicate inefficient processes because that's how it's always been done, or it's done everywhere else in the industry. Put Elon Musk and his management staff in charge of the ESA and I bet they'd install the same no-nonsense attitude in European engineers, and it would be Ariane that was delivering reusability before everyone else. As it is, let's just hope that the example SpaceX sets eventually pays off in changes to the way NASA, the ESA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. are run. Although I think that the big US defense contractors would rather get out of spaceflight completely than match SpaceX's costs. Because if they can, then it proves they could have done it all along, and that they've been hugely overcharging the US government for years. And if they've been overcharging for access to space, it might make congress ask questions about all the other pork-barrel military contracts they get, and why they can't deliver those cheaper as well?