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Don't forget that customers get bumped used in the schedule by quite a bit by agreeing to ride a re used rocket. The extra income from having a sat in space ear
by sand500 9y ago
Don't forget that customers get bumped used in the schedule by quite a bit by agreeing to ride a re used rocket. The extra income from having a sat in space early is much more valuable.
- imron 9y agoAt the moment people are wary of putting payload on a reused rocket. There will soon come a tipping point of being wary of using a rocket that hasn't been flown before.
- sand500 9y agoYeah exactly but earlier launches is a bigger incentive then a discount.
- kuschku 9y agoBut that will take a long time, even with new Falcon 9 rockets, SpaceX is an order of magnitude less reliable than Ariane, for now. At exactly the same price. Long term, the only viable competitors of SpaceX include Ariane and Blue Origin.
- nickik 9y agoAriane is already not competitive at the moment, and the reliable is not that different. Look at the insurance premium and its clear that the estimated reliability is not that large. They have massively exhilarated Ariane 6 because they know they simply can not compete with the Ariane 5. Also Ariane is only a viable competitor because they don't need to compete on cost. If Arianespace had to finance the Ariane 6 by themselves they would not be close to competing with SpaceX. Blue Origin prices are unknown so far.
- kuschku 9y agoFor a small to medium size satellite, Ariane is actually currently 2 million USD per launch cheaper than SpaceX. Around 60 vs. 62 million. And you get an order of magnitude better reliability. This might change in the next years, but for now, it's not changing.
- greglindahl 9y agoInterestingly enough, if you look at the Ariane manifest you can see that they're having a hard time finding satellites to fly in the "lower berth". Meanwhile, SpaceX's comsat launches are mostly heavier sats that won't fit into the "lower berth".
- kuschku 9y agoYes, it’s especially interesting how basically all of the smaller satellite launches have moved to the – at the moment – more expensive and less reliable SpaceX, leaving Ariane without small satellites to launch.
- greglindahl 9y agoYou have it backwards. Most of SpaceX's commercial comsat launches are big enough that Ariane would charge 90 million euros to launch.