4 ms·

I don't think the latter part is correct. In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. The fact that classical roc

I don't think the latter part is correct. In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. The fact that classical rocket companies are not that agile is probably caused by the comparatively small market. Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. Yes, you can save say $50M for your launch. But your satellite costs hundreds of millions and it has a very long lead time. SpaceX has slips and occasionally loses a bioster. So you might simply buy the Ariane offering because they will effectively purpose-built the rocket for you. Especially when there are political connections to be maintained. But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. Now it looks freakishly expensive to launch even for $10M when your satellites roll out of the factory in the dozens. And the concept of building a rocket on demand when you might need to replace a few broken sats next quarter is just outlandish. I think old rocket companies are basically just seeing the entire business model change from a ultra-specialist logistics company to something more akin to FedEx.

systemvoltage 6y ago
> In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. Can you name a few?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- choeger 6y ago
  Herrenknecht, Liebherr, BioNTech. Google for "Hidden Champion".
maven29 6y ago
>Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellations/teledesic.html http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellatio... I'm pretty sure that the idea behind huge fleets of commercial LEO internet communication satellite constellations had existed long before Elon tried his hand at it (first proposed in 1994). Even starlink was only brought in-house after a cancelled project with OneWeb (formerly WorldVu) https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet-satellites-1415390062 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-int...
- myself248 6y ago
  Iridium (1987) doesn't count as a huge enough fleet to warrant reusable rockets? It took them a LOT of launches...
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    It's basically a two minima space. You can get 10 launches per year and pretty high reliability and high cost. Satellite cost is maybe 10x the launch cost. Government and commercial operations are possible. Europe has to maintain this for strategic reasons, no matter the cost. And then there's the "newspace" strategy. Low cost launch achieved by reuse brings more demand, satellite cost goes down. When price goes low enough, completely new markets become possible. You enter a virtuous spiral. This is at least the theory. Requires a large amount of political capital to do this, as it will be lossy for a long time and there will be high profile failures (because you do so many launches and iterate). So this is probably only doable by mega billionaires who "get it" (the newspace way of thinking), not by public companies or governments. Even Elon Musk didn't "get it" originally, they were trying to fish the rockets from the sea and refurbish them. At some point he turned around completely. Grasshopper and vertical landing was done.
cryptonector 6y ago
> But your satellite costs hundreds of millions and it has a very long lead time. $50m is still a lot, and not every sat costs that much. How does a corporate bean counter justify spending $50m more than they have to? > SpaceX has slips Are there launchers that don't?? > and occasionally loses a bioster. Losing a booster is a risk for SpaceX, not for the customer. > So you might simply buy the Ariane offering because they will effectively purpose-built the rocket for you. Nonsense. Unless there's something to do with fairing sizes, $50m is $50m. > Especially when there are political connections to be maintained. Ahhh, got it.
- choeger 6y ago
  > Are there launchers that don't?? Naturally, everyone has delays. But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you. Selecting launch providers is not just about the sticker price of the rocket. But with more and more launches it obviously becomes ever more important.
  - cryptonector 6y ago
    > But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you. What?!
  - cryptonector 6y ago
    > But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you. Let's not forget too that EVERY booster for EVERY rocket other than Falcon 9 suffers a rude, if scheduled, disassembly EVERY time. When Falcon 9 suffers an unscheduled one, it's SpaceX's loss, not the customers. How can you possibly think that the occasional loss of a booster post-boost phase is a problem for the customer?!
    - AstralStorm 6y ago
      The problem is not loss of booster, but loss of or damage to payload. In this regard, Falcon is comparable to other rockets. Starship and the undeveloped Superheavy, not so much.
cryptonector 6y ago
> Before [anyone showed it could be done] the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. There, I fixed it. The reusable orbital launch vehicle revolution may well reduce launch costs by an order of magnitude when it's all said and done. That's not even relatively boring. It's not boring at all. It's nothing short of amazing. But it was boring when no one knew how to make it happen. > But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. [...] That's on the money. Government-owned/operated launchers are in trouble.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Rocket reuse is not a panacea. There is a very real expendable cost advantage in choosing SpaceX but rocket reuse will not reduce rocket costs significantly. There might be another -50% costs to be had once they iron out all the kinks but what Elon musk promises will not happen because he always overhypes everything.
  - cryptonector 6y ago
    Sure, he overhypes, but already Falcon 9 is cheaper than all others and precisely because of reuse. I don't see how to deny this. Oh sure, SpaceX is a privately held corporation so we don't really know the real numbers and maybe he's just underpricing to convince the world he's right even though he's wrong, or something. But there's a reason ULA and others are getting into the reuse game, and it's that rocket engines are unbelievably expensive, so if you just reuse those you save a huge amount on costs. The evidence is overwhelming that reusing rocket engines is a huge savings. It must follow that reusing the whole launch vehicle would be a bigger savings.

systemvoltage 6y ago

> In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. Can you name a few?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
choeger 6y ago
Herrenknecht, Liebherr, BioNTech. Google for "Hidden Champion".

maven29 6y ago

>Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellations/teledesic.html http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellatio... I'm pretty sure that the idea behind huge fleets of commercial LEO internet communication satellite constellations had existed long before Elon tried his hand at it (first proposed in 1994). Even starlink was only brought in-house after a cancelled project with OneWeb (formerly WorldVu) https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet-satellites-1415390062 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-int...

myself248 6y ago
Iridium (1987) doesn't count as a huge enough fleet to warrant reusable rockets? It took them a LOT of launches...
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  It's basically a two minima space. You can get 10 launches per year and pretty high reliability and high cost. Satellite cost is maybe 10x the launch cost. Government and commercial operations are possible. Europe has to maintain this for strategic reasons, no matter the cost. And then there's the "newspace" strategy. Low cost launch achieved by reuse brings more demand, satellite cost goes down. When price goes low enough, completely new markets become possible. You enter a virtuous spiral. This is at least the theory. Requires a large amount of political capital to do this, as it will be lossy for a long time and there will be high profile failures (because you do so many launches and iterate). So this is probably only doable by mega billionaires who "get it" (the newspace way of thinking), not by public companies or governments. Even Elon Musk didn't "get it" originally, they were trying to fish the rockets from the sea and refurbish them. At some point he turned around completely. Grasshopper and vertical landing was done.

cryptonector 6y ago

> But your satellite costs hundreds of millions and it has a very long lead time. $50m is still a lot, and not every sat costs that much. How does a corporate bean counter justify spending $50m more than they have to? > SpaceX has slips Are there launchers that don't?? > and occasionally loses a bioster. Losing a booster is a risk for SpaceX, not for the customer. > So you might simply buy the Ariane offering because they will effectively purpose-built the rocket for you. Nonsense. Unless there's something to do with fairing sizes, $50m is $50m. > Especially when there are political connections to be maintained. Ahhh, got it.

choeger 6y ago
> Are there launchers that don't?? Naturally, everyone has delays. But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you. Selecting launch providers is not just about the sticker price of the rocket. But with more and more launches it obviously becomes ever more important.
- cryptonector 6y ago
  > But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you. What?!
- cryptonector 6y ago
  > But a company that purpose-builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you. Let's not forget too that EVERY booster for EVERY rocket other than Falcon 9 suffers a rude, if scheduled, disassembly EVERY time. When Falcon 9 suffers an unscheduled one, it's SpaceX's loss, not the customers. How can you possibly think that the occasional loss of a booster post-boost phase is a problem for the customer?!
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    The problem is not loss of booster, but loss of or damage to payload. In this regard, Falcon is comparable to other rockets. Starship and the undeveloped Superheavy, not so much.

cryptonector 6y ago

> Before [anyone showed it could be done] the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. There, I fixed it. The reusable orbital launch vehicle revolution may well reduce launch costs by an order of magnitude when it's all said and done. That's not even relatively boring. It's not boring at all. It's nothing short of amazing. But it was boring when no one knew how to make it happen. > But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. [...] That's on the money. Government-owned/operated launchers are in trouble.

imtringued 6y ago
Rocket reuse is not a panacea. There is a very real expendable cost advantage in choosing SpaceX but rocket reuse will not reduce rocket costs significantly. There might be another -50% costs to be had once they iron out all the kinks but what Elon musk promises will not happen because he always overhypes everything.
- cryptonector 6y ago
  Sure, he overhypes, but already Falcon 9 is cheaper than all others and precisely because of reuse. I don't see how to deny this. Oh sure, SpaceX is a privately held corporation so we don't really know the real numbers and maybe he's just underpricing to convince the world he's right even though he's wrong, or something. But there's a reason ULA and others are getting into the reuse game, and it's that rocket engines are unbelievably expensive, so if you just reuse those you save a huge amount on costs. The evidence is overwhelming that reusing rocket engines is a huge savings. It must follow that reusing the whole launch vehicle would be a bigger savings.