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Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket is turning into a space policy disaster

60 points by allenrb 4y ago

everybodyknows 4y ago
> Falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket in the world, with the lowest insurance costs ... Such a reliable source of inconvenient truths, those wretched actuarial accountants.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Makes sense, after all they picked the F9 to launch the James Webb. Oh wait...
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > Makes sense, after all they picked the F9 to launch the James Webb. Oh wait... A big part of the reason the JWST flew on Ariane 5 is because it was started in 2003 - long before the first flight of Falcon 9.
  - allenrb 4y ago
    A decision which was announced in December of 2015 per https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/esa-and-arianespace-ink-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst-launch-contract/ https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/esa-and-arianespac... Of course, not much has changed since then…
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Launching James Webb was part of the European part of helping with financing James Webb. And of course they picked their own rocket to do so. Ariane 5 was not picked because its the most reliable. Ariane 5, Delta IV and Atlas 5 all had the necessary certification to launch James Webb. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy also have this level of certification, but of course they got it after James Webb was already assigned. Your comment is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how launch vehicle selection works and how NASA certification levels work. Please stop with these uninformed comments.
crop_rotation 4y ago
This is just another example that the EU needs to change something if it aims to compete with fast moving companies and industries.
- tetris11 4y ago
  "Here they go investing money on useless long-term infrastructure, when the private sector could be fleecing them for a fraction of end product..."
  - khuey 4y ago
    Is Ariane 6 long-term infrastructure? Unless I missed something it's still a totally expendable launch system. That doesn't seem like it's viable in the long term.
- groestl 4y ago
  Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. "Fast moving companies", from a Europeans perspective, often comes down to: ignored all the regulation, at least some of which was there for a reason. And now look at the mess that was left behind, it'll take decades to clean it up.
  - cm2012 4y ago
    This is why the EU is falling so far behind the US in GDP per capita, when they started out pretty close 30 years ago.
    - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      True but it helps that: - all US states all speak the same language - US got oil - the dollar is the reserve currency The USA has multiple advantages, not just one. Given the potential for wars this day, being surrounded by mostly ocean may also prove very useful as well.
      - 4y ago
raverbashing 4y ago
True Same as Artemis, same as the ULA rockets. Usual governmental kerfuffle. Sigh. SpaceX best decision was not letting the US gov/mil get too involved in their management. They would provide a service and that's it But that being said, projects of that magnitude usually get delayed. Sigh. (also for those who don't remember - Ariane 5 had some delays and high-profile unscheduled disassemblies at its start. But hey, also remember all the fireworks SpaceX gave us at the beginning as well)
- midland_trucker 4y ago
  Exactly, it's just the wrong people at the top and the wrong incentives. Is Arianespace structurally capable of producing economical access to space? Probably not.
jeroenhd 4y ago
This article is written as if the delays are some kind of gotcha, but is it really that bitter a pill to swallow? The goal was never to outcompete SpaceX on price. The EU wants to have access to space technology that's not tied up to foreign governments or oligarchs, and reduce the launch cost in the process. Obviously such a program will be more expensive than a private endeavor, no member state is going to invest into the program without some kind of return and that comes with delays and higher cost. Shopping around for launches now that the Ariane 6 has been delayed isn't some kind of epic defeat in the battle for spaceflight, it's just an inconvenience necessary to keep other projects on track.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > This article is written as if the delays are some kind of gotcha, but is it really that bitter a pill to swallow? The goal was never to outcompete SpaceX on price. Sort of. It's easy to forget, since SpaceX has such dominance over the space industry currently, but commercial space was mostly split between Europe and Russia before SpaceX. The goal of Ariane 6 was to help ArianeGroup maintain its marketshare - particularly of GEO/GTO launches - in the face of aggressive pricing by SpaceX. > Shopping around for launches now that the Ariane 6 has been delayed isn't some kind of epic defeat in the battle for spaceflight, it's just an inconvenience necessary to keep other projects on track. I think there may be some missing context here. There has been a somewhat strong movement to limit European institutional launches to European rockets, in the same way that the DoD/NASA does with US launchers.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  In the Netherlands every single project goes vastly over budget. It's never been a bitter pill. There's always more money to throw at things and people forget. The entire European space program is but a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    I agree, pointing that something is running over budget, when it is done by public company. That might be surprising only for people outside of Europe.
908B64B197 4y ago
> That is a lot of time—nearly a decade—and money for Europe to develop what is essentially a poorer version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. That's generous coming from Ars. Ariane 6 is a technological dead-end. No re-usability, no human rating, no path forward for larger payloads. Europe has at least a 15 years technological gap with the first versions of the Falcon 9. And it's on track to get bigger as Starship enters testing. At this point, any rocket program other than what SpaceX is doing are government job programs.
- Retric 4y ago
  Not being beholden to a foreign company or government is a strategic advantage. It’s not always worth it, but being able to say No often lowers the cost of saying Yes.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    > Not being beholden to a foreign company or government is a strategic advantage. Yes, but that was never the primary stated reason for Ariane 6's development. That's a later goalpost moving.
    - enragedcacti 4y ago
      From a 2015 ESA announcement of Ariane 6 development: > “These contracts will allow the development of a family of European launchers, highly competitive in the world market and ensuring autonomous access to space at fully competitive prices for ESA’s Member States,” said Jan Woerner, Director General of ESA. Seems like a primary stated reason to me. https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ariane_6_and_Vega_C_begin_development https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ar...
- aga98mtl 4y ago
  > At this point, any rocket program other than what SpaceX is doing are government job programs. That is the thing: all rocket building organisations before SpaceX were actually government job programs. The goal was not to build cost efficient rockets. The goal was to maintain a large pool of trained aeronautic engineers and technicians for strategic defence purpose.
themgt 4y ago
This BBC article from 7 years back is a great read [0]: For its part, Airbus Safran does not envisage making Ariane 6 recoverable, not in the short term. Mr Charmeau believes that different market conditions apply in Europe and the US, which means there will not be a single, winner-takes-all approach. He cites, for example, the restricted procurement that exists in all major political blocs, which essentially bars foreign rockets from launching home institutional and government satellites. Nowhere is this more true than in the US, but in Europe too there is an "unwritten rule" that European states should use European rockets. Mr Charmeau added: "And we have other specificities in Europe, such as the technology of propulsion, which is much better than the US one, both in solid and cryogenic propulsion. This allows us to launch [two satellites at once], which is another factor for competitiveness, maybe much better than re-usability - we will see in the future. And one characteristic, for example, is that we have only one (main) engine on the Ariane 64, whereas our competitor is going for re-usability because he is using much more engines. (The Falcon 9 has nine engines on its first stage.) ... "I could talk for two hours about the advantages or disadvantages of re-usability. Is it appropriate for the European situation? I don't say 'no'; I don't say 'yes'. I just say 'we're discussing it'; we're looking into it in detail. "But just look to your daily life: you are buying returnable bottles or one-way bottles, and obviously for both there is a market." Two satellites at once - just imagine! Always worth keeping in mind the ability of intelligent, powerful people in positions of leadership to confidently state absolute laughable nonsense which is treated seriously up until the moment it's proved invalid by cold hard reality. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35435108 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35435108
- politician 4y ago
  An epic defense of pollution. "Just leave it up there!"
- rtsil 4y ago
  I don't see stating that it "may be much better than re-usability, we will see in the in the future" as absolute laughable nonsense, I see it formulating an assumption that one approach might potentially better than another, but leaving room to be disproven later. The very basis of the scientific method.
nordsieck 4y ago
The really tragic part of this whole affair is that the design for Ariane 6 wasn't finalized until 2016 - after Falcon 9 landed for the first time. At the time, ArianeGroup (particularly Stéphane Israël) shrugged it off as irrelevant; such a position has since been shown to be foolhardy - to the extent that the designs for Ariane 7 looks like a methane powered semi-clone of Falcon 9. In practical terms, ArianeGroup lost an entire design cycle due to bad decision making. When the next Ariane is done it'll have to compete in a world with not just Falcon 9, but 2-4 of Starship (SpaceX), Neutron (Rocket Lab), Terran R (Relativity), and New Glenn (Blue Origin).
- mafribe 4y ago
  Note that Stéphane Israël is a classic French civil servant: a historian by education, and not knowledgable about technology.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    ENA, especially. An X would have been better suited within the usual CEO pool, I think. But of course he was chief of staff of an important Minister before he was appointed CEO of Arianespace so you know... Within this system Arianespace and the EU were never to be innovators and disruptors, and still aren't geared to catch up. In a way, this is a bit Nokia vs Apple unfolding in the space sector.
    - ur-whale 4y ago
      > ENA, especially. Much that is wrong and has been wrong with France in the last 50 years can almost always be traced back to this ghastly institution. The folks who graduate from ENA are wildly disconnected from reality, especially when it comes to the economy and technology. They unfortunately are also a tight knit mafia that pretty much controls the country and are dragging it down into the abyss at a 100 mph.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > ArianeGroup lost an entire design cycle due to bad decision making When you don't operate with market pressure, there is no such thing as bad decision making.
LeanderK 4y ago
Europe has to accept the loss of Ariane 6. We have to write it off, it's a pill we have to swallow. Either get Ariane 6 into production right now or continue with Ariane 5, but we have to get Ariane 7 into development as fast as possible. Ariane 6 is a dead-end. Everyone is pretty pessimistic here, but you have to keep in mind that before spacex ariane was a big player. They didn't realise the revolution happening until it was too late and now have this uncompetitive rocket, but Ariane is not entirely stupid and incompetent. They can create a reliable, good rocket.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Restarting Ariane 5 at this point would be more expensive then getting Ariane 6 out. Going for the Ariane 5 ME was the alternative plan many countries wanted, rather then the Ariane 6. Don't hold your breath for Ariane 7 anytime soon.

60 points by allenrb 4y ago

> Falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket in the world, with the lowest insurance costs ... Such a reliable source of inconvenient truths, those wretched actuarial accountants.

moffkalast 4y ago
Makes sense, after all they picked the F9 to launch the James Webb. Oh wait...
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > Makes sense, after all they picked the F9 to launch the James Webb. Oh wait... A big part of the reason the JWST flew on Ariane 5 is because it was started in 2003 - long before the first flight of Falcon 9.
- allenrb 4y ago
  A decision which was announced in December of 2015 per https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/esa-and-arianespace-ink-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst-launch-contract/ https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/esa-and-arianespac... Of course, not much has changed since then…
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Launching James Webb was part of the European part of helping with financing James Webb. And of course they picked their own rocket to do so. Ariane 5 was not picked because its the most reliable. Ariane 5, Delta IV and Atlas 5 all had the necessary certification to launch James Webb. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy also have this level of certification, but of course they got it after James Webb was already assigned. Your comment is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how launch vehicle selection works and how NASA certification levels work. Please stop with these uninformed comments.

crop_rotation 4y ago

This is just another example that the EU needs to change something if it aims to compete with fast moving companies and industries.

tetris11 4y ago
"Here they go investing money on useless long-term infrastructure, when the private sector could be fleecing them for a fraction of end product..."
- khuey 4y ago
  Is Ariane 6 long-term infrastructure? Unless I missed something it's still a totally expendable launch system. That doesn't seem like it's viable in the long term.
groestl 4y ago
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. "Fast moving companies", from a Europeans perspective, often comes down to: ignored all the regulation, at least some of which was there for a reason. And now look at the mess that was left behind, it'll take decades to clean it up.
- cm2012 4y ago
  This is why the EU is falling so far behind the US in GDP per capita, when they started out pretty close 30 years ago.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    True but it helps that: - all US states all speak the same language - US got oil - the dollar is the reserve currency The USA has multiple advantages, not just one. Given the potential for wars this day, being surrounded by mostly ocean may also prove very useful as well.
    - 4y ago

raverbashing 4y ago

True Same as Artemis, same as the ULA rockets. Usual governmental kerfuffle. Sigh. SpaceX best decision was not letting the US gov/mil get too involved in their management. They would provide a service and that's it But that being said, projects of that magnitude usually get delayed. Sigh. (also for those who don't remember - Ariane 5 had some delays and high-profile unscheduled disassemblies at its start. But hey, also remember all the fireworks SpaceX gave us at the beginning as well)

midland_trucker 4y ago
Exactly, it's just the wrong people at the top and the wrong incentives. Is Arianespace structurally capable of producing economical access to space? Probably not.

jeroenhd 4y ago

This article is written as if the delays are some kind of gotcha, but is it really that bitter a pill to swallow? The goal was never to outcompete SpaceX on price. The EU wants to have access to space technology that's not tied up to foreign governments or oligarchs, and reduce the launch cost in the process. Obviously such a program will be more expensive than a private endeavor, no member state is going to invest into the program without some kind of return and that comes with delays and higher cost. Shopping around for launches now that the Ariane 6 has been delayed isn't some kind of epic defeat in the battle for spaceflight, it's just an inconvenience necessary to keep other projects on track.

nordsieck 4y ago
> This article is written as if the delays are some kind of gotcha, but is it really that bitter a pill to swallow? The goal was never to outcompete SpaceX on price. Sort of. It's easy to forget, since SpaceX has such dominance over the space industry currently, but commercial space was mostly split between Europe and Russia before SpaceX. The goal of Ariane 6 was to help ArianeGroup maintain its marketshare - particularly of GEO/GTO launches - in the face of aggressive pricing by SpaceX. > Shopping around for launches now that the Ariane 6 has been delayed isn't some kind of epic defeat in the battle for spaceflight, it's just an inconvenience necessary to keep other projects on track. I think there may be some missing context here. There has been a somewhat strong movement to limit European institutional launches to European rockets, in the same way that the DoD/NASA does with US launchers.
WeylandYutani 4y ago
In the Netherlands every single project goes vastly over budget. It's never been a bitter pill. There's always more money to throw at things and people forget. The entire European space program is but a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  I agree, pointing that something is running over budget, when it is done by public company. That might be surprising only for people outside of Europe.

908B64B197 4y ago

> That is a lot of time—nearly a decade—and money for Europe to develop what is essentially a poorer version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. That's generous coming from Ars. Ariane 6 is a technological dead-end. No re-usability, no human rating, no path forward for larger payloads. Europe has at least a 15 years technological gap with the first versions of the Falcon 9. And it's on track to get bigger as Starship enters testing. At this point, any rocket program other than what SpaceX is doing are government job programs.

Retric 4y ago
Not being beholden to a foreign company or government is a strategic advantage. It’s not always worth it, but being able to say No often lowers the cost of saying Yes.
- mlindner 4y ago
  > Not being beholden to a foreign company or government is a strategic advantage. Yes, but that was never the primary stated reason for Ariane 6's development. That's a later goalpost moving.
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    From a 2015 ESA announcement of Ariane 6 development: > “These contracts will allow the development of a family of European launchers, highly competitive in the world market and ensuring autonomous access to space at fully competitive prices for ESA’s Member States,” said Jan Woerner, Director General of ESA. Seems like a primary stated reason to me. https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ariane_6_and_Vega_C_begin_development https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ar...
aga98mtl 4y ago
> At this point, any rocket program other than what SpaceX is doing are government job programs. That is the thing: all rocket building organisations before SpaceX were actually government job programs. The goal was not to build cost efficient rockets. The goal was to maintain a large pool of trained aeronautic engineers and technicians for strategic defence purpose.

themgt 4y ago

This BBC article from 7 years back is a great read [0]: For its part, Airbus Safran does not envisage making Ariane 6 recoverable, not in the short term. Mr Charmeau believes that different market conditions apply in Europe and the US, which means there will not be a single, winner-takes-all approach. He cites, for example, the restricted procurement that exists in all major political blocs, which essentially bars foreign rockets from launching home institutional and government satellites. Nowhere is this more true than in the US, but in Europe too there is an "unwritten rule" that European states should use European rockets. Mr Charmeau added: "And we have other specificities in Europe, such as the technology of propulsion, which is much better than the US one, both in solid and cryogenic propulsion. This allows us to launch [two satellites at once], which is another factor for competitiveness, maybe much better than re-usability - we will see in the future. And one characteristic, for example, is that we have only one (main) engine on the Ariane 64, whereas our competitor is going for re-usability because he is using much more engines. (The Falcon 9 has nine engines on its first stage.) ... "I could talk for two hours about the advantages or disadvantages of re-usability. Is it appropriate for the European situation? I don't say 'no'; I don't say 'yes'. I just say 'we're discussing it'; we're looking into it in detail. "But just look to your daily life: you are buying returnable bottles or one-way bottles, and obviously for both there is a market." Two satellites at once - just imagine! Always worth keeping in mind the ability of intelligent, powerful people in positions of leadership to confidently state absolute laughable nonsense which is treated seriously up until the moment it's proved invalid by cold hard reality. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35435108 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35435108

politician 4y ago
An epic defense of pollution. "Just leave it up there!"
rtsil 4y ago
I don't see stating that it "may be much better than re-usability, we will see in the in the future" as absolute laughable nonsense, I see it formulating an assumption that one approach might potentially better than another, but leaving room to be disproven later. The very basis of the scientific method.

nordsieck 4y ago

The really tragic part of this whole affair is that the design for Ariane 6 wasn't finalized until 2016 - after Falcon 9 landed for the first time. At the time, ArianeGroup (particularly Stéphane Israël) shrugged it off as irrelevant; such a position has since been shown to be foolhardy - to the extent that the designs for Ariane 7 looks like a methane powered semi-clone of Falcon 9. In practical terms, ArianeGroup lost an entire design cycle due to bad decision making. When the next Ariane is done it'll have to compete in a world with not just Falcon 9, but 2-4 of Starship (SpaceX), Neutron (Rocket Lab), Terran R (Relativity), and New Glenn (Blue Origin).

mafribe 4y ago
Note that Stéphane Israël is a classic French civil servant: a historian by education, and not knowledgable about technology.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  ENA, especially. An X would have been better suited within the usual CEO pool, I think. But of course he was chief of staff of an important Minister before he was appointed CEO of Arianespace so you know... Within this system Arianespace and the EU were never to be innovators and disruptors, and still aren't geared to catch up. In a way, this is a bit Nokia vs Apple unfolding in the space sector.
  - ur-whale 4y ago
    > ENA, especially. Much that is wrong and has been wrong with France in the last 50 years can almost always be traced back to this ghastly institution. The folks who graduate from ENA are wildly disconnected from reality, especially when it comes to the economy and technology. They unfortunately are also a tight knit mafia that pretty much controls the country and are dragging it down into the abyss at a 100 mph.
ur-whale 4y ago
> ArianeGroup lost an entire design cycle due to bad decision making When you don't operate with market pressure, there is no such thing as bad decision making.

LeanderK 4y ago

Europe has to accept the loss of Ariane 6. We have to write it off, it's a pill we have to swallow. Either get Ariane 6 into production right now or continue with Ariane 5, but we have to get Ariane 7 into development as fast as possible. Ariane 6 is a dead-end. Everyone is pretty pessimistic here, but you have to keep in mind that before spacex ariane was a big player. They didn't realise the revolution happening until it was too late and now have this uncompetitive rocket, but Ariane is not entirely stupid and incompetent. They can create a reliable, good rocket.

panick21_ 4y ago
Restarting Ariane 5 at this point would be more expensive then getting Ariane 6 out. Going for the Ariane 5 ME was the alternative plan many countries wanted, rather then the Ariane 6. Don't hold your breath for Ariane 7 anytime soon.