4 ms·

Of course, they rely on SpaceX because Europe doesn't have enough launch capacity to support their launch rate (1/year at best)

by tekla 1y ago

pfdietz 1y ago
Europe decided that the priority purpose of their launch industry was to provide jobs, not competitive launches.
- boricj 1y ago
  The primary purpose of the traditional European launch industry is to provide an independent launch capability for government payloads. Cost is irrelevant because the French government in particular wants to be able to launch payloads into orbit without depending on anyone else to do so.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    It's failing at that too, in the same sense that maintaining a sailing ship fleet would have failed to provide independent seafaring capability in the latter half of the 19th century. SpaceX has greatly raised the bar on what can be considered an "independent launch capability." Europe under the current system is greatly limited on what they can imagine doing in space. The equivalent of Starlink is not feasible, for example. Underlying all this was a failure of vision, an assumption that use of space would be static and change only slowly, if at all, and that launch cost could not be significantly reduced.
    - mjevans 1y ago
      Wouldn't it be nice if buying a space launch vehicle were like purchasing a car, instead of (a military) aircraft? For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much; to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle. Though with cars we do have a fairly standardized control scheme, at least for the most important parts. Steering wheel, go and stop foot levers.
      - metalman 1y ago
        heres a gaggle og MIGS, but name your flavor https://www.barnstormers.com/cat_search.php?headline=MIG&body=&part_num=&mfg=&model=&user__profile__company=&user__last_name=&user__first_name=&user__profile__country=&specialcase__state=&user__profile__city=&user__profile__uzip=&specialcase__phone=&user__email=&my_cats__name=&price__gte=&price__lte=&search_type=advanced&keyword= https://www.barnstormers.com/cat_search.php?headline=MIG&bod...
      - cpgxiii 1y ago
        > For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much ... Consolidation was an inevitable result of the end of the Cold War and massive cuts to defense spending. The defense industry was _encouraged_ to consolidate because the alternative would have been bankruptcy. Obviously, time has shown that this consolidation was bad for the industry and the government, but a lot has happened in the last 35 years that would not have been foreseen then. > to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle The type rating structure really has quite little to do with aerospace industry consolidation (if anything, the industry is too fractured to allow for more generic type ratings). Aircraft, their systems, and their flight dynamics are different enough that trying to create a more general type rating would really be impossible. What you do see are families of aircraft which either completely share a type rating or require very limited additional training to maintain a rating for multiple family types (e.g. all 737s, 757/767, 777/787, A32x/A33x/A35x). Single piston GA aircraft are really the exception, not because they all share the same behavior (there is a truly wild range of flight dynamics and avionics), but because the GA community (particularly in the US) is so large and established that requiring more training/experience is politically impossible. So long as GA accidents don't kill too many bystanders, this will remain the case.
        notahacker 1y ago
        Yep. Two things the space industry and airline industry have in common is that (i) you need to spend an enormous amounts of money to have a remotely viable product, because the physics is hard even without regulation (ii) you don't get that money back unless the product you've spent all that money developing has better unit economics than your competitors for a sufficiently large number of target customers (or your national government steps in to protect you) because there aren't many buyers and the market isn't buying aircraft or payload space because they like the vibe or the aesthetics. That naturally tends towards monopoly (or oligopolies with carefully defined differences in capabilities, some of which turn out to be unprofitable segments...)
  - NitpickLawyer 1y ago
    > Cost is irrelevant I agree with your overall point, but I think the person you replied to has a point as well. The cost of developing F9 is ridiculously low (considering the industry), so it should have been possible to do by any country / group of countries if the cost was the only problem... > "According to NASA's own independently verified numbers, SpaceX's development costs of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets were estimated at approximately $390 million in total."
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    This seems like revisionist cope. Ariane 4 and 5 were extremely successful in the commercial launch market in the 90s and 00s before SpaceX trounced them. Now that they're floundering, it's not because they failed to keep up but because they never meant to be successful in the first place? That's just not true.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
notahacker 1y ago
And? So does everyone else, because Transporter rideshares are cheap and incubating your own rocket programme isn't. SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors. Does the fact SpaceX can't be adequately served by domestic capacity and their in-house semiconductor programme is just getting started mean they don't execute?! Or is it just a little thing called trade that Americans used to believe in?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors Used and relies on aren’t interchangeable. (To the extent there is reliance, it’s more on Taiwan than Europe.)
  - notahacker 1y ago
    tbh launch is at least as commoditised as space semiconductor packaging, especially when it's rideshares to LEO; the Exploration Company wouldn't struggle to get into space if the Falcon 9 wasn't a thing, it'd just have to pay someone else more[1], and no particular reason to doubt its ability to deliver on its longer term plan to develop its own launch capability either. Doubt that SpaceX would want to operate a Falcon 9 without any chips on board or locally-packaged COTS parts either! [1]if Europeans wanting IODs of their reentry capsules for some reason couldn't use SpaceX, ArianeSpace absolutely has the technical ability to take the equivalent to Transporter mission payloads to the same orbits at the same launch cadence (this was the 14th Transporter rideshare mission since 2021), but obviously price-sensitive rideshare customers aren't going to use it whilst US and Indian launches are options, and much cheaper ones. Extra cost might be a dealbreaker for some less well funded space startups, but not for the company we're talking about here...
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > launch is at least as commoditised as space semiconductor packaging Cadence and national origin de-commoditise launch. > the Exploration Company wouldn't struggle to get into space if the Falcon 9 wasn't a thing, it'd just have to pay someone else more And wait longer. Higher cost, uncertainty and lead times challenge project viability. > ArianeSpace absolutely has the technical ability to take the equivalent to Transporter mission payloads to the same orbits at the same launch cadence Arianespace has a negligible fraction of SpaceX’s launch cadence. Europe doesn’t have the ability to build e.g. a LEO constellation with its own rockets, or replace destroyed orbital materiel in a conflict as quickly as China or America can.

Of course, they rely on SpaceX because Europe doesn't have enough launch capacity to support their launch rate (1/year at best)

by tekla 1y ago

Of course, they rely on SpaceX because Europe doesn't have enough launch capacity to support their launch rate (1/year at best)

pfdietz 1y ago

Europe decided that the priority purpose of their launch industry was to provide jobs, not competitive launches.

boricj 1y ago
The primary purpose of the traditional European launch industry is to provide an independent launch capability for government payloads. Cost is irrelevant because the French government in particular wants to be able to launch payloads into orbit without depending on anyone else to do so.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  It's failing at that too, in the same sense that maintaining a sailing ship fleet would have failed to provide independent seafaring capability in the latter half of the 19th century. SpaceX has greatly raised the bar on what can be considered an "independent launch capability." Europe under the current system is greatly limited on what they can imagine doing in space. The equivalent of Starlink is not feasible, for example. Underlying all this was a failure of vision, an assumption that use of space would be static and change only slowly, if at all, and that launch cost could not be significantly reduced.
  - mjevans 1y ago
    Wouldn't it be nice if buying a space launch vehicle were like purchasing a car, instead of (a military) aircraft? For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much; to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle. Though with cars we do have a fairly standardized control scheme, at least for the most important parts. Steering wheel, go and stop foot levers.
    - metalman 1y ago
      heres a gaggle og MIGS, but name your flavor https://www.barnstormers.com/cat_search.php?headline=MIG&body=&part_num=&mfg=&model=&user__profile__company=&user__last_name=&user__first_name=&user__profile__country=&specialcase__state=&user__profile__city=&user__profile__uzip=&specialcase__phone=&user__email=&my_cats__name=&price__gte=&price__lte=&search_type=advanced&keyword= https://www.barnstormers.com/cat_search.php?headline=MIG&bod...
    - cpgxiii 1y ago
      > For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much ... Consolidation was an inevitable result of the end of the Cold War and massive cuts to defense spending. The defense industry was _encouraged_ to consolidate because the alternative would have been bankruptcy. Obviously, time has shown that this consolidation was bad for the industry and the government, but a lot has happened in the last 35 years that would not have been foreseen then. > to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle The type rating structure really has quite little to do with aerospace industry consolidation (if anything, the industry is too fractured to allow for more generic type ratings). Aircraft, their systems, and their flight dynamics are different enough that trying to create a more general type rating would really be impossible. What you do see are families of aircraft which either completely share a type rating or require very limited additional training to maintain a rating for multiple family types (e.g. all 737s, 757/767, 777/787, A32x/A33x/A35x). Single piston GA aircraft are really the exception, not because they all share the same behavior (there is a truly wild range of flight dynamics and avionics), but because the GA community (particularly in the US) is so large and established that requiring more training/experience is politically impossible. So long as GA accidents don't kill too many bystanders, this will remain the case.
      - notahacker 1y ago
        Yep. Two things the space industry and airline industry have in common is that (i) you need to spend an enormous amounts of money to have a remotely viable product, because the physics is hard even without regulation (ii) you don't get that money back unless the product you've spent all that money developing has better unit economics than your competitors for a sufficiently large number of target customers (or your national government steps in to protect you) because there aren't many buyers and the market isn't buying aircraft or payload space because they like the vibe or the aesthetics. That naturally tends towards monopoly (or oligopolies with carefully defined differences in capabilities, some of which turn out to be unprofitable segments...)
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  > Cost is irrelevant I agree with your overall point, but I think the person you replied to has a point as well. The cost of developing F9 is ridiculously low (considering the industry), so it should have been possible to do by any country / group of countries if the cost was the only problem... > "According to NASA's own independently verified numbers, SpaceX's development costs of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets were estimated at approximately $390 million in total."
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- lupusreal 1y ago
  This seems like revisionist cope. Ariane 4 and 5 were extremely successful in the commercial launch market in the 90s and 00s before SpaceX trounced them. Now that they're floundering, it's not because they failed to keep up but because they never meant to be successful in the first place? That's just not true.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

notahacker 1y ago

And? So does everyone else, because Transporter rideshares are cheap and incubating your own rocket programme isn't. SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors. Does the fact SpaceX can't be adequately served by domestic capacity and their in-house semiconductor programme is just getting started mean they don't execute?! Or is it just a little thing called trade that Americans used to believe in?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors Used and relies on aren’t interchangeable. (To the extent there is reliance, it’s more on Taiwan than Europe.)
- notahacker 1y ago
  tbh launch is at least as commoditised as space semiconductor packaging, especially when it's rideshares to LEO; the Exploration Company wouldn't struggle to get into space if the Falcon 9 wasn't a thing, it'd just have to pay someone else more[1], and no particular reason to doubt its ability to deliver on its longer term plan to develop its own launch capability either. Doubt that SpaceX would want to operate a Falcon 9 without any chips on board or locally-packaged COTS parts either! [1]if Europeans wanting IODs of their reentry capsules for some reason couldn't use SpaceX, ArianeSpace absolutely has the technical ability to take the equivalent to Transporter mission payloads to the same orbits at the same launch cadence (this was the 14th Transporter rideshare mission since 2021), but obviously price-sensitive rideshare customers aren't going to use it whilst US and Indian launches are options, and much cheaper ones. Extra cost might be a dealbreaker for some less well funded space startups, but not for the company we're talking about here...
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > launch is at least as commoditised as space semiconductor packaging Cadence and national origin de-commoditise launch. > the Exploration Company wouldn't struggle to get into space if the Falcon 9 wasn't a thing, it'd just have to pay someone else more And wait longer. Higher cost, uncertainty and lead times challenge project viability. > ArianeSpace absolutely has the technical ability to take the equivalent to Transporter mission payloads to the same orbits at the same launch cadence Arianespace has a negligible fraction of SpaceX’s launch cadence. Europe doesn’t have the ability to build e.g. a LEO constellation with its own rockets, or replace destroyed orbital materiel in a conflict as quickly as China or America can.