An excellent long read.
As a general rule, the European Space Agency feels under appreciated. Russia has a storied history. NASA has the Apollo program and five decades of interplanetary missions. China, the third nation to put a human into space, has a rising program and great ambitions. And the Europeans? Even their own citizens don’t seem to know that much about their space agency.
Because they resolutely refuse to develop a manned space program (see below), don't do enough marketing*, and don't have an inspirational leader. Say what you like about Musk, he's made tech - big, engineering tech, not smartphones - cool again. Yes, he's a bit of dick, but it's still easier to be inspired by a dick than a faceless, suit-wearing committee. And that's the corporate, dull image ESA has very successfully managed to project, largely because - I suspect - that's exactly what it is. It doesn't have any underlying program to rally behind. Neither does NASA, really. Space X, on the other hand...
* That said, both ESO and ESA's public outreach divisions (especially the policy of doing observations solely for outreach and making all outreach data public) is excellent. They just don't sell it enough.
Since its debut in 1996, the Ariane 5 rocket has flown 98 missions, with just two significant failures. The Europeans are justifiably proud of their rocket and its capabilities. Asked about how the Ariane 5 compares to lower-cost alternatives on the market today, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Stefano Bianchi, Head of ESA Launchers Development Department, responded with a question of his own. “Are you buying a Mercedes because it is cheap?” Ranzo, sitting nearby, chimed in and referenced the India-based maker of the world’s least expensive car. As he put it, “We don’t sell a Tata.”
Which is just bloody stupid. Do you buy a Mercedes so that you can throw it away ? Of course not. Worse, only selling Mercedes - to only cater for the rich - that's just bollocks. A bunch of really clever idiots at work here. Stop catering to the elite and sell to the masses, you bunch of berks. It gets worse :
If everything works, when the Ariane 6 debuts in mid-2020, it will offer comparable service to the Ariane 5 rocket at a 40 to 50 percent reduction of cost. It will not be reusable, of course, and it can never reach the theoretically super-low cost of a fully reusable Falcon 9. But having eight to 10 launches a year, from an economic standpoint, simply does not justify the expense of developing and flying a reusable rocket, European officials say. Two dozen or more launches a year might, but that is not the scale Europe operates at or seeks.
Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much. This is one difference between rocket-by-government and rocket-by-billionaire programs.
.... which is just mwwwaaaaaaaarrrghh. Cheaper rockets = more launches, not less. Space X have proved that, but it wasn't something that needed proving, it was in-your-face obvious.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/as-the-spacex-steamroller-surges-european-rocket-industry-vows-to-resist/
The biggest point eg. Is that the areane program is a big cross financing for the military sector. One hidden requirement which was heavily battled on was the solid state booster, because they are needed to keep the ICBM producers humming and keep the institutional knowledge.
ReplyDeleteMichael Gebetsroither For that they have the Vega small launchers, no need to put then on an Ariane.
ReplyDeleteWhat they should probably do is pass a massive engine order to be made on, say, the next ten years. After all, those Soviet N1 engines proved that an engine can be left sitting in a warehouse for decades and still work. That way, they don't have the "1 engine a year" production problem and they can apply those engine reuse plans they are, in fact, working on.
That and probably do the same as the US, that is subsiding the domestic launch industry with an absurd number of government launches. Even without the US military-industrial complex, I'm sure they would find enthusiastic science teams putting satellites together if governments offered free launches.