Europe must have independent access to space - a vibrant space industry creating the next generation of launch vehicles is essential. A good article spolied by the use of foul language at the end !
I appreciate you taking the time to read the article and your honest feedback. As someone who has written professionally for over a decade, I don't buy into the idea of "foul language." All language has a place. It was used here to emphasize the conclusion because I thought it was important to highlight the juxtaposition between the hopeful statement and the reality of the situation. It's not a tool I use often, but it is one that I feel is legitimate.
>I don't particularly feel inspired by a launcher challenge that we will need to wait another two years to receive funding to pursue.
> How has ESA still not proposed a mechanism that would allow it to call on member states to make ministerial-level decisions outside the three-year cycle in extraordinary circumstances?
I was not aware of this. The member states were capable to call on ESA to terminate its contracts with Russia. Surely that same process could be used to discuss the funding of alternatives?
The one advantage ESA has over NASA is that it allows support for bottom-up programs pushed by its member stages and their space agencies (if they have them).
While these may be less efficient in funding and running large programs, they do allow it to assist more flexible smaller projects, and competition that may provide redundancy.
It seems to work well for the smaller launchers and smallsat industry so far.
While I like that the EU now plans to use ESA rather then develop its own space agency, I do fear that its top-down mentality may try to hamper this.
-
> However, Europe just doesn’t offer the same huge NASA and defence contracts that sustained a company like SpaceX in its early days.
It did not get those awards till the Falcon 1 flew, untill then it was private funding. While it did get a large sum for Cargo Dragon, this was in a cost sharing structure, (And overall less then Ariane 6)
SpaceX was initially not eligible for the NSSL (EELV) contract (it did get some DoD STP flights), and the cargo flights would only be for 1-2 flights a year. Similar to the Galileo and Copernicus programs - yet ArianeSpace did not even consider to keep a spare Ariane 5 around to bid on them.
What did help SpaceX were commercial contracts like from SES and Iridium. The Amazon Kuiper contract for ArianeSpace might be larger then everything SpaceX had at the start. Yet it does not seem to spur Arianespace to speed up at all.
> <i>[i] I am still not convinced ESA really has any idea how it intends to handle the development of a successor to Ariane 6. [/i] </i>
I am not sure that is a bad thing in itself - as ESA's (outward) certainty in its policies has gotten us where we are today. But there should be a debate raging about the various visions. Your online magazine should be flooded by op-eds for people laying out their vision for space policy. (If the discussions is happening elsewhere, I am not aware of it.)
One could even argue that this goes beyond just the launch side. Europe had every opportunity, it had the technology and often it even had visions. Yet somehow, over the last 30 years we managed to squander all of it.
But for launch in particular, everything we tried failed:
- Regarding Ariane 6 development it was worse, it backfired, creating an incentive to not draw out its development as long as possible to win more subsidies.
- But as your coverage laid bare, commercialization of Vega has led to lower quality but not to lower prices or faster innovation.
- External contracting of Soyuz also failed; even with the rocket paid for and on the pad Arianespace was not able to launch it without Russian permission and support.
- Spreading the risk by allowing foreign launch also proved not as reliable as expected.
ArianeSpace used to have a Launch Services Alliance with Boeing (Sea Launch) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, It was either ended or was never updated, but was not useful when we needed it.
- Depending on allies to buy or trade rockets from also failed.
ESA pulled out of using the partnership with Russia for its Mars lander, without having a backup strategy.
Indeed the USA and Japan experienced a launcher crisis at the same time as Europe for much of the same reason; competition with SpaceX.
And that SpaceX happened to have spare capacity is pure luck; a year before it would not have. Indeed, policy was still that their reuse was expected to fail.
As I already said, your coverage has made a good start at uncovering some of the issues. But ESA,
EU and the companies themselves have not given any signs that they accepted there are problems, let alone done a root cause analysis for structural issues that need to get fixed.
Without it, any future attempt is likely to experience the same problems
SpaceX and now multiple other companies have shown that launchers privately financed can be done at a fraction of the cost of governmentally financed ones. Ariane 6 won’t be the last European launcher, only the last governmentally financed one.
Europe must have independent access to space - a vibrant space industry creating the next generation of launch vehicles is essential. A good article spolied by the use of foul language at the end !
I appreciate you taking the time to read the article and your honest feedback. As someone who has written professionally for over a decade, I don't buy into the idea of "foul language." All language has a place. It was used here to emphasize the conclusion because I thought it was important to highlight the juxtaposition between the hopeful statement and the reality of the situation. It's not a tool I use often, but it is one that I feel is legitimate.
>I don't particularly feel inspired by a launcher challenge that we will need to wait another two years to receive funding to pursue.
> How has ESA still not proposed a mechanism that would allow it to call on member states to make ministerial-level decisions outside the three-year cycle in extraordinary circumstances?
I was not aware of this. The member states were capable to call on ESA to terminate its contracts with Russia. Surely that same process could be used to discuss the funding of alternatives?
The one advantage ESA has over NASA is that it allows support for bottom-up programs pushed by its member stages and their space agencies (if they have them).
While these may be less efficient in funding and running large programs, they do allow it to assist more flexible smaller projects, and competition that may provide redundancy.
It seems to work well for the smaller launchers and smallsat industry so far.
While I like that the EU now plans to use ESA rather then develop its own space agency, I do fear that its top-down mentality may try to hamper this.
-
> However, Europe just doesn’t offer the same huge NASA and defence contracts that sustained a company like SpaceX in its early days.
It did not get those awards till the Falcon 1 flew, untill then it was private funding. While it did get a large sum for Cargo Dragon, this was in a cost sharing structure, (And overall less then Ariane 6)
SpaceX was initially not eligible for the NSSL (EELV) contract (it did get some DoD STP flights), and the cargo flights would only be for 1-2 flights a year. Similar to the Galileo and Copernicus programs - yet ArianeSpace did not even consider to keep a spare Ariane 5 around to bid on them.
What did help SpaceX were commercial contracts like from SES and Iridium. The Amazon Kuiper contract for ArianeSpace might be larger then everything SpaceX had at the start. Yet it does not seem to spur Arianespace to speed up at all.
> <i>[i] I am still not convinced ESA really has any idea how it intends to handle the development of a successor to Ariane 6. [/i] </i>
I am not sure that is a bad thing in itself - as ESA's (outward) certainty in its policies has gotten us where we are today. But there should be a debate raging about the various visions. Your online magazine should be flooded by op-eds for people laying out their vision for space policy. (If the discussions is happening elsewhere, I am not aware of it.)
One could even argue that this goes beyond just the launch side. Europe had every opportunity, it had the technology and often it even had visions. Yet somehow, over the last 30 years we managed to squander all of it.
But for launch in particular, everything we tried failed:
- Regarding Ariane 6 development it was worse, it backfired, creating an incentive to not draw out its development as long as possible to win more subsidies.
- But as your coverage laid bare, commercialization of Vega has led to lower quality but not to lower prices or faster innovation.
- External contracting of Soyuz also failed; even with the rocket paid for and on the pad Arianespace was not able to launch it without Russian permission and support.
- Spreading the risk by allowing foreign launch also proved not as reliable as expected.
ArianeSpace used to have a Launch Services Alliance with Boeing (Sea Launch) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, It was either ended or was never updated, but was not useful when we needed it.
- Depending on allies to buy or trade rockets from also failed.
ESA pulled out of using the partnership with Russia for its Mars lander, without having a backup strategy.
Indeed the USA and Japan experienced a launcher crisis at the same time as Europe for much of the same reason; competition with SpaceX.
And that SpaceX happened to have spare capacity is pure luck; a year before it would not have. Indeed, policy was still that their reuse was expected to fail.
As I already said, your coverage has made a good start at uncovering some of the issues. But ESA,
EU and the companies themselves have not given any signs that they accepted there are problems, let alone done a root cause analysis for structural issues that need to get fixed.
Without it, any future attempt is likely to experience the same problems
Any European country could have their OWN Falcon 9 class launcher, like, tomorrow if ESA would allow it:
Towards Every European Country's Own Crewed Spaceflight.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/06/towards-every-european-countrys-own.html
Bob Clark
SpaceX and now multiple other companies have shown that launchers privately financed can be done at a fraction of the cost of governmentally financed ones. Ariane 6 won’t be the last European launcher, only the last governmentally financed one.
Bob Clark