European leaders say an immediate response needed to the rise of SpaceX
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They have no leverage. SpaceX doesn't operate in the EU, and the EU can't tax or regulate SpaceX operations in the US. They can't make it harder for the EU satellite manufacturers to put payloads on SpaceX vehicles, because then customers will just buy satellites from US manufacturers.
What Europe is doing now with Ariane is very similar to what the US did in the 1980s with the Shuttle, and it's going to cost them their dominance in the commercial launch market, just as it did the US at that time.
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I don't think that's entirely fair ... there's been some work on European re-use in the meantime and it's been apparent that the inital 'freak out' occurred some time ago. The issue - for the Europeans - is that the rocketry program represents a jobs & capability program as much as a commercial one, where the commercial role is to ease some of the cost. It appears rapidly developing a re-usable rocket & putting people out of work wasn't politically feasible, and so the European solution is to transition at an agreeable (to them) pace. Of course the market - like usually happens - is transitioning faster and so the next phase of discussion is about either a) accelerating the response or b) supporting the existing capability more directly in the meantime. My suspicion is that b) will win.
10 years cures a lot of 'jobs programs' ills. Folks retire or move on and younger capability can transition or be trained on the newer reality. And if SpaceX want to maintain it's pace of development towards Mars then it'll need funds which could help sustain pricing in the near term. But it's true the future direction is clear.
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It can be argued that having politically unfettered access to space (previously known as ICBM capability) is an unsolved problem for many countries. Now, we've moved a bit from ICBMs as the only reason to put up with the rocket equation, but the idea is still important for Europe (and China and India and Iran - if they can ever get their act together). So having dirt cheap access isn't the only metric.
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How do you figure? Does SpaceX operate in the EU? I don't think so. When customers come to SpaceX, those customers are choosing to do business in the US, and US regulations apply. As long as SpaceX's launch business takes place solely within the US, the EU has no ability to impose squat on SpaceX.
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But then the design folks a) have to admit they've been outdone b) call into question current funding for design and development.
Better to wait to admit the obvious when their design work is complete and ready for production, then claim "no one could have foreseen this when we started" and claim emergency. Then ask for new money to come up with a salespitch for dedicating billions of dollars for the same people (in a restructured, much larger organization) to either attempt the design of some revolutionary technology or duplicate SpaceX tech. Which will arrive in some form in 15 years due to unforeseen technical, organizational, and integration challenges.
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ESA has a budget of about 6.5 billion euros a year...... instead of paying for useless white papers, they’d be better served by just buying several billion euros of spacex stock when it hits IPO.
That budget includes Copernicus, Galileo and all collaborations with NASA. I doubt there's much left for Ariane development. If ESA had a similar budget to NASA, there'd be plenty to kickstart commercial development.
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ESA isn't part of the EU so I guess that means it's also somehow not European?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_ ... pean_Union
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It's theoretically possible, but would require very careful optimization.
There would be compromises to each goal, so it would be necessary to find some offsetting gain (say, a good social structure somehow set up to promote innovation in a way other structures do not). In a task with very narrow technical margins, any serious compromise would make the task so uncompetitive as to guarantee failure (e.g. SLS, etc).
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In all seriousness, maybe good social structure requires prioritizing fairness, equity, and stability while innovation flourishes in competitive, risky environments? For an extreme example, look at how much of modern technology is rooted in WW2 and the Cold War.
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Given the pace of bureaucracy, the "freak out" probably happened 2-3 years ago, and the EU has just taken that long to complete investigations, committee meetings, PR veting, and get multinational approval.
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Direct link to the ESA board deliberating on the topic:
https://youtu.be/l23_-1v__Fg
Seriously though, as a proud European I love the EU for the peace and prosperity it brought to the continent, and its many truly positive achievements over the last decades. But space policy and Covid response are two aspects that have been and continue to develop as an overwhelmingly disappointing fiasco...
https://youtu.be/l23_-1v__Fg
Seriously though, as a proud European I love the EU for the peace and prosperity it brought to the continent, and its many truly positive achievements over the last decades. But space policy and Covid response are two aspects that have been and continue to develop as an overwhelmingly disappointing fiasco...
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But SpaceX can easily pull out of the European launch market completely as they really only account for a few launches per year, as Europe has basically already black-listed SpaceX to prioritize Ariane 5/6. (Hmmm, could SpaceX start anti-trust litigation against ESA?)
StarLink is the more interesting angle. Europe could definitely argue that SpaceX has an unfair advantage since they have cheaper launch costs than anyone else, though it's hard to see what the remedy would be, as I can't imagine they could force SpaceX to lower launch prices for their competitors. I'm sure their legislators will come up with something interesting, though.
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They can barely keep their 20 year old launcher working consistently, I dont think European ingenuity will be inventing much of anything besides new fines and antitrust investigation for SpaceX.
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If SpaceX was in it to make money they would've ended all R&D (Starship? cut that shit out) and milked their 15-year head start on reusable rocketry starting a couple years ago. They'd charge a dollar less than the 2nd-cheapest rocket, rather than massively undercutting it.
They're definitely a for-profit company, but my guess is that as long as Elon is in charge, at least one Mars mission will happen even if a country doesn't pay for it.
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And without Russia, we might all be speaking German about now. We did out part, but Russia sustained more casualties than the rest of the Allies combined.
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This sounds like a plan to sometime in the future get where SpaceX is now, while SpaceX is planning to be further down the road at that time.
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What is the business case for a European SpaceX? SpaceX was heavily reliant on NASA and DoD funding for much of it's existence, and that's still around 40% of their revenue. Until Starlink is cashflow positive, SpaceX's business case relies on NASA and DoD funding.
Who would invest in a European SpaceX? How much money would they have to put into it? Would they be able to pull ESA and defense contracts away from Airbus, Thales, Avio, and the other big players? SpaceX had to risk everything and sue their competitors AND their customers to get contracts. Would that fly in European courts?
A lot of things had to come together for SpaceX to succeed: government contracts, venture capital, DoD assistance, and the right leadership and talent. SpaceX stepped into a situation where decades of intense defense spending had resulted in the infrastructure and people they needed being available. Europe's lower defense spending (and civil, but mostly defense) on space resulted in far fewer companies and people with the requisite skillsets being available.
I don't know that it could ever happen in Europe, not without tens of billion of dollars in investment - and there is no business case to make that investment.
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The difference between SpaceX and all the other space launching companies is that Space has done most of its development of its rockets on its own dime. This has allowed it to be fore flexible in the approach that the company took and to make decisions much more rapidly also. It was not until that SpaceX had a rocket that showed promise did the US government invest any money in it. The government only invested money in the company because the government run program was not working and may never work.
If Europe wants to compete in the space launch business it needs to take what SpaceX has shown to work and build on that. Invest in the companies that have developed a proven plan and then add a little incentives to nudge the compan(ies) in the direction it is needed to go. But don't burdon the companies with politics and bureaucratic controls that has hogtied the US rocket industry until SpaceX came on the scene.
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Just to repeat what numerous commenters already have, this is a situation where "fear of market dominance" = "fear they will do it cheaper than us."
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To be honest a lot of the times we see EU regulations with respect to big companies it usually it's a very good thing. However, this is a very different thing, and that's why they're approaching it in a different way. They could regulate all they want and bring SpaceX into price parity with EU launch services through some measures. However, that doesn't solve anything, because all that does is increase the price for access to space for EU companies. They may be slow, but they're not dumb, and mocking regulatory bodies and their work is a US trove that has led us to incredibly poor outcomes. Poisoned people, falling planes, economic crises, etc. Regulations are needed.
Now, what the EU should do (and really, should've done already) is foster the creation of launch companies like SpaceX. There is an implicit disadvantage due to having less launches needed, as the US launches a lot of stuff, but you can use government money to keep things going in one way or another. We do that in the US as well. Finally, it's weird to mock the EU as being an institution that didn't see this coming. Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, is still questioning the economics of rocket reuse, or at least he was as of last year when it's the last time I read about it. A direct competitor to SpaceX, in the same country, battling for the same contracts, is still unsure if reusable rocketry is the way forward.
I, for one, hope the EU can get its shit together on this. The world as a whole will be better with a variety of rocketry approaches, innovation, and access to space. They're late to the party for sure, but better late than never I guess.
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Links? Not doubting, but it would be fun for posterity a la “SLS is real, falcon heavy is not”.
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I'll defend the ESA a bit there. Remember, for quite a bit of their history, SpaceX was on the verge of going under. We're all better off that they're full viable now, but it was damned close to a flash in the pan for a while there.
I would agree that ESA has been slow to respond, but in terms of how things looked back then, there was good reason to doubt that it would work out.
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A friend I've known for 45 years, whose veracity I have never had reason to doubt, worked at the Ariane launch site many years ago--I believe it was in French Guiana--and he described how, every time a rocket launched, the French Foreign Legion, ostensibly guarding the entrances to the site, would immediately pull out their weapons and start shooting at the rocket.
I have no proof other than the anecdote, but it makes for a good story.
edit: A link that does not confirm the story, but adds to its plausibility.
And another one that suggests while the setting remains challenging, the discipline may have improved from the early days of the program described in the anecdote: https://www.popularmechanics.com/milita ... -10487410/ I have no intention of disparaging the FFL, their interesting past notwithstanding.
I bet Eric Berger knows people who could--probably off the record--grimace and nod.
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The Long March 8 might be a crude attempt to graft reusability on to an existing platform as a stop-gap, but I think it's still the fastest response to SpaceX from an Old Space player so far.
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The absolutely hilarious part is that as a launch vehicle, Starship probably already has SLS beat. SpaceX could probably be launching commercial loads in the very near future if they were willing to throw away the rocket. It's the landing bit that's proving difficult.
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Last known production rate for Starlink sats was 120/month, hence the launch rate of 60/2 weeks.
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By 2014 SpaceX had nearly $10 billion in contracts and investments, mostly with the US government. It was pretty obvious that they weren't going under. No assessment leading to Ariane 6 should have even considered that SpaceX might go under; that would be a major oversight.
However, it wasn't clear until about mid-2017 that SpaceX's bet on reuse would pay off. Ariane 6 should have been cancelled then, in favor of going directly to Ariane Next with partial reuse.
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In hindsight, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact wasn't a particularly wise alliance for the Soviets.
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By 2030 the Falcon 9 will be retired, and Starship, and its 18m successor will be flying.
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Let me state the painfully obvious: in the long run, an expendable vehicle can't compete with a reusable one.
You have to deliver a small package to a nearby town, you have to choose between using a bike or using an 18-wheeler. Easy choice, right? Well, what if I told you that you have to dump the bike after the delivery? The bike costs a few thousand bucks, fueling the truck for that trip is about a couple hundred.
I know this argument is very old, but it appears that some people still resist to accept reality. Yes, I know, I know: we're talking rockets here, GSE is a big chunk of the launch service cost, most of the rocket is a simple pressure tank, engines/motors are the really expensive bit, etc, etc. Rubbish. Falcon 9 is a first generation partially reusable vehicle, and it already cuts costs by at least half. Even if Starship lives up to just 25% of its promise, the path to the future is clear.
You have to deliver a small package to a nearby town, you have to choose between using a bike or using an 18-wheeler. Easy choice, right? Well, what if I told you that you have to dump the bike after the delivery? The bike costs a few thousand bucks, fueling the truck for that trip is about a couple hundred.
I know this argument is very old, but it appears that some people still resist to accept reality. Yes, I know, I know: we're talking rockets here, GSE is a big chunk of the launch service cost, most of the rocket is a simple pressure tank, engines/motors are the really expensive bit, etc, etc. Rubbish. Falcon 9 is a first generation partially reusable vehicle, and it already cuts costs by at least half. Even if Starship lives up to just 25% of its promise, the path to the future is clear.
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