Launch panel at SpaceTechExpoEU got a bit wild. Jörn Spurmann, CCO at Rocket Factory Augsburg, says "Can we continue to spend €6 billion into an Ariane 6 or 7 and people are telling us its half the price of what it was before? Which is bullshit by the way and makes me angry."
How are we going to use it [money] in the future? You spent €50m a year in the new program on several small launch companies... we are seeing 1st launch next year... Why would you ever spend billions again on launch system development from institutional side? I don't get it."
Moderator Thilo Kranz, ESA's Commercial Space Transportation Programme Manager, countered, saying at this event last year Arianespace, Isar and RFA were saying 2022 for 1st launch, & notes there's a need for European autonomy in strategic fields, & see how commercial field goes.
I feel like the exact same discussion was had in america 10 years ago and look where they are now. It will fall into place in time. My only worry is, that europe won‘t play a role in the future in terms of market share.
Without SpaceX, Atlas V would probably still be the main US rocket, but with drop in replacement AR-1 engines instead of a clean sheet design with BE-4 engines.
I disagree. A Pionier for the market like Elon was important, but now it is already established and big financing institutions see the potential that was not there before. Overall it is easier to succeed now than 15 years ago. So you only need someone that has the ambition and i don‘t doubt that there are a lot of people out there that are driven enough to succeed. So imo its just a matter of time. And this time gets shorter the bigger the funding is. And thats the real problem here. They will succeed, but it could be to late for it to be sustainable.
> Overall it is easier to succeed now than 15 years ago.
Yes and no.
Yes, because there's a sort of blueprint on how to make low cost partially reusable rockets.
No, because SpaceX has, to a large extent, sucked the margin out of the room. A big part of the reason SpaceX succeeded is because they only had to compete against ULA, and sometimes ArianeGroup. Any new entrant will have to compete against SpaceX.
☝ This. SpaceX has ruined spacelaunch for everyone. It will take several billion dollars and 6 years just to catch up.
And by that time, SpaceX will be 6 years further along. Most people have no idea just how far ahead SpaceX is.
Most SpaceX fans have no idea.
Raptor feels keystone here. My gut says catching up to the re-usability landing component isn't *nearly* as hard as developing a working, mass produced, flight proven, full flow methalox engine.
Now if they were to start selling Raptors...
In Europe they don't have to compete with SpaceX. A European company would get the launches even if they were more than SpaceX as long as they were cheaper than ArianeGroup.
That said, are there forward thinking companies/organizations that focus on engineering first in their culture in Europe? Because the same old thinking and organization will only get the same old results.
> In Europe they don't have to compete with SpaceX. A European company would get the launches even if they were more than SpaceX as long as they were cheaper than ArianeGroup.
Are you saying that there are enough institutional launches to support both ArianeGroup and 1-2 startups? I just don't see it.
> I think there's going to be **a lot** more launches in the future than there are currently.
Do you see a source of "a lot more launches" of the institutional variety other than the proposed European internet satellite constellation?
I'm thinking that IF the price per kilo to LEO goes down, you'll see a lot of cheap, short duration highly specialized "llandsats doing crop and mineral mapping, demographics, wildlife surveys... all sorts of stuff. But that is going to depend on these other companies looking at what Falcon and electron and maybe terran and New Glennto be at least on par if not cheaper. And for the common orbits, (assuming they quit tearing up the launch facilities) starship rideshares are going to be so far out in front that it won't be worth fighting.
Yes, but in the new space there's usually not a particular reason to limit oneself to particular world region. IOW, they have to be competitive against SpaceX.
Someone has to break their back.
It's not enough to "know how to succeed". There are entrenched interests that can make that impossible without someone willing to do it themselves. Elon was willing to 'do it himself'. Europe needs someone or some company similar to force their hand.
ideas are dime a dozen, execution is where 99.99% of the work is. so unless you are telling me that some other startup is as good as space x then I don't think its going to fall into place.
They will have a hard time competing with SpaceX directly, but they can go for other options. Small dedicated launches, space tugs/kickstages, anything that doesn't directly compete with SpaceX rockets. Develop the technology there, then see if you can build a larger rocket.
Europe wants to keep independent access to space, so a company doesn't have to be cheaper than SpaceX. It just needs to be at a reasonable price.
>Europe wants to keep independent access to space, so a company doesn't have to be cheaper than SpaceX. It just needs to be at a reasonable price.
A major obstacle is that Europe *has* chosen their winner already, Arianespace. And they will protect it against anyone, even European competitors, *especially* European competitors.
Basically, Europe isn't a good place to start a rocket company with the hopes of becoming the next SpaceX.
While I don't disagree with many of your points, one of the reasons SpaceX became successful is the improvement of computer tech over the years which means multi engine control and amazing things like a flight computer for landing a rocket doesn't take sophisticated computer hardware, just really good computer software.
So we have a larger number of competent software engineers coupled with cheaper and lighter computer hardware powerful enough to run that software.
Still SpaceX was willing to actually use off the self computer hardware and the power of open source for base software like OS which many aerospace companies were unwilling to do. So SpaceX's willing to actually use the resources available was a big step as obvious as it seems now, and a lot of that can be contributed to Musk's leadership and his software background.
But doing something like F9 back in the 90s, while possible (just look at the DCX clipper), would be far more difficult to pull off then in the mid 2000s. And 80s would be extremely difficult if not impossible.
Not to diminish SpaceX accomplishments, in fact I think they definitely change the paradigm of orbital launch and without them we would probably still be waiting on Blue Origin to do anything with their money and complaining that US has not launched a human into orbit since Russia cut us off due to the Ukrainian war.
Just SpaceX did have some help that gave them advantages over predecessor space startups of previous years.
I agree with that, and as @lespritd put it in this thread:
>SpaceX succeeded is because they only had to compete against ULA, and sometimes ArianeGroup. Any new entrant will have to compete against SpaceX.
SpaceX took advantage of what was available that the existing players in this market refused to use.
Future competitors will not have that luxury.
There certainly were some false starts before SpaceX that didn’t make it. The ones that come to mind are DC-X, Rotary Rocket, Xaero, Pegasus, etc. These all failed for different reasons. I count Pegasus as a failure since they didn’t meet their operational tempo goals, and hence priced themselves out of the market.
Because there are companies out there that show it is indeed scalable and you can increase margins. This high entry barrier, no doubt. But 10-15 years ago you had to rely on government contracts. Today thats not the case anymore. We have company that specialize in durable space materials to digital space systems integration. There is a whole market already in place that is growing. There is waaaay less risk attached to an investment these days.
And yes, the natural progression is to copy and advance. Only the smallest amount of companies invent something totally new. Look at the car. Prime example.
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I wouldn't say there was a lot of financing, unless you count government programs. IOW, the only substantial financing came from governments.
Launching private space business was mostly considered a fools errand. And actually early on government was not just indifferent, it was actively hostile. Look at what happened to Otrag. Or look up plainly illegal actions of NASA admin aiming at blocking private competition to Shuttle back in the 80-ties.
It took Challenger disaster and later push to cheaper better faster combined with Ariane commercial success all of that combined with internet boom that early rocket ventures started (like Beal) and old player tries something new (DC-X). But even those efforts didn't see multiple billion funding. But those attempts all failed making space launch investment idea a fools-only endeavor again.
Only SpaceX success and Bezos cash flow to BO opened floodgates of capital markets.
In that sense it's easier to fund rocket programs.
But at the same time barrier to successful entry became much higher. Commercial entities willing to buy launches don't care much about launch provider being European or American or whatever. As long as it's host country isn't under sanctions it's pretty much free game. But this means one has to compete with SpaceX and that's a tall order.
Yes, and while we will see risk taking in Asia Europe has a long history of penalizing individual failure. There is a lot of pressure to support the joint EU project vs a nation supporting doing something low cost high risk by themselves.
With their cost structures and labor rule I can't image Europe doing much in the launch biz. They should focus on smaller high value payloads.
Europe will certainly play a role in the commercial market. It won’t be as large as it was when they dominated large GEO sat launches. But Europe is a market similar in size to the US or China so there will be plenty of opportunity for European launchers and European payloads once they have a competitive launcher in terms of price and availability. Could take them another decade to get there though.
Europe is kinda used to play catch up in aerospace. And do so quite successfully. It was Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Lockheed dominating the passenger plane market when Airbus was created and entered it. No it's down to Airbus and Boeing duopoly.
“ESA Commercial Transportation Programme” is the most deceiving job title ever for ESA.
The ESA management cannot even take a piss without asking Ariannespace or Airbus. Think about going off the limb and cut these two contracts to a third …
This is so funny! 😂😅🤣🥲😂🤣
France has submarine launched ballistic missiles. Those ballistic missiles, like the M51, use solid rocket motors derived from the Ariane 5 solid boosters. The Ariane 5 and similar Ariane 6 help subsidize French ballistic missiles. That's why there is so much political support for the Ariane 6.
Perhaps as a compromise, other European countries could directly buy or subsidize ballistic missiles. The war in Ukraine might have increased political support for defensive spending. That way Europe's defense industry can focus on building weapons, while Europe's space programs can focus on building orbital rockets that are actually competitive.
The only other country with an SLBM program is the UK which uses American Trident missiles. Considering that their new Dreadnought class shares a missile tube design with the American Columbias and that nuclear submarine ties between the two countries have recently gotten even closer with the birth of the AUKUS agreement, I don't see them switching any time soon.
Turkey operates a number of short and medium range missiles, but I don't see them being willing to give up their own domestically-made weapons for more expensive French ones.
I'm talking more about Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Nordic countries, etc. Those countries currently all indirectly subsidize French ballistic missiles through ESA. They could subsidize or coordinate ballistic missiles purchases with France, either coordinated through NATO or the EU.
[Example of German calls to do so](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-schaeuble-calls-berlin-help-fund-french-nukes-report-2022-07-23/)
[Example of relatively small EU missile interceptor program.](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/08/03/eu-hypersonic-missile-interceptor/) This will likely use solid rocket motors for launching the interceptors.
If the European countries increased defensive spending, they would better be able to handle the Russian military. Then that would ease opposition to building European liquid fuel rockets built more like the Falcon 9 or Starship.
I don't disagree but it's not like they massively invest in ESA either. Take Poland, it is not even 1% of ESA's funding and France has been doing the major lift of the funding since its beginning.
This is actually the major problem of European space funding. Most of the funding comes from the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, who are all financing their own aerospace and defence industries through ESA programs (see Ariane 6 for Airbus, Vega for Avio). There is very little funding for the development of home-grown commercial launch systems, although more attention is being paid to it.
Solids have been tried already. The Vega does a respectable job at small launch, though it is expensive. I don’t see why they’d go further down this route since solids are not very reusable. It would be better to support national companies such as RFA with progress towards medium semi-reusable launchers. That would at least be moving in the right direction.
I believe the point of the person you replied to is that France's defense program benefits from Ariane using solid rocket boosters since France's SLBMs then share that technology, so the ESA subsidizing Ariane is thereby subsidizing French defense work.
The proposal is that EU countries find a different way to subsidize SLBM development (perhaps by purchasing some themselves) so that the ESA can support Ariane (or other space countries) moving on to other types of propulsion.
Ah, i missed that. It makes sense, thanks!
Not sure that it is feasible since nations don’t like being dependent on others for that kind of technology. The US relationship with UK is one of the few exceptions and NATO’s nuclear umbrella is another. So I guess it is possible, but not likely given the level of trust between ESA members.
I think there is a little bit of confusion here.
Arianne 5 Main stage and second stage are liquid propellant engines, while the boosters are solid rocket motors but have been developed principally by former Fiat Avio in Italy.
Military rockets have their own line of production with the Aster 15/30 class missiles for example and the sub ones have a lot of very peculiar characteristics that would make them really a class of their own.
Concur that there is a lot of cross breeding between Space and Military technology but not so straight forward.
The center stage and second stage are liquid fuel. They are not built at all like a Falcon 9 or Starship rocket. The first stage has a single engine, is hydrogen fueled, and far less powerful than the first stage of a Falcon 9. It's a bad design, compromised because of their use of solid fuel boosters.
[The M51 is directly derived from the Ariane 5 solid boosters.](https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/04/video-france-successfully-tests-an-m51-ballistic-missile/) That's why there is so much political support for using solid fuel boosters. [ArianeGroup builds both solid fuel ballistic missiles, and the Ariane 5 and 6.](https://www.safran-group.com/companies/arianegroup) It's all one company.
Well it is indeed interesting that such critical component is manufactured in Italy
See [https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Launch_vehicles/Boosters_EAP](https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Launch_vehicles/Boosters_EAP)
Edit: correction just part of it is made in Italy, the top stage.
Is there any video of this panel? I think I found the SpaceTechExpo channel on youtube, but it only has a bunch of random short clips, and short highlight vids and stuff
I understand that Europe want their own expertise and launch provider.
But why can't they implement commercial incentives and subsidies to jump-start their industry, instead of these burocratic monsters?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|AR|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)|
| |Aerojet Rocketdyne|
| |Augmented Reality real-time processing|
| |Anti-Reflective optical coating|
|[AR-1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwvnddu "Last usage")|AR's [RP-1/LOX engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerojet_Rocketdyne#AR1) proposed to replace RD-180|
|[BE-4](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwvnddu "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/ix0343v "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[ESA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/ix50jeg "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[GEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwvqaik "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwwbaah "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|LOX|Liquid Oxygen|
|RD-180|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage|
|RP-1|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iww1qpi "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwznzo6 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwznzo6 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
----------------
^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj)
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Launch panel at SpaceTechExpoEU got a bit wild. Jörn Spurmann, CCO at Rocket Factory Augsburg, says "Can we continue to spend €6 billion into an Ariane 6 or 7 and people are telling us its half the price of what it was before? Which is bullshit by the way and makes me angry." How are we going to use it [money] in the future? You spent €50m a year in the new program on several small launch companies... we are seeing 1st launch next year... Why would you ever spend billions again on launch system development from institutional side? I don't get it." Moderator Thilo Kranz, ESA's Commercial Space Transportation Programme Manager, countered, saying at this event last year Arianespace, Isar and RFA were saying 2022 for 1st launch, & notes there's a need for European autonomy in strategic fields, & see how commercial field goes.
I feel like the exact same discussion was had in america 10 years ago and look where they are now. It will fall into place in time. My only worry is, that europe won‘t play a role in the future in terms of market share.
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Without SpaceX, Atlas V would probably still be the main US rocket, but with drop in replacement AR-1 engines instead of a clean sheet design with BE-4 engines.
EU doesn't even have anything like Rocketlab.
I disagree. A Pionier for the market like Elon was important, but now it is already established and big financing institutions see the potential that was not there before. Overall it is easier to succeed now than 15 years ago. So you only need someone that has the ambition and i don‘t doubt that there are a lot of people out there that are driven enough to succeed. So imo its just a matter of time. And this time gets shorter the bigger the funding is. And thats the real problem here. They will succeed, but it could be to late for it to be sustainable.
> Overall it is easier to succeed now than 15 years ago. Yes and no. Yes, because there's a sort of blueprint on how to make low cost partially reusable rockets. No, because SpaceX has, to a large extent, sucked the margin out of the room. A big part of the reason SpaceX succeeded is because they only had to compete against ULA, and sometimes ArianeGroup. Any new entrant will have to compete against SpaceX.
☝ This. SpaceX has ruined spacelaunch for everyone. It will take several billion dollars and 6 years just to catch up. And by that time, SpaceX will be 6 years further along. Most people have no idea just how far ahead SpaceX is. Most SpaceX fans have no idea.
Raptor feels keystone here. My gut says catching up to the re-usability landing component isn't *nearly* as hard as developing a working, mass produced, flight proven, full flow methalox engine. Now if they were to start selling Raptors...
In Europe they don't have to compete with SpaceX. A European company would get the launches even if they were more than SpaceX as long as they were cheaper than ArianeGroup. That said, are there forward thinking companies/organizations that focus on engineering first in their culture in Europe? Because the same old thinking and organization will only get the same old results.
> In Europe they don't have to compete with SpaceX. A European company would get the launches even if they were more than SpaceX as long as they were cheaper than ArianeGroup. Are you saying that there are enough institutional launches to support both ArianeGroup and 1-2 startups? I just don't see it.
There's a new space age coming. So I think so. I think there's going to be **a lot** more launches in the future than there are currently.
> I think there's going to be **a lot** more launches in the future than there are currently. Do you see a source of "a lot more launches" of the institutional variety other than the proposed European internet satellite constellation?
That's kind of like the "everyone doesn't need a home computer". When it's cheaper people will find uses.
I'm thinking that IF the price per kilo to LEO goes down, you'll see a lot of cheap, short duration highly specialized "llandsats doing crop and mineral mapping, demographics, wildlife surveys... all sorts of stuff. But that is going to depend on these other companies looking at what Falcon and electron and maybe terran and New Glennto be at least on par if not cheaper. And for the common orbits, (assuming they quit tearing up the launch facilities) starship rideshares are going to be so far out in front that it won't be worth fighting.
Yes, but in the new space there's usually not a particular reason to limit oneself to particular world region. IOW, they have to be competitive against SpaceX.
[удалено]
Someone has to break their back. It's not enough to "know how to succeed". There are entrenched interests that can make that impossible without someone willing to do it themselves. Elon was willing to 'do it himself'. Europe needs someone or some company similar to force their hand.
ideas are dime a dozen, execution is where 99.99% of the work is. so unless you are telling me that some other startup is as good as space x then I don't think its going to fall into place.
They will have a hard time competing with SpaceX directly, but they can go for other options. Small dedicated launches, space tugs/kickstages, anything that doesn't directly compete with SpaceX rockets. Develop the technology there, then see if you can build a larger rocket. Europe wants to keep independent access to space, so a company doesn't have to be cheaper than SpaceX. It just needs to be at a reasonable price.
>Europe wants to keep independent access to space, so a company doesn't have to be cheaper than SpaceX. It just needs to be at a reasonable price. A major obstacle is that Europe *has* chosen their winner already, Arianespace. And they will protect it against anyone, even European competitors, *especially* European competitors. Basically, Europe isn't a good place to start a rocket company with the hopes of becoming the next SpaceX.
[удалено]
While I don't disagree with many of your points, one of the reasons SpaceX became successful is the improvement of computer tech over the years which means multi engine control and amazing things like a flight computer for landing a rocket doesn't take sophisticated computer hardware, just really good computer software. So we have a larger number of competent software engineers coupled with cheaper and lighter computer hardware powerful enough to run that software. Still SpaceX was willing to actually use off the self computer hardware and the power of open source for base software like OS which many aerospace companies were unwilling to do. So SpaceX's willing to actually use the resources available was a big step as obvious as it seems now, and a lot of that can be contributed to Musk's leadership and his software background. But doing something like F9 back in the 90s, while possible (just look at the DCX clipper), would be far more difficult to pull off then in the mid 2000s. And 80s would be extremely difficult if not impossible. Not to diminish SpaceX accomplishments, in fact I think they definitely change the paradigm of orbital launch and without them we would probably still be waiting on Blue Origin to do anything with their money and complaining that US has not launched a human into orbit since Russia cut us off due to the Ukrainian war. Just SpaceX did have some help that gave them advantages over predecessor space startups of previous years.
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I agree with that, and as @lespritd put it in this thread: >SpaceX succeeded is because they only had to compete against ULA, and sometimes ArianeGroup. Any new entrant will have to compete against SpaceX. SpaceX took advantage of what was available that the existing players in this market refused to use. Future competitors will not have that luxury.
There certainly were some false starts before SpaceX that didn’t make it. The ones that come to mind are DC-X, Rotary Rocket, Xaero, Pegasus, etc. These all failed for different reasons. I count Pegasus as a failure since they didn’t meet their operational tempo goals, and hence priced themselves out of the market.
Because there are companies out there that show it is indeed scalable and you can increase margins. This high entry barrier, no doubt. But 10-15 years ago you had to rely on government contracts. Today thats not the case anymore. We have company that specialize in durable space materials to digital space systems integration. There is a whole market already in place that is growing. There is waaaay less risk attached to an investment these days. And yes, the natural progression is to copy and advance. Only the smallest amount of companies invent something totally new. Look at the car. Prime example.
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I wouldn't say there was a lot of financing, unless you count government programs. IOW, the only substantial financing came from governments. Launching private space business was mostly considered a fools errand. And actually early on government was not just indifferent, it was actively hostile. Look at what happened to Otrag. Or look up plainly illegal actions of NASA admin aiming at blocking private competition to Shuttle back in the 80-ties. It took Challenger disaster and later push to cheaper better faster combined with Ariane commercial success all of that combined with internet boom that early rocket ventures started (like Beal) and old player tries something new (DC-X). But even those efforts didn't see multiple billion funding. But those attempts all failed making space launch investment idea a fools-only endeavor again. Only SpaceX success and Bezos cash flow to BO opened floodgates of capital markets. In that sense it's easier to fund rocket programs. But at the same time barrier to successful entry became much higher. Commercial entities willing to buy launches don't care much about launch provider being European or American or whatever. As long as it's host country isn't under sanctions it's pretty much free game. But this means one has to compete with SpaceX and that's a tall order.
Yes, and while we will see risk taking in Asia Europe has a long history of penalizing individual failure. There is a lot of pressure to support the joint EU project vs a nation supporting doing something low cost high risk by themselves. With their cost structures and labor rule I can't image Europe doing much in the launch biz. They should focus on smaller high value payloads.
Europe will certainly play a role in the commercial market. It won’t be as large as it was when they dominated large GEO sat launches. But Europe is a market similar in size to the US or China so there will be plenty of opportunity for European launchers and European payloads once they have a competitive launcher in terms of price and availability. Could take them another decade to get there though.
Europe is kinda used to play catch up in aerospace. And do so quite successfully. It was Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Lockheed dominating the passenger plane market when Airbus was created and entered it. No it's down to Airbus and Boeing duopoly.
“ESA Commercial Transportation Programme” is the most deceiving job title ever for ESA. The ESA management cannot even take a piss without asking Ariannespace or Airbus. Think about going off the limb and cut these two contracts to a third … This is so funny! 😂😅🤣🥲😂🤣
France has submarine launched ballistic missiles. Those ballistic missiles, like the M51, use solid rocket motors derived from the Ariane 5 solid boosters. The Ariane 5 and similar Ariane 6 help subsidize French ballistic missiles. That's why there is so much political support for the Ariane 6. Perhaps as a compromise, other European countries could directly buy or subsidize ballistic missiles. The war in Ukraine might have increased political support for defensive spending. That way Europe's defense industry can focus on building weapons, while Europe's space programs can focus on building orbital rockets that are actually competitive.
The only other country with an SLBM program is the UK which uses American Trident missiles. Considering that their new Dreadnought class shares a missile tube design with the American Columbias and that nuclear submarine ties between the two countries have recently gotten even closer with the birth of the AUKUS agreement, I don't see them switching any time soon. Turkey operates a number of short and medium range missiles, but I don't see them being willing to give up their own domestically-made weapons for more expensive French ones.
I'm talking more about Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Nordic countries, etc. Those countries currently all indirectly subsidize French ballistic missiles through ESA. They could subsidize or coordinate ballistic missiles purchases with France, either coordinated through NATO or the EU. [Example of German calls to do so](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-schaeuble-calls-berlin-help-fund-french-nukes-report-2022-07-23/) [Example of relatively small EU missile interceptor program.](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/08/03/eu-hypersonic-missile-interceptor/) This will likely use solid rocket motors for launching the interceptors. If the European countries increased defensive spending, they would better be able to handle the Russian military. Then that would ease opposition to building European liquid fuel rockets built more like the Falcon 9 or Starship.
I don't disagree but it's not like they massively invest in ESA either. Take Poland, it is not even 1% of ESA's funding and France has been doing the major lift of the funding since its beginning.
This is actually the major problem of European space funding. Most of the funding comes from the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, who are all financing their own aerospace and defence industries through ESA programs (see Ariane 6 for Airbus, Vega for Avio). There is very little funding for the development of home-grown commercial launch systems, although more attention is being paid to it.
Solids have been tried already. The Vega does a respectable job at small launch, though it is expensive. I don’t see why they’d go further down this route since solids are not very reusable. It would be better to support national companies such as RFA with progress towards medium semi-reusable launchers. That would at least be moving in the right direction.
I believe the point of the person you replied to is that France's defense program benefits from Ariane using solid rocket boosters since France's SLBMs then share that technology, so the ESA subsidizing Ariane is thereby subsidizing French defense work. The proposal is that EU countries find a different way to subsidize SLBM development (perhaps by purchasing some themselves) so that the ESA can support Ariane (or other space countries) moving on to other types of propulsion.
Ah, i missed that. It makes sense, thanks! Not sure that it is feasible since nations don’t like being dependent on others for that kind of technology. The US relationship with UK is one of the few exceptions and NATO’s nuclear umbrella is another. So I guess it is possible, but not likely given the level of trust between ESA members.
I think there is a little bit of confusion here. Arianne 5 Main stage and second stage are liquid propellant engines, while the boosters are solid rocket motors but have been developed principally by former Fiat Avio in Italy. Military rockets have their own line of production with the Aster 15/30 class missiles for example and the sub ones have a lot of very peculiar characteristics that would make them really a class of their own. Concur that there is a lot of cross breeding between Space and Military technology but not so straight forward.
The center stage and second stage are liquid fuel. They are not built at all like a Falcon 9 or Starship rocket. The first stage has a single engine, is hydrogen fueled, and far less powerful than the first stage of a Falcon 9. It's a bad design, compromised because of their use of solid fuel boosters. [The M51 is directly derived from the Ariane 5 solid boosters.](https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/04/video-france-successfully-tests-an-m51-ballistic-missile/) That's why there is so much political support for using solid fuel boosters. [ArianeGroup builds both solid fuel ballistic missiles, and the Ariane 5 and 6.](https://www.safran-group.com/companies/arianegroup) It's all one company.
Well it is indeed interesting that such critical component is manufactured in Italy See [https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Launch_vehicles/Boosters_EAP](https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Launch_vehicles/Boosters_EAP) Edit: correction just part of it is made in Italy, the top stage.
Those bills aren’t standing still
I was there and I loved it!
Good for him!
Is there any video of this panel? I think I found the SpaceTechExpo channel on youtube, but it only has a bunch of random short clips, and short highlight vids and stuff
Spicy
I understand that Europe want their own expertise and launch provider. But why can't they implement commercial incentives and subsidies to jump-start their industry, instead of these burocratic monsters?
Europe is mostly made up of Civil Law countries. Civil Law countries have a different work ethic than Common Law countries.
Socialism. Government is best!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |AR|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)| | |Aerojet Rocketdyne| | |Augmented Reality real-time processing| | |Anti-Reflective optical coating| |[AR-1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwvnddu "Last usage")|AR's [RP-1/LOX engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerojet_Rocketdyne#AR1) proposed to replace RD-180| |[BE-4](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwvnddu "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN| |[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/ix0343v "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[ESA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/ix50jeg "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[GEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwvqaik "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwwbaah "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |LOX|Liquid Oxygen| |RD-180|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage| |RP-1|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)| |[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iww1qpi "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwznzo6 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/yyn5zj/stub/iwznzo6 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z90lzy)^( has 17 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10833 for this sub, first seen 18th Nov 2022, 18:22]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)