Ariane 6 ready to rocket, bringing heavy-lift capability back to Europe The much-delayed Ariane 6 rocket is scheduled to launch on July 9 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. The date was announced by European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher in Berlin this week. Europe lost its domestic heavy-lift capability with the retirement of the Ariane 5. The plan for the Ariane 6 …
Reuse isn't a panacea and heavy lift vehicles aren't used as much these days as most satellites are much smaller and lighter. To make something reusable requires 40-50% more capability in the rocket and a load of on-shore infrastructure to process the recovered pieces. Is all of that worth it for a couple of launches per year?
SpaceX launches as much as they do mainly due to their own in-house needs for Starlink. They aren't creating a market where there's more outside entities launching things. There's already big questions about whether Starlink can ever be profitable given the cost of the customers terminals and the limited lifespan of the satellites. After the constellation is complete at 42,000 sats, it will take roughly a flight of replacements every 2-3 days to keep it topped up. While Starship would be able to place more strings initially if it's ever completed, it won't be useful for filling in gaps where there isn't a need for a full loadout.
Starlink is expected to generate $3.1 billion in profit in 2024, actually, but as a private company you won't see an audited statement that proves it.
But the same argument that applies to the Ariane 6 applies to Starlink: The ability to download massive amounts of data ("the payload") including live video streams during reentry of Starship is simply priceless and in itself another very marketable product. We had fast, reliable Internet in our last Caribbean cruise because... You know.
Nor is Starship primarily intended to launch Starlink satellites, although larger and more capable satellites with lower launch costs will expand profit margins. Falcon 9 is the Family Truckster of launch vehicles - cheap, reliable, reusable, unique. But Starship is a container ship. It doesn't deliver 2 astronauts and 3 days of supplies to the moon - it delivers a 16-story warehouse. It doesn't deliver a Mini-size rover to Mars - it delivers 100 colonists and 2 years' supplies.
SpaceX is everything laughable and magnificent and stereotypical and absurd and wonderful about America. And I love it.
To make something reusable requires 40-50% more capability in the rocket
What metric are you using to measure "capability"?
If you mean payload tons to LEO, then you'd presumably be saying that a reusable rocket has a *lower* capability than an equivalent non-reusable one. Maybe that's true, but you already said that was irrelevant, since "most satellites are much smaller and lighter" these days (your words).
and a load of on-shore infrastructure to process the recovered pieces. Is all of that worth it for a couple of launches per year?
Even Arianne is planning on ten launches per year. Surely to be worth it, the only requirement is that the cost of recovery and reuse is less than the cost of constructing a whole new rocket from scratch? They're pretty expensive things to build.
SpaceX launches as much as they do mainly due to their own in-house needs for Starlink. They aren't creating a market where there's more outside entities launching things.
I think you'll find SpaceX has a long queue of commercial customers.
Personally I see it the other way round: Starlink is a technology demonstrator for SpaceX, giving SpaceX customers huge confidence that their own payload is in safe hands, plus lots of practice to SpaceX's operational teams. If Starlink happens to make some money on the side, that's a bonus.
But there certainly seems to be a demand for Starlink-type services, and the potential for money to be made. Otherwise why would three or four other companies all be building their own LEO constellations to compete with it?
Somehow this Ariane 6 seems like too little and too late.
How are they going to become profitable with just ten launches per year?
We all watched the SpaceX Starship-Super Heavy Starship have a good test flight today and, surely, that is going to take some of the larger payloads?
If the Ariane 6 test launch fails then, surely, they will need to ask themselves if the project is going to succeed at all?
"How are they going to become profitable with just ten launches per year?"
They're not. And as this is an "old space" style, government run project, there is no need to be profitable by any traditional measure of the word. Things like the value of not being bound to any other nations politics for launch capability aren't assessed in the "bare" cost of just using for instance SpaceX, but that is the main reason for ESA building Ariane 6. A decision probably supported by the kerfuffle with Russia and losing Soyuz launches from Kourou. Losing access to US systems in the same way is less likely, but it's still a geo-political power play the US might use against Europe and one we should want to avoid. So yes, the whole thing is probably in the grand scheme of things slightly pointless, but not without purpose.
How is SpaceX supposed to be profitable without guaranteed contracts from NASA?
Arianespace was really the first commercial launcher. Yes, it was developed with ESA money but for a long time it was the vehicle of choice for commercial launches because the competition could and frequently did prioritise military missions. As US providers will continue to do if they want to keep their licence.
"Europe needs its own launcher if it wants to go in space without relying on a partner that could impose conditions on the payload (it happened in the past)."
Yes, like how the US offered to launch UK sats at or near "cost", so, being in recovery from WW2, the UK cancelled its own functional and successful launch system, only to be shat on from a great height by the yanks.
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