Is the first European on the Moon in ESA's astronaut corps? The European Space Agency (ESA) had to use a SpaceX rocket to send its Hera spacecraft to Dimorphos. After the delays of the Ariane 6, what will the Ariane 7 look like? And is the first European on the Moon already in ESA's astronaut corps? ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher touched on these topics and more during the space …
..in the private sector to deliver various critical parts of Europe's future space infrastructure.
Since Europe has not got a lot in the way of commercial payloads, I wonder if ESA have given thought to what makes a credible business case for a company investing a whole lot of money up front in high risk engineering with few or no guarantees that somebody will pick up the tab?
Maybe Boeing have got some space engineering skills, and are willing to invest a few shekels on a speculative basis?
> We buy blocks of launch capacity
That's the guarantee that they will pick up the tab. It's basically "you build a rocket, and we will use it, if it works"
It's a big improvement over "the rocket must use a Vulcain 2.5 engine from France, DLR solid boosters from Germany, Ektran guidance and control from Switzerland.... all assembled by Arianespace" which is how it works now. This is also why SLS is such a boondoggle, because every component was specified by NASA in the same fashion, only specifying senator's home states instead of countries.
"you build a rocket, and we will use it, if it works"
And how much risk is there in the qualifier? Essentially there's only one buyer, and that doesn't create a functional market. I also wonder if a small but expert company from (say) Croatia would be on the purchasing list if there's a German or French company claiming they can do the same.
It needs a bit more than "we buy blocks of launch capacity". The number of launches, their time window and must importantly the price, are needed before you can start the design process. If it's a small number of launches spread over a long period the price might encourage an expendable solution.
The flipside is that Ariane 6 cannot support many launches because it isn't reusable. Kuiper is only launching a few satellites with Ariane 6 and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they cancel some of those if Blue Origin's New Glenn works as expected.
ArianeSpace will be left holding the bag.
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