Europe fires up beefier booster for Ariane 6 and Vega-C

A qualification version of the P160C solid-fuel motor was successfully tested at the European Spaceport in French Guiana on April 24, paving the way for heftier payloads on the Ariane 6 and Vega rockets. The P160C is an upgrade of the P120C solid-fuel booster. It is one meter longer and carries 14 metric tons more propellant. …

[Eclectic Man]

Looking forward to the Biomass satellite launch and the science it will help to produce.

[LogicGate]

Personally I hoped for a second that they were planning to launch actual biomass.

If this had been the case, I would volunteer (voluntell) 3 specific pieces of biomass which would do much better in orbit than they are currently doing on earth. Maybe if we let it be known that the rocket contains hamberders, fertile white women and and an inviting looking lazy-boy....?

[anothercynic]

Excellent news!

Upgrades are always good, especially if they allow us to heave heavier stuff into orbit. :-)

Let's hope the thing doesn't go *pop* next time it gets fired up.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Cancelled

I suspect Amazon will cancel most Ariane 6 Kuiper launches and redirect them towards Blue Origin, also the property of Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos.

The Ariane 6 booking is merely a back-stop in case Blue Origin doesn't come through. Now that it has there's no reason for them to keep flying on Ariane 6.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Cancelled

They need to get quite a number up there within a relatively short time frame to meet the licence conditions or the licence gets revoked. And so far BO has only had one successful orbital launch and no real time frame yet of how many and how frequent they can launch. BO has yet to recover a 1st stage and that may well take a few more launches to succeed and quite a few more to demonstrate reliable recover and re-use. So I don't think it's unreasonable for them to use up most if not all of the Ariane 6 bookings and maybe even book more.

I wish BO well with their booster recovery and re-use, but it's still very early days yet.