This was perfectly predictable, and I (and others) predicted it. It was obsolete from its inception.
6 thoughts on “Ariane 6”
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This was perfectly predictable, and I (and others) predicted it. It was obsolete from its inception.
Comments are closed.
Because of this, the French and Italian ministers are calling for Europe to offer a significant “technological and industrial” response to the rise of SpaceX. It is not clear what form this would take, nor how quickly the European nations could move in response.
<fake-news>
Boca Chica Texas Aug. 7, 2024 (Not the AP) – At around 5:15 AM CDT today a large expeditionary force of combined land, sea and air forces from the combined countries of France and Italy stormed ashore here early this morning under the cover of dense fog. A defensive perimeter has been established around the facilities known as “Starbase”, an industrial complex developed by the US based SpaceX Corporation for the development of orbital and suborbital space vehicles. It was not clear at press time what the intended purpose of this seizure is. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has described the incursion as a minor inconvenience that should be sorted out in time for the upcoming election. But if not, residents under occupation should still be able to email in their votes for Joe Biden in November. The President was unavailable for comment as he is still asleep.
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Europe is incapable of responding due to the vast mismatch in OODA loops. They’re still trying to react to Falcon 9 v1.0 or so, and are committed to completing their reaction to it before starting another project, due to their institutional inertia. It takes them too long to reach agreements among themselves about what they want to build, how they want to build it, and where they want it built.
Since they likely can’t or won’t do very much to streamline their bureaucracy, as such changes would be even more contentious than building a rocket, they’d need to start design work on a rocket that would be competitive with what SpaceX will be building ten years from now, and not even Elon has a good idea of what that will be.
True, and they’ve had little incentive to develop a rocket for lower costs, much less reusability, because they openly admit it’s a jobs program. Lower costs and reusability mean fewer jobs and less reason for existing. So, they’ll have to go to SpaceX to negotiate launching their Galileo satellites. SpaceX will be happy to accommodate them, just as they’ve done with satellites that are direct competitors to Starlink.
If they actually DID produce a highly economic and competitive RLV, they’d likely produce MORE jobs as the demand for services would far exceed anything they’ll see with Ariane 6.
But as already noted, they are institutionally incapable of this, so their best option is to plod on with obsolete designs and keep the bureaucrats employed pushing paper around.
So… they designed a launch vehicle that was obsolete right off the drawing board, and shockingly, it’s both years late and still obsolete.
How they ever thought that an expendable rocket could compete with a partially reusable one is magnificently astounding ineptitude.
Better yet, the Galileo satellites they need to launch are a wonderful combination of obsolete, utterly redundant (GPS has been doing that job for decades) and incredibly expensive. Their only good point is that they are therefor a good match for Ariane 6.
Yes, it must gall ESA to have to rely on the Falcon 9 they so derided, a rocket that (in expendable mode.) is both cheaper and has more throw weight to the required orbit than even the a64 version of Ariane 6. In recoverable mode, F9 is still more capable (and vastly cheaper) than the A62 version of the A6.
I do hope they enjoy their crow.
They may have thought it would turn out to be “reusable” in the same sense as the Shuttle was, i.e. not worth doing. At any rate, that was their story.