[HN Gopher] Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rocke...
___________________________________________________________________
Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets will not be
competitive
Author : tosh
Score : 80 points
Date : 2021-03-22 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| solarkraft wrote:
| Dude.
|
| What's up with people laughing at innovators and going "oh no,
| nobody could've seen this coming" when they succeed? This seems
| especially terrible in Europe, with maybe the (perhaps
| coincidental) exception of VW.
| COGlory wrote:
| >Germany, with no history of its own rockets during the European
| Union era
|
| I guffaw'd at this one
| mikece wrote:
| Funny and sad at the same time. Germany, at one time, was so
| far ahead in rocket science it's arguable if anyone else was
| even doing _serious_ work in comparison. When that sector
| experienced near-total brain drain after WW2 that intellectual
| diaspora launched the space programs in the United States,
| Russia, France (and possibly Israel and Japan though the
| history there isn 't as clear). It's interesting to think that
| the origin location for this brain trust still hasn't recovered
| or rebuilt this knowledge base.
| avmich wrote:
| > When that sector experienced near-total brain drain after
| WW2 that intellectual diaspora launched the space programs in
| the United States, Russia, France (and possibly Israel and
| Japan though the history there isn't as clear).
|
| Don't forget UK. Peroxide technology of Black Arrow descends
| nicely from Peenemunde's works.
| kazen44 wrote:
| > When that sector experienced near-total brain drain after
| WW2 that intellectual diaspora
|
| interesting take on "brain drain" considering most scientists
| which where of military relevance where either getting to
| work in the US (with some heavy handiness because of being a
| war criminal) or being imprisoned to do research in the USSR.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Well, large parts or the Ariane program are built in Germany
| - the upper stages IIRC. SRBs in Italy, etc.
| [deleted]
| jdmoreira wrote:
| I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to
| beat capitalism at its own game.
|
| I really wish Europe would understand that you can't beat
| capitalism on innovation and delivery.
|
| EDIT: I think a lot of the replies missed the point I was trying
| to make. I'm all for the free education, amazing healthcare,
| better regulation, etc that we have in Europe. But no state will
| ever beat private companies on innovation and delivery. If you
| want to sponsor a space industry, create public contacts that
| companies have to compete against and win.
| TakawaraJu wrote:
| Government is part of the innovation equation, the private
| space sector would not exist without US vs USSR Space Race.
|
| Where Europe and others continually drop the ball is due to
| short sightedness and a reactionary mindset. They want to back
| alternative options to today's market environment rather than
| planning for, incentivising and investing in future market
| making solutions.
| fastball wrote:
| It would not exist in its current form, but a space industry
| would almost certainly still exist without the Cold War.
| Space is too useful to just ignore, regardless of whether or
| not it was another venue for a geopolitical boxing match.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, that's something I have been wondering - how would
| things look like if the main driving force behind
| spaceflight was entrepreneurs of the Goddards generation,
| not military mainly trying to get good ICMBs and spy sat
| launchers ?
|
| A lot of the current status quo of single use state of the
| art super-expensive hyper-optimized launchers can be IMHO
| traced back to ICBMs and spy sat launcher where
| accomplishing the given military mission was the most
| important goal, whatever the cost (both monetary and in
| general sustainability).
|
| I wonder if it all was instead financed by private and
| commercial money from the start, we might have perhaps
| ended up with cruder (partially ?) reusable rockets much
| sooner, not to mention with a more robust in-space
| infrastructure (propellant depots, etc.) that simply does
| not make sense if you just want to lob nukes one way or
| launch a couple expensive spy sats per year & don't care
| about anything else.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| You can look at optical astronomy for how the "market"
| would look like if it was only science driven: all
| innovation happening on government funded projects, with
| very few companies worldwide having some manufacturing
| capability.
|
| In any case, calling Goodard a entrepreneur seems pretty
| strange: he was a professor interested in rocketry
| firstly as a means of recording the state of the
| atmosphere at very high altitudes. To the extent the
| market gave him any attention it was as a source of cheap
| entertainment by making people laugh at him.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Was it that Americans pay the most for and get the least
| healthcare?
| thehappypm wrote:
| You talk of health care, how is the pandemic going in Europe?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Ironically, that's largely due to the EU being a bit too
| free market. The EU is almost the only country/bloc to
| allow unrestricted export of covid vaccine; indeed, it even
| exports to other vaccine producers. India was also a large
| exporter but seems to be tightening up. This is, broadly, a
| good thing; if it had taken the same approach as the US and
| UK then supply in many countries would be virtually zero.
|
| So far attempts to deviate from this haven't really gone
| anywhere (though there's currently talk about halting
| export to other major producers, primarily the UK).
| nickik wrote:
| Health care has been incredibly regulated in the US for a
| long time, from local to the federal level harmful regulation
| are enforced. In fact it is horribly regulated by any
| rational logic.
|
| But instead of looking at that and seeing the issues with it,
| the whole world just uses it to bash on capitalism, as if the
| US Health care system was some exemplar free market system.
| US politicians have no interest in reforming the system other
| then add more and more layers on top or keep the status quo.
|
| Funny enough medical care that doesn't fall under the
| insurance system is very effective in the US. Eye surgery or
| beauty operations can somehow be run with amazing capitalist
| efficiency but routine operations that are about the same in
| terms of complexity cost 10-20x more.
|
| Arguably one of the best system, Singapore, is more free
| market then US one.
|
| This is not to say that any system has the perfect
| combination, but a simple government run health care proves
| that government run everything is better, and use the US
| system as evidence is bad argument.
| brmgb wrote:
| > I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying
| to beat capitalism at its own game.
|
| I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now.
|
| In the past five years, there is a country which erected
| multiple new trade barriers, put in place tariffs, enacted
| protectionist policies, publicly declared it was going to
| reassess its transaction with the world to put itself first and
| threatened repeatedly to leave the WTO. This country is the
| USA. A country notorious for using extraterritorial sanction to
| advantage its companies, a country abusing public subsidies to
| distort markets, a country refusing standards to protect its
| interest.
|
| Let this be my last post on HN. Everytime I think this site has
| reached rock bottom it succeed in hitting a new low.
| nabla9 wrote:
| SpaceX and Tesla are both great examples of big government
| involvement. US government created market for SpaceX and Tesla
| to get into.
|
| Neither of them would exist without government contracts,
| government subsidies or regulation.
|
| Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX - received $5 billion in government
| support in 10 year years 2005 - 2015. On top of that government
| contracts and regulation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Which is a lot less than what their competitors received. So
| did big government hurt or help?
| addicted wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, but both Tesla and
| SpaceX only exist because of government policy.
|
| Strangely enough, I would argue that SpaceX probably could
| have existed without government policy (but maybe not so
| soon).
|
| Tesla, OTOH, is completely a product of the government. Elon
| Musk himself said (before he turned into some strange version
| of libertarian), that it was government funds that allowed
| Tesla to survive right after the financial crisis.
|
| And for over a decade, Tesla's biggest money maker is ICE
| companies paying Tesla for renewable credits required by the
| government.
| fastball wrote:
| I'm not sure "surviving because of the government" and
| being a "product of the government" are at all the same
| thing.
| ericmay wrote:
| Well, yes and no.
|
| Let me start by saying generally I'm 100% with you. I'm a huge
| fan of capitalism and I think that to get the best of both
| worlds you need people who demand accountability and action
| from their government. My view is usually capitalism isn't to
| blame, lack of the will of the people is.
|
| With that being said, SpaceX is where it is today by partnering
| with the government for contracts, which helped it build out
| and develop. I view this as a good thing - government can and
| should bootstrap companies and industries like this. It's good!
| SpaceX wouldn't be where it is today if the path forward was
| just, uh, figure it out... being able to win contracts to
| deliver value for NASA and the government was/is instrumental
| to its success and from here it can go on to do additional work
| for other countries or in the private sector. This means
| employment for Americans and lots of money spent to push the
| frontiers of science and space development.
|
| Unfortunately, it seems so much of this has become politicized
| to the point that it's nonsensical. Depending on who you ask,
| Elon is a capitalist pig, or a communist getting free hand-outs
| from the government. It's so stupid.
|
| I think in this case it was a win-win all around.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| NASA also has an operational mandate that limits what they
| can and cannot do.
|
| Much of the science NASA produces is tremendous stuff, but
| they can't just be given a budget - even with the friendliest
| administration - with permission to go nuts.
|
| For better or worse, private industry fills these gaps.
|
| Any well-capitalized space company could "go nuts", and as
| long as the higher-ups (execs, board, shareholders, etc.) are
| happy then there is a wide open space (forgive the pun) to
| innovate in.
| lottin wrote:
| On the contrary, a business needs to turn a profit in order
| to survive, and this largely limits the activities it can
| do to those that are economically profitable.
| astrange wrote:
| There are alternative approaches - for instance you can
| be Amazon/Uber/Tesla/GameStop, who aren't profitable but
| are simply so cool investors just keep them running
| forever. However, it's possible that their investors are
| the actual customers and their product is their coolness
| expressed as shares.
|
| (Amazon is kind of messing this up by starting AWS, which
| is actually profitable, but the retail side isn't.)
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Is GameStop cool? I though the point was that it is not
| and investing is just an ironic pose...
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| Right, and like I said, if the higher ups are happy to
| make big investments in long-shot projects, then that is
| what will be done, regardless of whether or not the
| _result_ is profitable.
|
| This is not unlike biomedical engineering: invest in big
| expensive projects expecting several to fail and a few or
| one to recoup the costs for the rest and then some.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| LOL
|
| medical research and sicentific breakthought were made without
| capitalism
|
| capitalism actually destroy everything it touches
|
| capitalism prevents innovation if old dated systems generates
| profits
|
| what works better is things brought to life by people with
| passion, no matter what system is currently in place, be it
| capitalism, socialism, communism, populism etc etc etc
|
| the people is what drive inovation and delivery
|
| capitalism is here to make sure those people don't gain too
| much power, and to make sure we can control competition in
| order to maintain power and profitability
|
| profits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything >>>>
| you, the people
| hackeraccount wrote:
| This is a chance for Europe. It should be something like the US
| in the 60's. The USSR launches sputnik - what do you do?
|
| I'm not saying it's a government program. Maybe it's some genus
| idea that encourages the private sector. Maybe it _is_ a
| government program. Honestly, who cares.
|
| What it shouldn't be and probably can't be is trundle along the
| status quo. Doing that is worse for everyone. Even deciding that
| space flight isn't worth the effort; that's there's no future in
| it and Europe would be better off doing something else - even
| that would be better for everyone then what they're doing now.
|
| What they're doing now is more and more just a political program
| that makes people happy as main goal, sends a few rockets into
| space as a secondary goal and sets fire to a large number of
| Euros as a consequence.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| FT had an article about this a few months ago- Arianspace is
| seeing their business evaporate overnight, and they have no
| reusability story, and Europe doesn't do enough launches to
| really drive much business.
|
| EDIT: Link:
| https://www.ft.com/content/24cca993-b249-45a5-8c42-b39c0ec30...
| jimmyed wrote:
| Europe feels somewhat depressing these days. I don't recall when
| was the last time I heard genuinely positive news coming from
| there. Everything is broken and falling apart.
| carabiner wrote:
| Well, there was a presidential candidate promoting "European
| style socialism" for a while.
| antipaul wrote:
| Looking at technology, yes. They sort of gave up competing with
| US and China, and focus on regulation (eg, GDPR)
|
| But then "9 of the top 10 happiest nations are in Europe" [1].
| That's good news right?
|
| The question is how will this dynamic play out over next few
| decades. Is it necessary to lead in technology to remain
| peaceful and happy?
|
| [1] https://qz.com/1986996/europe-is-home-to-9-of-
| the-10-happies...
| andor wrote:
| According to Bloomberg's innovation index, 7 of the top 10
| most innovative countries are also in Europe.
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/19312/most-innovative-
| economi...
| xiphias2 wrote:
| This is a joke. EU's relative GDP is decreasing, while
| China's is increasing and US is staying the same.
| jimmyed wrote:
| That article legit mentions Austria as one of the top 10
| innovative countries in the WORLD. How can anyone take the
| ranking seriously?
| brnt wrote:
| Perhaps that is a sign you should be looking into
| methodology and be enlightened?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I can understand where this poster is coming from. I
| don't know of anything innovative coming out of
| Austria/Austrian companies.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Because innovation is more than a couple of crappy
| software coming out of silicon valley...
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| I'd be fascinated to see how the US states of California,
| Washington, Texas, and Massachusetts would score on that
| index.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Bhutan is pretty happy too, whatever that means.
|
| It's feels like Europe has exhausted it's fuel and is now
| slowing down to a crawl while India and China are just
| getting started burning their gas. It's history in the making
| really.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Where was Pfizer-Biontec developed?
| andi999 wrote:
| The answer is yes. European happiness needs a certain level
| of prosperity. You only get that with competitive products on
| the world market. But some parts are still competitive.
| nickik wrote:
| Happiness research is a total crap-shot. Depending on
| methodology you get totally different answers.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| You're not alone with that thinking:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strange_Death_of_Europe
|
| The problem is basically the welfare state, which requires a
| huge tax system/burden to support, and encourages 'welfare
| tourism'.
|
| Dropping all welfare for non-citizens, setting a minimum
| lifetime income tax paid to receive citizenship (eg.
| EUR100,000) refusing further immigration from troublesome
| nations and actually deporting those already there, as well as
| raising the retirement age to 70 - and with the savings
| eliminating payroll tax and cutting VAT to 16% (the legal
| minimum) across the bloc - are the necessary solutions.
|
| The other issue is land taxation - in many countries eg.
| Britain, Spain, huge land areas are still owned by basically
| the aristocracy, who receive EU farm subsidies and pay little
| in the way of land taxation.
| sofixa wrote:
| > The problem is basically the welfare state, which requires
| a huge tax system/burden to support, and encourages 'welfare
| tourism'.
|
| > Dropping all welfare for non-citizens, setting a minimum
| lifetime income tax paid to receive citizenship (eg.
| EUR100,000) refusing further immigration from troublesome
| nations and actually deporting those already there, as well
| as raising the retirement age to 70 - and with the savings
| eliminating payroll tax and cutting VAT to 16% (the legal
| minimum) across the bloc - are the necessary solutions
|
| Do you have any source supporting your claim that welfare for
| non-citizens is a significant part of government expenses? Or
| any case, more significant than the contributions ( direct in
| taxation and less direct in products and services ) of said
| non-citizens?
|
| Going on my observations, the concept seems ludicrous.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| You seem to be well versed in both EU and USA issues. What's
| your background?
| burundi_coffee wrote:
| In that case you mist be reading primarily US news outlets.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Yeah, it's like Biden winning made people completely forget
| that Trump was there until little over two months ago and the
| circumstances that put him there aren't materially changed...
| sschueller wrote:
| Funny as from Europe it looks like that in the US from what we
| hear and read. It's like the US is falling apart.
|
| Maybe generally most places are having a bad time with the
| pandemic and recession that is coming.
| astrange wrote:
| The US isn't going to have a recession this year - things
| look positive, and the faster we do vaccinations the more
| positive they'll be. This is mostly because we learned from
| our 2008 mistakes and are much better at stimulus now (hint:
| never listen to Larry Summers.)
|
| The EU and Japan are going to be the ones with issues.
| kazen44 wrote:
| ah yes, it has nothing to do with the petrodollar and the
| fact that the US can eat inflation thanks to being the
| world reserve currency.
| astrange wrote:
| It's because the EU and Japan are doing badly at
| vaccines. I said nothing about their economic policies.
| mikece wrote:
| I know SpaceX gets plenty of government funding these days but,
| unless I'm significantly mistaken, that isn't how they boot-
| strapped. To me this is a case study of an agile entrepreneur
| creating value and savings for customers through innovation
| versus giant incumbents encumbered by bureaucracy and being
| unable to adapt until they are threatened with being pushed into
| insolvency or extinction.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Falcon 1 got funding from DARPA. Falcon 9 got funding from NASA
| as part of the effort to develop resupply for ISS. For both
| efforts there was significant private money put in as well.
| Musk has said they would have succeeded w/o government money
| but it would have taken longer, which is debatable.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Musk also put in his Paypal earnings into it.
|
| Let's put it this way - if it wasn't for private
| entrepreneurship and Musk's vision, SpaceX wouldn't be here
| no matter what DARPA or NASA would have done.
| nickik wrote:
| Well, SpaceX Falcon 1 started with private money. However their
| first 'test' costumers was a DoD student project.
|
| However then they did got significant (200-300M) in funding
| because of the effort around commercial resupply of ISS and
| more later but that financed the whole Falcon 9 and Dragon
| program.
|
| That funding they used to offer a rocket that then accumulated
| a huge backlog of launches because of the low pricing they
| offered. Note, this was before re-usability was even a factor.
|
| Its also true of course that other companies, including ULA
| (and its parents LM and Boeing), Orbitl ATK and others also had
| to option to commercially bid for those government contracts.
|
| Orbital ATK did however their rocket met with no success in the
| commercial market.
|
| Rocket Plane Kistler tried, but their efforts were very much
| Old Space and they couldn't raise the insane amount of money
| they wanted to raise and NASA kicked them out of the program.
|
| Overall, SpaceX was certainty helped by the need for Commercial
| resupply of ISS and without that they might have gone bankrupt.
| However, what they did with the funds, was truly amazing and
| beyond what anybody could have hopped for.
| [deleted]
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Isn't this the _most ideal_ scenario? This can only benefit
| humanity, spin up new advanced reusable rocket system for EU.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Strategic industries are never left to markets. Each big
| geopolitical power has their own.
|
| Consider chip manufacturing. Why just not let TSMC and Samsung
| do their thing? Why the US government intervenes and tries to
| skew the markets.
| rsynnott wrote:
| If there were, say, ten top-end fab companies, I don't think
| anyone would be worried. Today, there are 1.5. That's
| obviously a problem.
| Lio wrote:
| Probably for the same reason that the Taiwanese government
| recruited Morris Chang to start TSMC and strategically skew
| markets towards Taiwan.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Taiwan had very purposeful government strategy. First
| import substitution, then export expansion.
|
| Taiwanese industrial policy was to concentrate support for
| export expansion into two industries, petrochemical
| industry and electronics industry. First there was these
| plastic "made in Taiwan" exports. Then came electronics.
| thecleaner wrote:
| Because the US government understands this no matter how much
| people think individuals are better and all that rubbish. The
| model of operation in the united States has consistently been
| to crop up innovative businesses around strategic industries.
| SpaceX would not be this successful without the billions NASA
| poured into it repeatedly.
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| E pluribus unum!
| trident5000 wrote:
| Interesting what happens when you let ambitious people actually
| collect the fruits of their labor and then do what they want with
| their money, like start Tesla and SpaceX. Maybe they should try
| it out and see if they get innovation for once.
| emayljames wrote:
| He is a silver spooner that used daddies blood diamond money to
| _buy_ tesla. He does very little in spacex other than provide a
| bit of management and under pay folk.
|
| "innovation" is a nonsense buzzword for stripping peoples lifes
| and wages. No thanks!
| trident5000 wrote:
| Actually thats not the history of Elon at all. Maybe spend 5
| seconds and read his Wikipedia page or something. Its always
| the people who do the least that complain about people
| actually doing something the most to try and boost their
| deflated ego/inferiority complex.
| emayljames wrote:
| Daddy had a blood diamond mine in Apartied South Africa, he
| inherits money, buys his way into everything, strips it out
| and pretends he is something special. You can pretend it is
| any other way, but that is the cold truth
| trident5000 wrote:
| You do realize criticizing Elon in erroneous ways will in
| no way elevate yourself, right? You're still going to be
| the same person who has achieved nothing and complains
| about others who do stuff.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| But the healthcare is freeeee!
| ajmadesc wrote:
| Too bad _most_ wealth isn't the fruit of labor but extracted
| rents and 'what they want' is to preserve those rents in
| inflated non-productive financial instruments.
| trident5000 wrote:
| If we thought like you, we would all be living in mud huts
| because fair is fair and nobody is allowed to have more than
| anyone else. Having a reward system for people who move
| production and efficiency forward to provide goods and
| services for everyone else is how humanity advances. Life is
| not completely fair but its the best system we have.
| ajmadesc wrote:
| I didn't say nobody is allowed to have more.
|
| I 100% agree that people who _move production and
| efficiency forward_ should be allowed to allocate more
| capital!
|
| Where I imagine we disagree is about what counts as
| productive
| emayljames wrote:
| Nobody has ever realistically said all should make the
| same. Even the USSR had different pay for different skills.
| Money hording is unacceptable.
| astrange wrote:
| Money hoarding doesn't directly affect other people in a
| fiat system; remember money is fake, we can just make
| more of it. Hoarding it is a deflationary pressure and is
| combated by inflating again. (this is called functional
| finance and of course isn't 100% true, you do have to
| reclaim the hoard through taxes or something eventually)
|
| Rich people do things like own Amazon rather than own a
| huge pile of money; this makes them rich because a whole
| lot of other people are willing to give them money. This
| also doesn't directly affect you, but at least it
| indirectly affects you differently.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Money hoarding has nothing to do with your life quality
| as life quality is a logistical issue not a money issue.
| If I give everyone 1 million dollars for example, there
| are still only 30k nurses in the country for 320 million
| people. Nothing changes except for the price of nursing
| services. The same goes for homes, education, etc. And
| rich people dont take 50 nurses, buy all the single
| family homes, or eat 1000x their portion of food. Quit
| making excuses and being a negative person and learn to
| understand that life quality is about expanding economic
| production and efficiency through entrepreneurs, not
| being a negative jealous person trying to bring everyone
| down so its all fair and square but production comes to a
| halt and everyone is worse off. Socialist thinkers like
| yourself are really short sighted and the Karens of the
| economic world.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Of all the people to be beholden to for space launches the
| billionaire who wants to go to mars seems like the least worst
| option. Better than any nation state certainly.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Being beholden to SpaceX also means being beholden to the
| United States, since SpaceX is based there and can't easily
| move elsewhere due to ITAR.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Guess other countries need to embolden their entrepreneurs
| and risk takers to compete or something.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| I agree with your logic 100%... but are SpaceX's rockets
| ITAR? I legit dont know. If they were eventually going to
| hold a nuke on the tip or used as Space Force transpo, I
| wouldn't bother asking. I just haven't heard DoD interest
| yet, but I've also not paid _too_ close of an eye on the
| matter... as I live in viewing distance of rocket launches...
| god damn they 're annoying at this point. Then again, NASA
| usage... is that instant ITAR stamp too?
|
| But some backdoor US influence to say,"Hey, that country?
| Yea, fuck those guys. They dont get to use shit." I see that
| as a possibility.
| verdverm wrote:
| https://futurism.com/spacex-building-military-rocket-to-
| ship...
|
| SpaceX signed a contract with the Pentagon
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Alright, nevermind then. I see the ITAR rubberstamp is
| nicely well warn over there. ITAR all the things.
| Badfood wrote:
| ITAR is surprisingly broad. It covers a lot of stuff that
| no one cares is restricted, but that just gets ignored.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I think it's pretty safe to assume that any device that
| could be converted into an ICBM with minimal effort would
| be covered under ITAR.
| JarlUlvi wrote:
| It isn't just SpaceX.
|
| Rocketlab's Electron has gone reusable also, they already have a
| private launch site, and, are now exploring a much larger rocket.
| nickik wrote:
| Lets relax. RocketLab is a nice company, and I like them but
| they are playing in a different failed.
|
| They have not 'gone reusable' they have slowly started to work
| on re-usability.
|
| And a rocket that remotely competes in the area that this
| article address will not be done for years yet.
|
| In practice, its only SpaceX. But its gone get worse from here
| for Europe. Starship by itself, and RocketLab and BO will both
| have reusable rockets before Europe. And RelativitySpace likely
| too.
| DrBazza wrote:
| There's always the SABRE engine that could do with more money and
| manpower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_(rocket_engine)
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Thanks to its reusable, low-cost Falcon 9 rocket,
|
| Is the Falcon 9 really low-cost or maybe is it that NASA and the
| American government is indirectly subsidizing the company by
| overpaying for their launch contracts?
|
| Rocket technology hasn't really changed in decades. Reusability
| is not a panacea. It increases complexity, decreases safety and
| much of the cost savings are mitigated by the fact that you have
| to carry extra fuel for the return back (thereby cutting into the
| amount of payload you can carry). The space shuttle was reusable
| and yet, it is generally seen as a disappointment (and I don't
| believe for a second SpaceX engineers are better than NASA
| engineers).
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Nice try ULA.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _space shuttle was reusable_
|
| No, it wasn't. It was sort of reusable, but only with a lot of
| expensive refurbishment.
|
| > _I don 't believe for a second SpaceX engineers are better
| than NASA engineers_
|
| Modern materials and computer aided design tools are
| incomparable to those the Shuttle designers had. Also, SpaceX
| is less conflicted than NASA was when it designed the Shuttle.
| [deleted]
| ericd wrote:
| >Rocket technology hasn't really changed in decades.
|
| Raptor is the first full-flow engine to have flown (not on
| commercial missions yet, though). There are a bunch of other
| changes, besides that.
| irrational wrote:
| You are coming across as someone who is mad that your
| predictions for Space X's failure or demise didn't come true.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > Is the Falcon 9 really low-cost or maybe is it that NASA and
| the American government is indirectly subsidizing the company
| by overpaying for their launch contracts?
|
| How can it be overpaying when they crushed the previous
| monopoly on launch held by ULA? It is known that both Delta and
| Atlas are a lot more expensive than F9.
|
| And that's been borne out when competing for government
| contracts, they pretty much always have the low bid and/or have
| forced their competitors to significantly lower their prices.
| ISS resupply 1 and 2, Commercial Crew, NROL launches, GPS
| launches, etc. Look back at the award process if you like.
|
| They did come in 2nd to Vulcan for the recent NSSL contract,
| which surprised a lot of people. Vulcan, of course, is a newly
| developed, as yet to be flown rocket and it looks like factors
| other than price made the difference.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > The space shuttle was reusable and yet, it is generally seen
| as a disappointment (and I don't believe for a second SpaceX
| engineers are better than NASA engineers).
|
| It helps that SpaceX actually lets their engineers design the
| rocket, while the Space Shuttle was designed by Congress for
| defense missions that never happened.
|
| SpaceX engineers probably aren't better than NASA engineers
| (though the fact that they have a clear mission and actually
| get stuff done helps with recruiting the best talent). The
| SpaceX organisation is significantly better than NASA.
| topspin wrote:
| > The space shuttle was reusable and yet, it is generally seen
| as a disappointment
|
| We're well past the point where we risk discovering that SpaceX
| Falcon rockets are a "disappointment." Just so you know.
|
| > (and I don't believe for a second SpaceX engineers are better
| than NASA engineers)
|
| And ESA/Arianespace engineers are on par as well. Yet here we
| are. Has it occurred to you that this isn't really about the
| quality of engineers? Would you like to know what it is
| actually about?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > (and I don't believe for a second SpaceX engineers are better
| than NASA engineers)
|
| The software I write can do a lot more than similar software
| written in the 1970's. That doesn't make me a better software
| engineer, it means I have access to tools they didn't.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > Reusability is not a panacea. It increases complexity,
| decreases safety and much of the cost savings are mitigated by
| the fact that you have to carry extra fuel for the return back
| (thereby cutting into the amount of payload you can carry).
|
| All evidence points against this. Sure, but you left out the
| fact that the _entire booster_ comes back to earth. This is
| absurd.
| jccooper wrote:
| The USG is paying SpaceX less than their (older, better
| connected) domestic competitors. Usually substantially less.
|
| Arianespace gets large direct subsidies, in addition to being
| paid more per launch by European governments (and commercial
| customers) than SpaceX.
|
| The subsidies talking point is dumb and needs to die, but I
| guess it's easier to try to deflect blame than, you know,
| compete.
| runj__ wrote:
| The US govt isn't the only customer though, if I'm not mistaken
| they're paying the market price just as everyone else? Sure
| they subsidise launch prices by creating a market, but they do
| that for all companies, right? SpaceX doesn't win all
| contracts.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Well .. there was a couple recent news reports that U.S.
| Space Force paid out $316 million for a single mission[1].
| The excuse was that this high fee was required in order to
| make capital investments to the infrastructure ...
|
| So if the government pays for you to build out your
| infrastructure you then own and use to secure other contracts
| ... isn't that a subsidy? Do you not think that will make
| SpaceX more competitive in the market? ULA got similar
| treatment, so I'm not saying it's all SpaceX but they are
| living off of government dole (in a way that is more than
| just providing a competitive service to the government)
|
| [1]https://spacenews.com/spacex-explains-why-the-u-s-space-
| forc...
| jccooper wrote:
| If a customer wants capabilites you don't have, and don't
| otherwise have a use for, they get to pay for it. The
| customer being a government doesn't make it a subsidy.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| The government paid for the development of that same
| infrastructure for ULA in the past so its not specific to
| SpaceX. National security is a unique customer with very
| specific needs, if they want it they'll have to pay for it.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > So if the government pays for you to build out your
| infrastructure you then own and use to secure other
| contracts ... isn't that a subsidy?
|
| The other contracts are key here. It's very unlikely that
| the vertical integration facility will be used for anything
| else than US government missions, as vertical integration
| is basically only useful for spy satellites. Without more
| details it's hard to judge whether the same is true for the
| West Coast upgrades and extended fairing, but it wouldn't
| surprise me if we see those only being used for government
| contracts.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| 1.8 Million to study is not "freaking out".
| ribrars wrote:
| Agreed! 600k per organization seems like pennies compared to
| the Billions invested in SpaceX so far.
| starik36 wrote:
| My reading of the article is that these monies are allocated
| for a report on what to do about SpaceX's lead.
| wrnr wrote:
| It's not helping either, EU just loves to do these things. Last
| year 600k to find evidence of uncompetitive behaviour of US
| tech giants[1]. Another 300k to know that Kronos Group has
| released something called glTF. Don't get me started on FiWare
| or GaiaX. People don't even believe you if you claim 100 mil is
| spend on nonsense. At least if they spend 10 mil on a sound
| wall for a road though a meadow, people might have some idea
| why that might be dumb. Put AI, cloud and blockchain on the
| proposal and you can get away with murder. Universities don't
| give a shit, sign off on all of it, better you get the easy
| money then the other guy. Innovation consultant talking out of
| their ass all day, or do you think Gartner has tested, for
| real, all the different cloud BI tools they put on their
| laggard chart.
|
| Makes me feel helpless, nothing that can be done about it.
|
| [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-tech-antitrust/eu-
| look...
| rektide wrote:
| There's some great shit too. Webinos was an absolutely
| fantastic, consumer-secure IoT platform[1]. It still feels
| like it fixes so much of what's wrong with internet-of-things
| technology: it's all on someone elses networks. Webinos used
| basically VPN technology to connect your systems to your
| self. I really wish they'd seen better adoption!
|
| I hadn't heard of GaiaX. The mission statement sounds
| incredible though. It sounds like trying to create a
| democraticized online market-place. Rather than rely on big
| tech to intermediate all our search & transactions. It sounds
| amazing. So virtuous, so smart, so obvious. But I know
| nothing about implementation. And less about adoption.
|
| There's a fairly popular post in this thread about EU looking
| grim[1], & the top reply is the US looking grim. The answer I
| wanted to put there was that it's the lack of efforts like
| this, it's the lack of big initiatives & trying things. That
| things feel stuck, that only the very wealthy get a chance to
| try & bootstrap things. Failure & bad efforts aren't great,
| but it's worse to have a society that's not trying, that
| doesn't have some surplus capacity dedicated to giving folks
| a chance to try civilizationally-benefiting radical &
| practical things.
|
| There's a lot of bullshit & bad. Yes. And it does feel like
| we're falling away from seeing success. But this should be a
| rallying cry. It should prompt adjustment, a redoubling,
| trying to find out how we're not taking things seriously &
| finding ways to distribute the money more widely, to less
| classic figures, trying wider innovations, and see what we
| learn.
|
| Also though some times big innovation is semi-necessary. I
| definitely have trepedation, a mix of hope & fear, but
| efforts like the EU chipmaking[2][3] plans are 100% what
| ought to be happening. Huge investment, but if it fails, my
| recommendation would 100% be to try again. Stop failing.
| Probably by failing faster, failing smaller, & working up to
| bigger.
|
| As Kevin Kelly says, "over the long run the future is decided
| by optimists"[4]. Making your part of the world a place where
| optimists get chances, where things are tried, even when the
| criticism is correct & things are bad, is what keeps a place
| vital.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26544555
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56334210
|
| [3] https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/04/22/drilling-down-
| into-t...
|
| [4] https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly/status/459723553642778624
| wrnr wrote:
| You had me believing there for a second. Webinos is death,
| link just doesn't work anymore, wikipedia lists a whopping
| 5.400 downloads on a budget of 14 mil[1]. Every fucking
| time, someone gets money to write software with as selling
| point to "enhance EU values" or a coalition to commodify
| the complement against EVIL American competition. You don't
| want to start business where your margin is competed away
| by marked forces, go and ask a poor cacao bean farmer.
|
| I am all for big moonshots, but these project feel more
| like LARPing what the Americans did profitably 10 years
| ago.
|
| [1]https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/257103
| rektide wrote:
| society has a real fucking problem adopting things that
| are good for them. we all hate iotshit, but how many of
| us go the extra mile to do ethical, consumer empowering
| iot? no one. folks like tp-link suddenly close down their
| devices & all the home-assistant & handful of webthings
| users cry & are sad. screw you, you bought unethical
| hardware & circuit/software bent it to your will, but now
| it's chuffed. it was never an ethical enough start, even
| though you tried to empower yourself, you got wicked
| wicked burned. rarely do ethical, proper chances come
| along to try & support.
|
| webinos was so noble, so good, such a well thought of way
| to do iot. that had all the right priorities.
|
| it's fair & easy to call this a catastrophe, a disaster.
| but it keeps feeling to me- and this is dark- that the
| real disaster is us, mired in a deep deep inability to
| evaluate the free market of ideas, & pick actual good
| ones.
|
| it makes me absolutely desperate to believe the "1000
| true believers" thesis, or as I once heard it, the
| "follow the alpha geeks" thesis. i want to believe change
| is not that hard, if you can get users empowering
| themselves & each other. webinos never got 1000 true
| devs. but, to me, we are all to blame. and we will suffer
| endless tales of how bad iot is for decades to come as a
| result. how can society better adopt?
| wrnr wrote:
| Stop pretending your shit doesn't stink. Hunger is eating
| away at our lands and some nerds are working on networks
| without some perceived moral shortcomings.
| rektide wrote:
| way way way more nerds are getting bread off shitty bad
| failing products that society can't maintain or fix.
| there is incredible damage being done by the status quo
| that a very minimal investment proposed very excellent
| fixes for.
|
| you are being extremely scarcity conscious in only the
| narrowest most self-selective view possible. doing good
| things ought be worthwhile & it could be. rather than
| shit on the attempters I think we should consider what
| beyond the tech made webinos not succeed? and how and
| what pieces are addressable and how?
| astrange wrote:
| Most of my IoT devices are made by European companies
| (Eve and Hue) so you'd think an EU standard could work.
| But nobody needs their lightbulb to run a "web OS
| interface". This standard seems to break the rule of
| least power compared to something like Thread or HomeKit.
| nickik wrote:
| That's just one example. The evidence of this has long been
| clear to anybody watching the space.
|
| While they usually try to pretend everything is awesome in
| public, they are clearly in a shit position.
|
| Arianespace has already publicly stated they need more
| political help (after just getting 3.5+ billion $). There have
| been a whole storm of demands that all European institutional
| costumers should be forced onto the Ariane.
|
| The Germany military was politically attacked for launching on
| Falcon 9 (that was when they still didn't take SpaceX
| seriously).
|
| Politicians, ESA bureaucrats and people from the European
| industry have all essentially said the same stuff with a
| different spin depending on their position.
|
| German and European journalist who are not just institutional
| PR printers have had a field day calling them out on their
| idiotic statements they made about SpaceX between 2014 and
| 2019.
| temporalparts wrote:
| > ...while member states of the European Union pay for
| development of the rockets, after reaching operational status,
| these launch programs are expected to become self-sufficient by
| attracting commercial satellite launches to help pay the bills.
|
| I think the amazing thing about SpaceX is that they are
| constantly improving their stack. They don't finish designing a
| rocket, unless they're working on the next big rocket. The model
| of "build a rocket, and then sit back and profit for the next few
| decades" model is never going to take off again. A lot of the old
| launch providers need to reckon with this reality, and it's going
| to be really hard to turn these giant aircraft carriers of
| companies into embracing this new way.
| lquist wrote:
| Interesting take. Is there a next after Starship?
| xoa wrote:
| Starship is significantly scaled down from their original
| plans. Despite being enormous, it's actually about the
| minimum viable size. Assuming there is the traffic to support
| one of course, there are actually a number of scaling
| advantages to greater size when using stainless steel as the
| construction material. So while it'd take a long while,
| SpaceX may well ultimately find it advantageous to do a
| larger Starship 2.
|
| Another area that humanity hasn't even gotten to the stage of
| considering yet would be dedicated interplanetary space
| transport craft. For now SpaceX is planning to just use
| Starships for getting out of gravity wells and getting
| between them. But the kind of cadence, $/kg, and sheer
| capacity Starship will enable also opens up the real option
| of permanent orbital assembly and maintenance facilities, and
| in turn the construction of spacecraft optimized purely for
| use outside of gravity wells (so much more emphasis on ISP vs
| thrust, no need to worry about aerodynamics, far less
| restriction on size, optimization for long time travel like
| potential synthetic gravity via spin, more radiation
| shielding, etc). No reason SpaceX couldn't lead the charge on
| that too in principle, though certain attractive forms of
| propulsion like anything using nuclear would probably
| necessitate more government involvement until/unless SpaceX
| can form their own mature government far down the road.
|
| Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence
| is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict
| how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going
| to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > permanent orbital assembly
|
| Sorry not familiar with these plans - does this mean that
| we assemble a bigger rocket (by using earth based rockets)
| at ISS level orbits and then _relaunch_ to another planet?
| m4rtink wrote:
| There are quite a few benefits of how current Starship has
| been designed and actually nicely demonstrates how cleverly
| though out the whole thing is!
|
| It goes between two places with at least some sort of
| atmosphere by default (or one with and on without for the
| Lunar variant) so while indeed dragging aerosurfaces with
| your in the vacuum of space might seem wasteful on the
| first look, you can save huge amounts of delta-v once you
| arrive at your destination due to atmospheric braking.
|
| A purely built for space vacuum only craft could be built
| to be much lighter but would also need to loose all that
| excess interplanetary speed with engine power alone,
| potentially negating the advantages quite a bit.
|
| There are, of course, various hybrid approaches: - the
| space only craft still could have some limited aerodynamics
| to do earocapture to orbit at the destination or at least
| do aerobraking from a "cheap" eccentric capture orbit - you
| could have a space only "hotel" ship on a cycler orbit and
| get passengers and cargo using Starship like "taxi" ships
| from a planet - a big complex space-only ship could have
| fancy high tech low thrust & high ISP engines that would
| not realistically fit on craft that needs to be fairly
| aerodynamic
|
| Also as for in space construction - indeed, it will enable
| really massive and efficient space structures, but we are
| not there yet space infrastructure wise. And Starships so
| far have shown how easily they can be made in their current
| form using _very_ basic tech during their assembly, even
| compared to tech used for existing decades old expandable
| rockets! :)
|
| So no doubt eventually big efficient high tech in space
| cruisers will carry the most interplanetary traffic, it
| seems like Starship is a surprisingly good fit for the time
| being & for putting in place the building stones of that
| future. :)
| justaguy88 wrote:
| Elon Musk has mentioned an 18m wide version of starship
| (current is 9m)
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| After Starship, Elon has stated he wants an upgraded Starship
| with double the radius: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-
| elon-musk-starship-the-next...
|
| After that, orbital infrastructure:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713
|
| And possibly nuclear propulsion?
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005
|
| Not to mention colonies on other planets:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873
|
| Most of that is pretty long-term though. I suspect Starship
| will remain a commercially viable platform for quite some
| time after its inception.
| Someone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship only lists
| uses that don't have a market right now: -
| Reusable launch system - Intercontinental transport
| - Space tourism - Earth-lunar transport - Mars
| colonization - Multiplanetary transport
| amelius wrote:
| The main difference between EU and SpaceX is probably
| investors.
| giomasce wrote:
| And political fragmentation.
| Daho0n wrote:
| And that SpaceX sells its packages overpriced to the
| military. It's normally called state-funding but not in this
| instance.
| choeger wrote:
| I don't think the latter part is correct. In fact, many
| European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile
| market leaders. The fact that classical rocket companies are
| not that agile is probably caused by the comparatively small
| market.
|
| Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a
| relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective.
| Yes, you can save say $50M for your launch. But your satellite
| costs hundreds of millions and it has a very long lead time.
| SpaceX has slips and occasionally loses a bioster. So you might
| simply buy the Ariane offering because they will effectively
| purpose-built the rocket for you. Especially when there are
| political connections to be maintained.
|
| But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. Now it
| looks freakishly expensive to launch even for $10M when your
| satellites roll out of the factory in the dozens. And the
| concept of building a rocket on demand when you might need to
| replace a few broken sats _next quarter_ is just outlandish.
|
| I think old rocket companies are basically just seeing the
| entire business model change from a ultra-specialist logistics
| company to something more akin to FedEx.
| maven29 wrote:
| >Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a
| relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective.
|
| http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellatio.
| ..
|
| I'm pretty sure that the idea behind huge fleets of
| commercial LEO internet communication satellite
| constellations had existed long before Elon tried his hand at
| it (first proposed in 1994).
|
| Even starlink was only brought in-house after a cancelled
| project with OneWeb (formerly WorldVu)
| https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-
| int...
| cryptonector wrote:
| > But your satellite costs hundreds of millions and it has a
| very long lead time.
|
| $50m is still a lot, and not every sat costs that much. How
| does a corporate bean counter justify spending $50m more than
| they have to?
|
| > SpaceX has slips
|
| Are there launchers that don't??
|
| > and occasionally loses a bioster.
|
| Losing a booster is a risk for SpaceX, not for the customer.
|
| > So you might simply buy the Ariane offering because they
| will effectively purpose-built the rocket for you.
|
| Nonsense. Unless there's something to do with faring sizes,
| $50m is $50m.
|
| > Especially when there are political connections to be
| maintained.
|
| Ahhh, got it.
| choeger wrote:
| > Are there launchers that don't??
|
| Naturally, everyone has delays. But a company that purpose-
| builds the rocket for you does not, for instance, have to
| deal with a RUD of the booster it wants to use for you.
|
| Selecting launch providers is not just about the sticker
| price of the rocket. But with more and more launches it
| obviously becomes ever more important.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany,
| are quite agile market leaders.
|
| Can you name a few?
| choeger wrote:
| Herrenknecht, Liebherr, BioNTech.
|
| Google for "Hidden Champion".
| [deleted]
| carabiner wrote:
| Large aerospace companies are constantly working on
| modifications, repairs, upkeep that all require significant
| analysis. For a commercial jet, something like a truck driving
| into a jet engine nacelle might entail significant engineers'
| time (CFD, FEA etc.) because the safety margins for aircraft
| are so small. The results might be a once off-repair, or it
| might lead to a redesigned part that is put into production.
| It's usually not that interesting to the public though.
|
| - Worked at one, know others still there. Truck example is
| real.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Europe should start attracting VC money instead of all the grants
| that just waste EU money. As much as it's trendy to look down on
| VCs, they are outperforming EU government innovation budgets.
| kklisura wrote:
| I remember this comment from ArianeGroup chief:
|
| > "Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe
| and we had a rocket which we can use ten times--we would build
| exactly one rocket per year," he said. "That makes no sense. I
| cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'" [1]
|
| [1] 2018, "Ariane chief seems frustrated with SpaceX for driving
| down launch costs"
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-f...
| kstrauser wrote:
| Wow. That's literally Luddite thinking, which is not what you
| want to hear from someone in charge of a rocket company.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Look at the head of the EU! They literally chose the most
| mediocre bureaucrat in Germany to run the whole area. It's
| emblematic of how the EU functions.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There has to be a middle ground between SlaveX (friends
| there) and Ariennespace.
| blibble wrote:
| once you understand Arianespace primarily exists as a means
| to funnel taxpayers money to the companies that produce the
| rockets then it all makes sense
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