ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehearsal

Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by Octoth0rpe on Thursday November 23, 2023 @09:59PM (#38400260)

> It’s unfortunate that Ariane 6 already has no realistic chance of being price competitive with Space X

The difference between the two looks a lot smaller when one considers the total price including the payload.

800M satellite + 75M for an Ariane 6 versus 800M satellite + 65M for a Falcon is, well, not quite a rounding error, but probably within the acceptable margin for keeping it in the European family for many projects.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by AdamJacobMuller on Thursday November 23, 2023 @10:46PM (#38400480)

Falcon 9 payload is way more than that of Ariane 6. Ariane 62 (smaller variant, the one which costs 75M) has an LEO delivery capacity of ~10,000kg. Falcon 9 has a fully expended capacity of ~23,000kg and a reusable capacity of ~19,000 kg.

Cost per kg on Ariane is unfortunately going to be more than double Falcon 9.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by manquer on Thursday November 23, 2023 @11:01PM (#38400537)

Shouldn't we be comparing Ariane 6 with Starship not falcon 9?

Starship is in similar stage of development and by the time A6 comes online it will compete with Starship not falcon .

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by AdamJacobMuller on Thursday November 23, 2023 @11:20PM (#38400601)

That's difficult since I don't think anyone at SpaceX has talked about Starship launch costs and it's even more difficult because the comparison will be even worse for Ariane.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by solarkraft on Friday November 24, 2023 @09:07AM (#38404071)

Well, Elon has been making crazy claims, of course. "Orders of magnitude" and so on.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by AdamJacobMuller on Friday November 24, 2023 @03:58PM (#38408259)

For Falcon 9, the costs and payloads aren't just claims. You can go to SpaceX today and buy a flight.

For Starship, it's an in-development rocket with a focus on novel technology as well as cost engineering. Orders of magnitude cheaper is a great goal but it's impossible to know if or when SpaceX can achieve it.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by justrealist on Thursday November 23, 2023 @11:01PM (#38400539)

$800mm is going to be a very hyperspecialized satellite. Normal weather or comms satellite is more like $200-$300mm.

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