Europe does something
> Aha it's bad why did they even try
Europe doesn't do anything
> Aha Europe always late, never innovate, Europe bad
I don't see the contradiction what you seem to be implying.
Just because something must be done, doesn't mean that anything done should be celebrated. One can still do the wrong thing, and people can comment on that.
Also HN is not a single entity. Even if you would see some contradiction between attitudes (which I don't see here) it could be still explained by the fact that many different people post on HN and they have different opinions, thoughts and values.
Companies in that space can have islands of inconceivable incompetence that remain surprisingly stable.
"Doing something" isn't a goal in itself. Ariane 6 in context of the 2020s is similar to programming a new MySpace app for Symbian OS right now. Hard work, costly, needs a lot of qualified workforce, and the product has very limited audience.
Arianespace had the lead and lost it, because it kept the old way of doing things. Or are you arguing Ariane 5 was technically behind and wasn't competitive in the '00s?
Ariane 6 is not that far behind the other "old space" companies, which the US is struggling to keep around as alternatives to SpaceX. It's not like Boeing and ULA are doing much better.
We should be critical of Arianespace, and find ways to get it to improve, but just throwing everything at SpaceX will do nothing to keep them honest.
That is not what I said. We badly need (real) alternatives.
But French-government-need-driven development is bringing us nowhere. Paris is happy to have six launches a year and doesn't feel the need to finance and support anything beyond that. The rest of the EU doesn't seem to have any strong motivations either.
Yes, the US old space is exactly as bad.
Where did you get that idea from? They are financing the development of Ariane Next - Europe's version of a Falcon Heavy - just as the other ESA members do.
No, compete. There is a menagerie of European space start-ups starved of oxygen by ArianeSpace.
Arianespace is Europe’s ULA. Europe with Ariane 6 is about as dependent on SpaceX as Europe without. The difference is whether it will continue to be dependent on SpaceX. Every euro that goes to Arianespace cements SpaceX’s global dominance.
> Arianespace had the lead and lost it
When was Arianespace in the lead?
> Ariane 6 is not that far behind the other "old space" companies
Granted. Not a great show for €5bn.
In retrospect, I don't think they ever really had the eye of the tiger; mostly they managed to be less terrible than the competition. The US competitors got far too fat at the government teat and didn't even try, and the Russians couldn't keep Proton from 'sploding.
They'd probably still be king of the (small and expensive) hill without SpaceX. But they'd be in hot soup today, if some sort of LEO constellation market had come around without Falcon, 'cause they wouldn't even have started on Ariane 6 and Ariane 5 isn't well suited for that, and "Europeanized" Soyuz, which they'd use for that, would be unavailable due to Russian imperialism.
Maybe.
IMO, ULA's Vulcan is more commercially competitive than Ariane 6.
But both rockets were developed in response to SpaceX, so maybe neither would have been made otherwise. In which case, ULA would be in even more hot water than ArianeGroup, since they wouldn't be able to get engines for Atlas V post Ukraine war.
Before the rise of SpaceX.
> For over 20 years, Ariane rockets dominated commercial launch—by 2004, Arianespace had 50 percent of the global market for commercial launches.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-can-we-learn-ariane-futur...
I’ve raised money for and invested in space start-ups. There is a lot of opportunity. There are even more vapid PowerPoint decks.
> If somebody actually wanted a reusable rocket, the real issue would be engineering, not funding
It’s absolutely a problem of funding. You need to be able to tell a group of highly-demanded engineers with other life options that they will have access to the materials and resources repeated destructive validation of exorbitantly-expensive kit requires.
That doesn’t mean any numpty with a few billion can do it. But, like, Europe could. (It hasn’t because that would threaten Ariane 6.)
> Even a small country like Finland could run two programs the scale of Ariane 6 with the money it's currently using to support Ukraine
But they don’t.
Not true. Launch and propulsion are amply funded. (If you have a good idea in the space, and capacity to execute, I’d love to connect.)
> Rockets are not particularly expensive, but they are also not particularly relevant
Hell of a lot more to launch than just rockets. And there is demand, today, for non-SpaceX launch providers.
Plenty of capital stands ready for this sector. And hundreds of millions are deployed every quarter. (Yes, private capital, occasionally in the billions.) SpaceX crowds out the market, yes, but Arianespace suffocates it by providing the same crowding effect with none of the utility in pay-off. And part of SpaceX’s wake comes in the form of commodification, particularly at the low-mass end. (To be clear, I think smalsat launch is overblown.)
And it's not any easier trying to make a small-lift rocket. They suck the volume out of that market with their Transporter and Bandwagon launches.
Almost all space activity, with the exception of satellite launches, is useless. Let's say we build a Mars and Moon colony, then what? You do it, because you want it as a goal in itself. If you don't grasp that, you don't understand anything about space.
The same fundamental problem also applies to the idea of an economy that is 100% productive and that consumption is evil. If you get rid of consumers, you can also get rid of the producers. You can get rid of the economy. No human existence can be justified under the guise of "productivity" unless that productivity leads up to some consumptive activity.
That's quite a self-confident, if not arrogant, take, which also misinterpretes my words.
Ariane 6 is a launcher, not a Moon base. Launchers should strive to be economical, because there is a real orbital economy, as you admit, and because the entities which launch them may be cash-strapped.
You yourself wouldn't buy a car or a bicycle that would have to be discarded after the first trip.
Or if your point is that Ariane 6 is basically a white elephant project, well, that would be pretty damning.
China is... weird.
Most of the rockets they launch are small hypergolic rockets (Long March 2-4) with clear ICBM heritage. Which are multiple generations "behind" Ariane 6.
They do have some more modern cryogenic rockets, but they can't seem to scale those operationally. Presumably it'll happen eventually. But who knows when that'll be.
They’re decently far along on their reusable booster [1], with a methalox engine being developed by a private company [2].
Of course, everything looks cute until it flies. But that programme is arguably ahead of anything ArianeSpace is working on.
[1] https://spacenews.com/china-to-debut-large-reusable-rockets-...
Ariana 6 might be the stupidest civil aerospace project in the world after Boeing’s Starliner.