"The lesson we learn from the Californian garages"
Reinventons le programme Ariane pour rivaliser avec les Americains, LeMonde (English translation)
[translation] ” … its technical definition and industrial organization has, since the beginning, been designed with the goal of minimizing development and operations costs: instead of being a cutting edge technology launcher, the Falcon 9 uses proven technology engines that were easy to develop and inexpensive to industrialize/mass produce, and there are very few subcontractors involved in launcher construction, which reduces production costs.” …
“… It is clear that today, the USA are challenging us to compete with them by showing us the way with a system that puts into practice all those recommendations. And while, for many years, we feared competition from emerging economies with their cheap labor, competition is instead coming from the USA and their ability to innovate and to challenge themselves.
Europe’s space launch supremacy was hardwon/very expensive. Ariane 5 is the best launcher in the world, due to its reliability, conquering launch after launch since 2003, and it will remain the best since Europe has decided to support its operation and its adaptations to the evolving market. As such, we must react to SpaceX’s challenge and move forth with the development of Ariane 6. The goal isn’t to make yet another Ariane launcher, but rather to reinvent Ariane development by taking the same turn that IT did in the 70s and SpaceX is taking now. This is the lesson we learn from the Californian garages.”
Keith’s update: This is really kinda funny – its like a cheese company noticing that everyone is now buying salads and one day they say “let’s convert from cheese to salads” – like its THAT easy – and yet they are aways going to be cheese people at heart. Why does this article (i.e. the English translation thereof) make me think of “Talladega Nights”? And why did Elon Musk fly a wheel of French Le Brouere cheese on the first Dragon flight to ISS? Just sayin’.
European could simply get SpaceX to launch from their launch site.
And instead developing launcher, they could develop fuel depots and make a better spaceport.
And thereby continue their dominance in the GEO market and make new markets in space. One market being more of full service for GEO satellites- getting them there, repairing them, and disposal satellites which are no longer needed.
Perhaps satellites could be like cars- consumers can buy the latest model and trade in their old satellite. And first time buyers might get used satellite. And when satellites don’t value as used, scrap them.
I believe it will be more likely that individual member states will start pushing funding at their own individual arerospace companies to compete against SpaceX at the commercial level.
That seems more likely to succeed than the Ariane 6.
No chance of Congress giving up its taste for expensive (Russian) cheese and changing to salad then.
I’d love to know what The Boeing Company really make of this. They understand all about mass production as well as fine cheese making.
They are probably trying to think if there is a way into this with a very low barrier. So far this is CST-100 but I’m sure they’ve been looking much farther. There are plenty of people there with the knowledge and ideas and desire to innovate, and a very rich history in the area. However they are handcuffed by ULA and their captive US Gov’t market. How can they start a fresh rocket business when they have Delta running successfully? Do they have the money to start one up while Delta is still going? (and compete against themselves…) It makes no sense for them (especially their investors) to wind Delta down while developing something new on their own dime. It’s just guaranteed lost money in the short term. No chance explaining the long term goal to investors.
Just my guesses! 🙂
Turning around such a massive organization will be awkward, but it’s not absurd. All they have to do is survive the price shockwave longer than their other competitors to give themselves time to innovate while SpaceX is going after closer targets like ULA.
What you have to bear in mind here, is that this article is itself a REACTION to criticisms expressed against the Ariane 6 design as it is imposed today (PPH stack for Powder-Powder-Hydrogen) as expressed on other french and european websites and newspapers.
LeGall has been committed itself too much into this affair to be against it without losing its job, because the European Space Sector in mainly french-led (as I would explain later), and runs like the SovietUnion-born Roskosmos by ministries, committies and high-ranking civil servants, not by industry and business people.
Ariane 6 PPH Is the brainchild of the head of french DGA (Weapons Procurement Agency), who persuaded the former heads of the french space agency (CNES) and atomic energy committee (CEA, god knows why ? We have no plan to revive a Orion-like Juggernaut SpaceShip) to adopt his views. These 3 Civil Servants have been charged by the former prime minister (F Fillon) of the former president (N Sarkozy) to come up with THE option to be defended at ESA inter-governmental meeting on future launcher bargaining (vs ISS, Vega etc…). Their Report (in french, no english executive summary) is only 40-pages long (that’s one page per year to live with this option) and can be found here : http://www.ladocumentationf…. Even the people interviewed by those three gentlemen are mostly from the same in-bred “grandes ecoles”/big corporation/administration tribe.
The real agenda behind this was for DGA to maintain a solid-propulsion business line in France for national ICBM production in a context where the new M-51 had just entered service (one failed recently) and a second and redundant solid propellant industry (for civilian purposes though) had been created in the mean time in Italy for the useless-or-so-it-seemed-before-it-was-no-more “VEGA” with ESA money (low-profile Italians are very good in trusting key positions in big international organisations, better than the arrogant french anyway !).
The report itself seems right on the situation assessment, about what is not going so well in the near-term for Ariane : It will no longer benefit from the former US “Shuttle-Era” disastrous launcher policy and its immediate (EELV) consequences, or from bans and various restraints from using Soviet-Era or Chinese launchers, it is indeed a complex lrocket designed for maximum performance rather than designed-to-cost with manned (kind of “heavy”) spaceflight in mind, suffers from low launch-rate and therefore increased, higher costs (even ESA missions are launched on Soyuz, that we were stupid enough to invit to french Guyana for launch operations, so as to create an internal competitor and offload european taxpayer money to Moscow) etc.
BUT the answer to the real problem faced by Ariane is not in the product itself (Ariane 5 for the time being, has been paid for), it’s the way we are doing “business” in launching stuff into orbit : the financial/geographic/industrial return rule, the inter-governmental bargaining… (what’s the point in trading the future of the launcher industry agains the future of the ISS utilization or the exploration of Mars ? Spend money on “space” because it sounds cool ?). That report does nothing to help it : it just proposes to cut Ariane in half to double the launch rate, “make it powder” because it pays for the french nuclear deterrence fixed cost until the M-52 or M-61, and focus on “institutional” launches (i.e military/strategic or modest science payloads) and leave the commercial and big exploration (i.e manned spaceflight) aside. No doubt these people went to college ! It’s a committee rocket : you wanted a workhorse and get a camel ! An “institutional” launcher (in the words of the report) designed by civil cervants to launch anything but private payloads – a targeted “market” that amounts to only a few percents of what the US or Russian governments launch every other year in value, tons or any metric you can think of.
Make no mistake, just like there is “greenwashing” at work pretty much everywhere around, there is “SpaceX-flavouring” here. If you can’t make it good, make it Shinny ! You cannot design an ICBM-like “institutional launcher” for strategic purposes first, and then claim it’s based upon a “garage” philosophy. These people don’t know anymore how to sell their Frankenrocket and even Air&Cosmos was braindead enough to report a saying by the very promotters of Ariane 6 PPH such as : “its target cost is only 70% of an Ariane 5 “….to launch 50% of its big sister that is….What a savings !
No, unlike “Daft Punk” you saw at Grammy , THAT french touch we could do without, and I hope the German sez “NEIN” during the next space cattle-market. That “NewSpace” hype a-la-SpaceX is dubious at best, but it is getting ridiculous when turned “french/gangnam style”.
We’ve spent (modest) amounts of money over (many, many) years for the Future Launcher Preparatory Program Phase I, Phase II etc.., on re-entry, reusability (as does SpaceX by the way), according to roadmaps, we organized countless workshops, paid so many paper studies to national industries and as we’re now getting to launch flying demonstrators for good, we’re going back to chinese middle-age era solid rocket that dump dirty plumes into the amazonian environment.
Either we keep our high-profile, high-performance way of doing business as it is, and thust must invest for good and come up with something more high-end, at least partially reusable to be paid for over many launches, or we do simple rockets in a garage, but fire all the hi-level executive to focus on the french/german rocketeers themselves that actually DO the work, and get rid of all the red-tape and political inputs into a business that truly becomes competitive in an open-market.
Any approach mixing those two fundamentally different ways is doomed to fail !
Almost sounds like the Utah delegation and why America needs to keep it’s large solid fuel rocket motor capacity at all costs.
Apparently, the US military was not pleased so much by Obama getting rid of the shuttle to replace it with…nothing intially. Europe could do with a “smaller” rocket than ariane 6, had the french-US “liberty” launcher gone forward for oversized payloads, but since it seems dead today….
Please review history to learn who actually cancelled the Shuttle program.
Mr. Squared
And where do you find this history?? And the time to do the research? That’s the main reason I read NASA watch! So I can learn from people that know or lived the details and then hopely figure out what rings true, then throw out the crap, use a little common sense, and simplify and god forbid generalize. And hopefully end up with truth.
Thanks Vladislaw! 🙂
Find history: simple Google search.
Time to do research: less than one minute.
Yeah, my bad, though to the best of my knowledge, the problem was more in the ARES rockets (I/V) cancellation (or not going ahead past the “dummy” I-X launch), effectively closing down ATK SRB business, and thus putting all the financial burden of the solid rocket propellant industry on the shoulder of the US DoD…. This could have been matter for resurrecting Ares-V as the Senate Launch System, but it seems the lobbying campaign did not go as far as considering “Liberty” for Nasa contract in the so-called “commercial” cargo/crew ventures (NASA/Obama administration champions SpaceX. Period.)
Maybe they just got tired of being ripped off!!!!!!
If you read the Vision for Space Exploration, it was President Bush’s space policy that stated:
“For cargo transport to the Space Station after 2010, NASA will rely on existing or new commercial cargo transport systems, as well as international partner cargo transport systems. NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities For cargo transport to the Space Station after 2010, NASA will rely on existing or new commercial cargo transport systems, as well as international partner cargo transport systems. NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities”
It was President Bush who stated NASA was not going to be building new rockets. ESPECIALLY the Ares 1.
You have to understand, NASA falls under the Executive Branch, not the Pork branch, oops I mean Congress. Every President since Nixon has talked about commercial. Every President since Reagan has had some form of commercial legislation to push NASA towards commercial services. The Porkonauts in congress have fought to protect what they had under the Apollo program and it has a been a long and slow process.
President Reagan managed to get this added to the original space act that created NASA:
“(c) Commercial Use of Space.–Congress declares that the general welfare of the
United States requires that the Administration seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.
President Bush was able to get commercial cargo started, President Obama was able to get commercial crew started. The next couple will be NASA leasing space in LEO from commercial space facilities, commercial cargo to EM 1 & 2, Lunar Orbit, Lunar landings for cargo.
President Bush, in his Jan 2004 announcement of U.S. space policy stated that the Space Shuttle would be retired in 2010 when the ISS was completed. Parts manufacturers were told how many more parts to make for the run out on the remaining flights. Those production lines immediately started closing down as soon as they finished the number of units were needed. By the time President Obama came into office, it would have cost over 3 billion and at least two years before another space shuttle could be launched. Plus it had to go through another certification process. As Wayne Hale wrote, the shuttle was dead by 2008 there was not going to be any resurrecting it and Congress agreed.
What President Obama did manage to do was get congress to fund two additional flights. The last flight was the one that brought up the AMS experiement.
I had a lot of trouble understanding why ESA would buy Soyuz LVs. Why didn’t ESA put some effort into developing a modern LOX/kerosene LV itself? Now I know. There was no good reason. How will Ariane 6 compete with Soyuz?
Well, first it would have seemed to be a step backward to Ariane IV in an era were you HAD to love Ariane 5 over here, and the opinion-makers of the day dismissed the whole idea on the ground that “there was no market for it”, until there was one. Soyuz in Kourou was the gift of Chirac to Vladimir Putin. Second It’s about foreign policy, not industrial, scientific or commercial. Ariane 6 PPH is supposed to take both the job or Ariane 5 and Soyuz, because soyuz today offloads the “half-payload” that cannont find a sister satellite to launch with
Ironic that both the US and ESA should make the same mistake regarding solid propulsion, then repeat that mistake for the follow-on systems. Solid fuel makes sense for a missile that has to remain ready for years and launch in minutes. But it makes a launch vehicle hazardous and expensive to process. How will Ariane 6 get any payloads if Soyuz is allowed to compete on cost?
“How will Ariane 6 get any payloads if Soyuz is allowed to compete on cost?”
That’s a good question, and it assumes you think in a rational ie. economic vs techical way, but it ain’t working like that.
Effectively, the R-7 base has been launched more thant 1500 times since its inception as an icbm, and major hazards occur generally during the early launch phase.
So you can derive STATISTICS from this that can support PROBABILITIES wrt Hazard analysis of any new version derived from it.
No other first “stack” (since it’s parallel) has been launched that many times in history, so setting-up a joint-venture around
THIS launcher was probably a better move (market segmentation put appart) than Lockheed with PROTON or SeaLaunch with ZENITH.
But as said before, it’s not by strategic thinking, it’s by chance that Arianespace inherited from the RIGHT russian launcher
, imposed by international policy consideration.
None in the western world has launched (at least part of) a rocket so many times in history, so everything we do from SpaceX to
Ariane (Airbus SPACE so they say now), is based upon PROBABILITIES, projections etc.. The last french ICBM failure just shows this.
The soviets used to shoot so many ICBM in any whacko conditions so as to derive statistics, ensuring the rest of the world knew
somehow how many warheads could drop on Washington, Paris or London for SURE. This is what makes nuclear deterrence credible.
This is why it is a rich man’s toy, and why all things space/nuclear killed the soviet economy in the end.
When you have NO money, you never enter the realm of Statistics. You pretend you do by carrying out “simulations” or so they say
(either technical, focused on the missile, the warhead etc…or technico-operationnal playing wargames). So in France, they launch stuff only a minimum number of times and pretend it’s qualified (like space X) if it didn’t blow up, living with a “failure probability” we believe in, and especially
we want others to believe. The Russians ain’t the Soviets anymore, and their BULAVA numerous failures exhibited the same trend.
So, the point here is that both for economic and technical reason, any Soyouz-Derived expendable launch vehicle is UNBEATABLE :
the Soyouz design has been paid for since the late 50s (dreamt by Stalin, made by Kruchtchev) and it’s price (not alone though, but along other space/nuke/defense development) was the demise of an Empire : the hard work, medical cover and pension schemes of a 150+ million workers and peasants who were indeed left with NOTHING on the day the Soviet Union collapsed. This is just to give a flavour of how much money has been poured into
these projects, and how good that bargain was in the mid-late 90’s for the western world (double win), and why rightfully and not
surprisingly, the Russians make the price of a Soyouz Launch vary so much (where that money goes is another story) with respect to
how badly you need them to launch various stuff and apes above and beyond…To be honest, I don’t think SpaceX could survive in
a real “free-market” environment (there’s no such a thing in the world), even in the long term if they don’t succeed in changing their business model to spread the cost of some of the flying hardware over many flights (ie introduce some reusability) : on an apple-to-apple basis, the Russians will just adapt the market price of the Soyuz down to keep their market share….
I’m not so sure space-insurance company are aware of the induced-effect of this historical fact about the SEMIORKA, but when one claims “my laucher has a success rate of 9x %”, it doesn’t state if its a “probable” success rate, or a demonstrated one.
In the later case, the question that comes next is “demonstrated over how many flights” ? Had It not crashed ONCE, Concorde
would have had a 100% reliability over 30-40 years of commercial exploitation…of only 17 machines. 737 and A320 fall from the sky
every other year (or months sometimes), yet, since the “population” and the numer of flights/passengers is many order of magnitudes greater, and in every thinkable airline and natural environment, I would feel “safer” in a 737 or an A320 than a Concorde.
SO, insurance rates of any Soyouz-based launcher should also be A LOT less than for any other, even an Ariane 5 that has shown such a good success rate, since its early and only catastrophic failure of 1995 (+ one “partial” success/failure), and THAT would normally make a Soyouz in a so-called “free market” environment also unbeatable (not on R&D cost this time, but Recurring Cost). When you reach
the limits of nature (as in classical, chemical-based rocket Science) there is rationally, a huge penalty for any newcomer unless
there is not really any “free market” anymore, and you favour a competitor like SpaceX through Cargo and Crew delivery to ISS (i.e. leverage
private investment through public contracts). This might be wise strategically, but don’t call this “NewSpace” thingy Free Market for the time being (that’s at best wishfull thinking for the future). Now having said that, space insurance is also driven by the recent success/failure rates, and with all the proton losses, there has been obviously a few problems in production and “quality insurance” in Putinland over the recent years (they were apparently more keen on doing loads of money than investing in their processes to keep their reputation as high as possible : Russia ain’t SovietUnion once again)
Conclusion : No Ariane 6 or any other new launcher can really “compete” (for what that means) with Soyouz-based stuff. If Europe
wants to retain its marketshare on commercial launch, it must both work on an architecture and a business model that is different, and I think this is reusability through incremental testing, the ability to refly, monitor in-service and thus demonstrate statistics
about launch operations rather than probabilities to space-insurance companies. It must also create a legal environment that favours its choice – just like ITAR rules played
wisely favours the US industry. Environment could be one approach (FAA claimed Concorde could fly over CONUS before it could no more for noise reason : not sonic boom, but near-airfield noise regulations). If Europe don’t go along the chinese “powder” route, it can set-up a directive (european law if you will), that applies a financial penalty to european satellite operators that do not launch on “clean” launchers (that definition just being about greenwashing the propulsion option that would have been favoured).
The best thing being : you cannot complain at WTO : unlike the airliner industry, space out of WTO’s scope, it’s about strategic independance and “supremacy”, Jungle, boy ! Don’t buy chinese comments on SpaceX, read SunTzu on instiling certainties into your foe’s mind so it lowers its guard….
Very good explanation of “statistical probabilities” and how we think about the reliability of launch vehicles. Personally, I have not spent much time trying to understand these but I am familiar with how the terms are used when we talk about risks and risk mitigation. Your analogy with commercial airlines made your point clear to me. I may just have to spend some time reading up on some basic statistics… But, oh boy, the subject is so dry!
Appreciate the insights into what is really going on here. SpaceX’s main competition may be a consortium of ESA and Russia.
I agree with most of what Berkut says, except for one minor detail. Reliability clearly increases with experience, but it does not require 1500 launches to reach a steady state, in fact it only takes a dozen or so IF the design is modified to eliminate potential failure modes as they are identified. This was discussed in detail by Dr. I-Shih Chan: http://www.ewp.rpi.edu/hart…
Indeed, the problems that ultimately caused the loss of both Challenger and Columbia were known within the first dozen Shuttle launches but were not corrected in time, partly because of the difficulty in modifying the complex Shuttle design.
Beyond this point quality control and complexity are major factors in reliabilty, and Soyuz may have challenges an competing with the more automated SpaceX fabrication process. Soyuz can no doubt reduce cost somewhat to complete with SpaceX but even without reusability SpaceX, with its more modern facilities, will likely keep a share of the market.
A few thoughts-
Wow, that sounds familiar. Space Shuttle/US Air Force/NASA anyone? We’ll never know how a Space Shuttle without Air Force design influence would have done.
I agree with you. I don’t think they can trigger this. It has to be an independent business like you said, and like SpaceX. So LeGall’s reaction to defend Ariane 6 is hollow.
By the way, very thoughtful and insightful comments, Berkut, thanks!
More like a discussion between Le Brouere and Velveeta.
I wonder about the comparison to ‘what IT did…’. SpaceX prices, as far as I can see, result directly from vertical integration. Europe is hampered exactly as NASA: the requirement that various pieces be apportioned to ESA member countries.
This will be fun to watch. Is it fair to say that the future is SpaceX v. ESA? Certainly that’s how the French see it. And no mention of NASA.
I guess they like having the share of the launch market that they’ve earned. The statement voices a competitive spirit that business would have. CNES isn’t a business but Arianespace is I guess?
Any of the big companies could spin-off a startup, this frequently happens in the valley and has been part of the culture here since Fairchild spawned the “Fairchildren”.
I think an earlier analysis showed that Ariane development and the expense thereof, no matter what they do, will have a very hard time in ten years catching up to what Space-X will deliver this year.
Ariane 6 and SLS are make-work projects for the solid rocket manufacturers to keep the technology alive during the decades between major ICBM upgrades. Fine. Just admit it and stop with the multi-billion dollar distractions. Have them make X number of ICBM like SRBs per year and give them away steeply discounted to anyone launching from that country. They should be scaled to augment existing launchers – basically to make a Delta/Atlas/Falcon/Ariane mid-sized launcher into a three-quarter sized launcher and plug gaps in launch families. That would save both the US and EU billions. It would not be Robert Zubrin’s Trans-orbital Railroad concept, but it would be a step in that direction that I suspect we could agree to fulfill.
“make-work projects for the solid rocket manufacturers to keep the technology alive during the decades between major ICBM upgrades”
Couldn’t agree more.
Of course this is all about SpaceX , isn’t it “Mack” Oh yes, “Talladega Nights” is a modern comedy classic. So there.
Pump up the volume, pump up the volume yeah!!!” Lolol
Please explain how discussing an article written by the president of CNES about what changes must be made for Ariane to be competitive with SpaceX’s offerings is a “creative way for NASA Watch to pump-up SpaceX.” You’ll note that NASA Watch isn’t part of CNES, and the last I checked, Keith Cowing isn’t the president of CNES.
Perhaps all of the competitors in the launch services industry world wide are just looking for creative ways to pump-up SpaceX since they’re all discussing and working on ways to better compete with SpaceX. Even the Chinese were surprised and put-off by SpaceX’s pricing structure. I’d like to see the logic that finds the discussion by invested parties of the monumental shift in the launch services status quo a silly attempt to pump a particular company.
The article’s cover image is hysterical and entirely appropriate. I laughed pretty damn hard.