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Arianespace Ready for Liftoff
stuckinarut writes to tell us Arianespace is reporting that their newest Ariane dual-satellite ECA mission rolled out of the assembly building and is set for a launch today (Nov 12) at 2345 GMT. This flight is set to demonstrate the massive lift capacity of nearly 10,000 kg and is currently the "only commercial vehicle that can launch two mainstream telecommunications satellite payloads on the same mission."
...we only blew up one satellite at a time.
A new Ariane and the Galileo GPS well under way, it seems Europe is into the space race in a very commercial way.
"only commercial vehicle that can launch two mainstream telecommunications satellite payloads on the same mission."
The shuttle once launched 3 geosynchonous satellites in a single mission. This is not a big deal. I am surprised the moderators found it news worthy.
an ill wind that blows no good
I doubt the launch is that much cheaper, and in the long run it definately won't be. Look at it this way - yes, there is a small marginal decrease in launch price as mass increases. But there is a much larger marginal increase in launch price as launch rate goes down. This could have been done in two launches. The vehicle design cost and launch personel cost (the primary cost components) is slightly higher (per kg) for a lower launch mass, but the cost is sunk (you have to pay the people even when you do not launch, and you have to pay interest on your design cost loans even when you do not launch). Essentially, the second launch is almost free! The only reason is doesn't seem that way is cost accounting, where the cost is spread out per flight. A more realistic accounting method is to say that the first flight costs $10B, and every flight thereafter costs only $10M.
In the free market, most companies know this - but in a government market, no one cares...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Your point is well taken - and that's why Europe has chosen to use Russian technology:
ESA has entered into a 340 million euro joint venture with the Russian Federal Space Agency over the use of the Soyuz launcher. Under the agreement, the Russian agency will manufacture Soyuz rocket parts for ESA, which will then be shipped to French Guiana for assembly. ESA benefits because it gains a medium payloads launcher, complementing its fleet while saving on development costs. In addition, the Soyuz rocket -- which has been the Russian's space launch workhorse for some 40 years -- is proven technology with a good safety record, which ESA might be happy to use for launching humans into space.
This cooperation is well on it's way - this week they used a Soyuz vehicle to launch the successfull ESA mission "Venus Express".
I certainly was surprised to see this show up on the front page of slashdot. It's not a super big deal that Ariane is launching two satellites at once, they have done that before. I guess the capacity has increased from the sounds of it? One of the satellites onboard (Spaceway F2) will be one of the largest commercial satellites ever launched. It's sister satellite, Spaceway F1, was launched last April and was successfully delivered to the DirecTV customer this fall. They are both about 6100 kg when fully loaded with fuel.
Companies may be able to save some money by doing a dual-manifest launch but it can also be a real pain in the ass. This launch was originally supposed to happen in June but the other satellite had problems and had to get sent back to home base to be checked out thus delaying Spaceway F2 also. Plus when you get your own launcher you can have a lot more control over what orbit you are injected into and the launch window. Ariane provides a standard GTO injection with their ECA launcher, which is not the most desireable orbit for some satellites.
According to an inside source, the postponement came as a result of several of their servers becoming overwhelmed causing shutdown, when the news was posted on a very popular "Geek" website known as Slashdot.
No conformist ever made history.
(O/T) As a native English speaker, I was delighted to see you use the term milliard simply because I was always taught by school teachers and 'educated' people that a billion should be defined as 10^12(1,000,000,000,000) but that, as a sop to the overwhelming influence of the American economy and cultural might, billion should be regarded as 10^9(1,000,000,000).
s ) but if you want the vast majority of people to understand, use the word 'Billion'
So, for instance, in Business Studies class, we strictly meant 10^9 if we used the word billion, but in English class, the meaning was much more ambiguous.
Since the mid-seventies, officially a billion has meant 10^9 in government documents in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere, but its old meaning as 10^12 has remained colloquially. (I left secondary school in 1999, which is fairly recent and it was still possible to use the 10^12 form then).
My point? Long-scale convention for naming numbers is just as valid as short-scale(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale
Concrete analysis...