Slashdot Mirror
Ariane 5 Has No Chance, Says Elon Musk
Dupple writes with some remarks by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, as reported by the BBC, on the Ariane 5 launch vehicle: Musk is anything but a disinterested party, but he has some especially harsh words for the ESA rocket: "'I don't say that with a sense of bravado but there's really no way for that vehicle to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. If I were in the position of Ariane, I would really push for an Ariane 6.' Ariane's future will be a key topic this week for European Space Agency (Esa) member states. They are meeting in Naples to determine the scope and funding of the organisation's projects in the next few years, and the status of their big rocket will be central to those discussions."
Sorry, failed at reading this with a straight face.
To paraphrase part of TFA 'We can save money by developing X with components from Y', this is why it's cheaper to now spend money on Y.
Versus a clean-sheet design.
Combine that with SpaceX's largely integrated workflow, with minimal external contractors, and you have extreme problems for traditional aerospace to meet the costs.
Contracts are granted not on the basis of what would make the overall system cheaper, but electoral politics.
And if SpaceX gets even limited reusability working - http://phys.org/news/2012-11-spacex-story-reuseable-grasshopper-rocket.html - the price crashes further.
Yea, just wait until some "Regulation" comes his way. You can't compete on a level play field with Government.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The Falcon 9 has flown four times IIRC; in two cases things went wrong -- on its first launch the orbital payload ended up rolling and yawing in the wrong orbit and on the fourth launch it lost an engine and couldn't deploy a secondary payload successfully and the mission was not a complete success. The Falcon Heavy is still to be completely assembled never mind actually flown.
The Ariane 5 in ES, GS and ECS configurations has 50 completely successful launches under its belt since the last failure back in 2002. It has a proven track record of delivering twice the payload of the Falcon 9 to LEO and twice the projected payload of the F9 v1.1 to GEO (since SpaceX has not yet attempted a launch to GEO).
Musk's comments sound like FUD to encourage sales of Falcon 9 launches, nothing more.
"Ariane 5 has no chance,"
translates to "Arian 5 is our big competitor"
"Mr Musk said that the cost of producing the current European rocket would kill it as a commercial entity."
Translates as "Give us a subsidy US military or we can't keep competing on price!"
"Not only can we sustain the prices, but the next version of Falcon 9 is actually able to go to a lower price,"
Translates as:
"We hope to get to the stock market before we burn through our $1 billion in capital, Groupon/Facebook style! Ka-chink!"
Sounds like marketing to me. Whenever I see a company focus on dissing a competitor, I immediately wonder why they're going negative campaigning.
And what government would that be?
Dilbert RSS feed
Arianespace is a private company, with private shareholders.
http://www.arianespace.com/about-us-corporate-information/shareholders.asp
Did you want a list? The governments of: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Happy?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
"At some point, if you're a third the cost, even if you lose one vehicle in five, you start getting a lot more business."
Companies price their products to what the market will bear, if he could price it at Arianne - 5%, he would. He's having to deep discount and that suggests he's having difficulty attracting customers with so many teething problems.
"Reliability isn't everything"
We use to send mobile phones via registered post in the UK. A lot of them were stolen, our contract meant we received the value of the phone back from their insurance. We lost those customers who didn't re-order, we got a bad reputation and eventually we had enough and ditched Royal Mail. See it only works if you ONLY count the cost of the lost satellite, not the damage it does by the failure to launch as contracted.
SpaceX need to improve their reliability, and get their heavy launcher out the door. Less hype, less fake 'reusable' claims from a rocket that gone only 2 feet off the ground. Less BS attacks on competitors, they need to iron out THEIR problems with THEIR first launcher. Discounting to keep customers is a short term fix only.
As it is, it looks like he's trying to draw attention away from his owns companies problems.
I being forced to pay for it though taxes in the form of government loans and tax breaks to those that purchase these vehicles.
Here's a hint for you -- the $7500 tax credit is just that -- a credit on taxes. The car costs $100k.
Odds are the buyers are paying more in taxes than most people on Slashdot make, so guess what? Its *their* taxes that are paying for those vehicles, not yours.
As someone who pays well into the six figures in just federal income tax, let me be the first to say "fuck you". *My* taxes are paying for those discounts. *My* taxes are paying for your schools. *My* taxes are more than an order of magnitude higher than any benefits *I* get from the government.
And guess what? *I* am not so fucking shortsighted as to complain that my taxes are going to things that help the country, and help the environment.
Is that the Cost/Payload of Ariane or Falcon? And how does it compare to the other one?
Put it this way. Ariane is expensive enough that many people launching billion-dollar satellites would rather put them on a Russian rocket and hope they didn't leave a vodka bottle in the engine when they built it.
Completely wrong.
EU legislation can make the market for Space X very limited and increase the cost per launch due to reduced launch frequency of Space X. You want a concrete example of this. For years India's ISRO had the cheapest launch vehicle for LEO. (This is distinct from their GSLV program which hasn't been very successful). PSLV has an excellent success rate and is cheap. For years they tried to get other countries to launch their satellites on the PSLV. None of the countries placed their satellites on the PSLV.
There is US legislation which prevented any satellite, even a civilian satellite which used US components being launched by countries outside the approved list of launchers, EU, US or Russia. I am not sure if China is now on the list as well. India got on the list a couple of years ago. Now they launch LEO satellites for Israel, France, SE asia and a growing list of countries. It's not just the cost it's legislation.
EU could very well just legislate for satellites with EU made components to be EU launch only. Or they could just legislate to have all government funded direct or indirect funding to be EU launch vehicles only. Or EU could legislate for all EU television channels to hire only EU launched satellite transponders and if EU television channels need to lease transponders on non EU satellites for broadcast in EU require them to get a governmental waiver which oh just takes 9 months to a year to process. This is just the tip of the ice-burg.
Don't for a minute think none of this will happen as there will be retaliation from US. So you won't let your satellites launch on our platform good for you. Think of the only two aircraft manufacturers in the world. It's the same equation here. Some countries cannot or will not be allowed to launch their satellites from US. All of them have to use EU.
Space-x is being delusional here. The market is pretty big and governments will win most of the time. It's also about diplomacy. You launch your puppy on ours we will scratch your back in the UN, WTO and in that free trade agreement.
Yeah because it's a negative sum economy and that money would have went directly to the poor people that need it. How is life in the Hollywood movie you live in?
Here's a hint for you -- the $7500 tax credit is just that -- a credit on taxes. The car costs $100k.
Yes, people who buy $100,000 toys really need the tax break.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
*My* taxes are more than an order of magnitude higher than any benefits *I* get from the government.
So move to Somalia.
Oh, wait - maybe you are getting something for your money.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you want to talk about economic theft, who do you think the government "stole" that money from in the first place? Who do you think pays most of the taxes? Who do you think provides the jobs? Who do you think invests their money back into the economy? The great thing about having your simplistic view of class warfare is the so-called "1 percent" will always be here for you to villainize no matter how prosperous everybody else is. Even in the most socialist and centrally planned economies there is a top 1 percent.
C'mon, Mitt. I know you're out of work, but surely you've got better things to do than post on Slashdot.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If we really seriously want to move from the expensive launch vehicle, expensive hardware optimization we are currently in, we probably need to do something like this.
All that the EU can do to SpaceX is to impact his suppliers (which are few in number.... SpaceX makes most of their own components from raw bulk materials like sheets of aluminum, titanium, and steel) or his potential customers in the EU. Given that few of his customers are in the EU, it isn't all that big of a deal to them and increased regulations by the EU would impact all potential launchers.
It should be noted that until recently, it was the Ariane rockets that carried the bulk of commercial spaceflight vehicles. In other words, increased regulations on spaceflight (assuming they "play fair" and impose those regulations equally to all companies participating) would mainly kill European companies who are doing (and still doing currently) a very robust commercial business. Much of the reason why they have the launch rate that they do is because they have been very competitive on the world market and undercut American launch companies like Boeing (with the Delta rockets) and Lockheed-Martin (with the Atlas rockets). They worked their way to become compliant with American regulations like ITAR, but were also in a position to avoid ITAR if needed so they could launch vehicles from companies that American launch providers can't because of American regulations. There are some ESA payloads as well as satellites that have been launched by EU members.... but those will likely go to Arianespace anyway regardless of how cheap SpaceX makes their launch prices go and will never be on the table for SpaceX.
Arianespace can become an EU-only launch provider, but they will give up most of the market by doing so. Elon Musk's assertion here is that he can compete against Arianespace for contracts from countries like Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and Qatar. None of those countries care or will even pay attention to EU regulations and will go to SpaceX if they can provide a launch for a quarter of the price that Arianespace can offer for the same payload. That should be a no-brainer, especially if SpaceX can deliver the same level of reliability that Arianespace is currently providing.
That really is the trick for SpaceX right now: to prove that their system is reliable enough that you can be 95%+ certain that the payload will make the trip into the intended orbit. A whole bunch of people are waiting to see if SpaceX can deliver on that promise, and that is the only real selling point at the moment for either Arianespace or RKK Energia for that matter. It has nothing to do with governments, but simply engineering that is well done and quality manufacturing processes.
It should be pointed out that SpaceX has figured out how to reduce the cost of its launches to the point that the subsidy needed for Arianespace to compete would be embarrassing and noticeable to EU members and their constituents. Keep in mind SpaceX is making their rockets so cheap that even the Chinese don't think they can underbid SpaceX.
If the ESA was to expand slightly and include additional EU members (ESA and EU membership... while there is considerable overlap... isn't identical), they might be able to embark in an incredibly ambitious space program like a manned European Lunar or Martian program on a level comparable to NASA but with a much larger budget. Keep in mind though that would be a financial commitment of about $100 billion USD (or equivalent)... and I don't think it would be any cheaper simply because it is a European concept instead of being an American one. Just see if something like that would fly through the EU parliament, much less national parliaments in the EU in terms of funding.
The reason why top satellite manufacturers are in the EU is in part because Arianespace has been successful at competing on the international market, and because American legal regulations have been idiotic to put it mildly. ITAR regulations alone have driven out much of the commercial spaceflight market from America, which has gone almost exclusively to Europe and a few launches to Russia via RKK Energia/Roscosmos. China has tried to enter this market too, but they've had their own set of problems.
The satellites made in the EU are often being done on a contract basis, and if the EU wants to follow in the stupid path that the American Congress has done over the past couple of decades to drive out commercial spaceflight business.... EU companies would have the same problems that American launch providers have faced over the past couple of decades but without the American military or American military budgets to prop them up.
While PayPal may have evolved into a ripoff, when it first came out it was a godsend. Remember paying for things on eBay using money orders? Musk then turned his attention to big, serious engineering challenges that nobody else had the vision or cojones to tackle. Which is much more than can be said for you, Anonymous Coward.
The government isn't spending a dime here. It is just not collecting federal excise taxes that otherwise would be collected if the person purchasing the automobile had purchased something else instead.
Besides, the federal government isn't exactly losing money either,as Tesla still is paying federal income tax on earnings as well as on salaries for its employees. Telsa is also paying property taxes for its factories and dozens of other taxes are being paid to state and local government authorities. You shouldn't be crying too hard about "government spending" here that isn't even happening in the first place. If nobody buys a Tesla Model S, the tax would never have been collected in the first place.
On top of that, the Model S has a starting price of about $50k, and Tesla is looking to eventually develop a high volume-low cost consumer vehicle once they get enough working capital from hopefully robust sales of their other products. The next generation vehicle is anticipated to cost about $30k... while still expensive is definitely something more affordable for a non-millionaire. That sounds like an excellent reason to even encourage this kind of business and marketing behavior to have the wealthy help finance the development of a low-cost consumer vehicle by offering luxury vehicles that also do something useful for the environment.
A good point. I hate PayPal and avoid using it whenever possible, but when Musk was focused on that project, he basically made possible the entire concept of small online payments to individuals who don't have the time or resources to set up PCI themselves, but want to conduct business or accept donations over the Internet.
I don't like what it's turned into over time, and I'd like it if Musk (or somebody) were to slap it around a bit and make it behave more properly, but I don't fault him for creating it, or for moving on to other (IMO, far more interesting) projects since.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The Falcon Heavy is still in development.
The Falcon 9 has a 75% success rate and a 25% partial success/partial failure rate after 4 launches.
The Ariane 5 has a 94% success rate, a 3% partial success/partial failure rate, and a 3% failure rate, after 66 launches.
Everything I've read says the Falcon series is likely to be very reliable, but the proof of the success is in the launching - and the Ariane 5 has more launches under its belt. I hope Musk succeeds and lowers launch costs for everyone, but he hasn't proven anything yet.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.
Russia has actually raised their launch prices in part because of the demand for them is outstripping their supply and they have a backlog on production at the moment. They are simply being capitalists, which is a good thing too but sort of shoots your theory out of the water. Name a specific launcher if you think it can be more competitive.
The Ariane V vehicle has a launch cost of $120 million and puts about 15 metric tons into orbit, or about $8 million per metric ton. In other words, it is literally twice the cost as the Falcon 9. It can put up a slightly heavier payload at the moment, but that is something SpaceX is trying to fix with their Falcon Heavy rocket.
If you want to find the source from Chinese space officials who toured the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, California and said they couldn't compete, do some Google searching on the topic. I won't bother but it was widely reported at the time including a post here on Slashdot when it happened.
Tesla has produced cars and sold them. Sure they are expensive but what did you expect? You need vast capital expenditures to make a single high-volume factory which is a necessary investment to make a low cost car. He doesn't have the capital required to do this so he makes a lower volume of higher priced cars.
Who do you think pays most of the taxes?
Not by percentage of income.
Who do you think provides the jobs?
Who do you think does the bulk of the work which creates the wealth in the first place?
Who do you think invests their money back into the economy?
Elon Musk is one of these people. However not everyone is like him. A lot of these people are investing abroad, not in the US. At least the poor keep their money on US banks where it gets loaned and invested. The money going to the tax shelters abroad is probably not going to be invested in the US.
Do you honestly think these people work 10x more than a middle class citizen to be worth their income, let alone the 1000x or more they earn?
Even in the most socialist and centrally planned economies there is a top 1 percent.
You are being silly if you think even the top echelons of the Soviet Union had the vast differential in wealth the US upper class enjoys. They got a regular car and a summer house and that was it. Even the "nice" car belonged to the State and went back to someone else. Even Stalin himself had to share a house with other people when he was Party Secretary.
What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.
That link is about the still non-existent Falcon 9 v1.1, that's why I'm very dubious: it's just trash talking, smoke and mirrors. They said the Falcon 1 would have been the first reusable and cheap launch system, it wasn't; then it was the time of Falcon 5, it was never built; then NASA came to the rescue and fully funded Falcon 9, neither this time it was reusable, however they say Falcon 9 v1.1 will be: I'll believe it when I see it.
Just to point out, according to the original sheets the planned launch cost for Falcon 9 was $35-55 m for 8.5-9 t (2007), in 2010 it was already $50-56 m, now it's "under $60 million".
So being generous, i.e. SpaceX 2010 prices vs. PSLV 2012 prices:
Falcon 9 v1.0 | 8.5t-9.0t | $56 million | 6.22-7 million $/t
PSLV | 3.25 t | $17 million | 5.23 million $/t
Russian and Ukrainian launches are still cheaper. I don't know about Chinese launches, but I'd bet their cheaper as well...