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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."
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.
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.
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.
*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
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.
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.
Ariane 5 ECA has over twice the payload. Falcon 9 is competing with Soyuz, Zenit (including Sealaunch), Delta IV medium, Atlas V 4xx.
Falcon 9 Heavy reliability, with 27 (!) engines, is still unproven.
Ariane's customers want reliability. Ariane's flights are known to be easily insurable because of this. If the only driver was cost those clients would be flying their satellites on a Russian rocket. However when the satellite costs more than the Ariane flight itself it is cheaper to go on a more reliable vehicle.