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."

Comments

It's a common problem with 'big space'.

[queazocotal]

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.

SpaceX vs. ESA

[nojayuk]

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.

Re:SpaceX vs. ESA

[trout007]

Look at the Ariane 5 flights before 2002. First flight had to be terminated. Second flight didn't reach intended orbit. Then 7 successes. Then a failure to reach intended orbit. Then 3 successes. Then a flight needed to be terminated. Success since then.

So far in the first 4 flights Falcon 9 has performed better than Ariane 5's first 4 flights. No terminations, one failure to insert in intended orbit and one failure of secondary payload.

This reinforces Musk's point. You get better the more you fly. As long as they keep flying and learning it will get better quickly. Now right now if I had a Billion Dollar payload I'd pay for an Ariane 5, Delta IV, or Atlas V. But if I was planning a $200 million dollar total mission it would be impossible on anything but a Falcon 9.

Re:SpaceX vs. ESA

[arse maker]

That would almost never be true.
The cost of launch is almost (probably always) a tiny part of the total cost of designing, building and launching something.

The launch might be $80m, but if you lose a $200m payload its not so good.

There is insurance which makes the cost analysis more complex, I'm not sure how that would factor in. However it would have to be far more reliable than 1/5 for 1/3 the cost.

Re:SpaceX vs. ESA

[dkf]

Falcon 9 is cheaper and has been pretty successful.

But is it because they're good or because they're lucky? You can't tell from Musk's comments; one of his tasks is to pitch as high as possible to bring in investors and persuade customers to jump ship.

If I was running the Ariane program I would be worried. You are betting on the Falcon 9 having failures. Otherwise you cannot compete for a large part of the market.

If the Heavy works, you are out of business. It might be FUD, but it is also true.

Right now, you've got someone talking up a product that hasn't actually entered service yet and you're believing them on the basis of an exceptionally short service history with a different system (the Falcon 9 and Ariane 5 are targeted at different types of payloads; you'd probably be better off comparing with the A5 predecessor). It's FUD and vaporware vs stuff that actually exists. We don't tolerate that when talking about software, so why should we be more lenient about rockets? Arianespace will start worrying once the Falcon Heavy has actually lifted a decent number of loads without incident (remember to compare the sum of the launch costs and the insurance, because the satellite owners will surely do that sum).

Re:SpaceX vs. ESA

[nojayuk]

The market SpaceX is competing in already has the Ariane as well as other commercial/military launchers like the Deltas, the HII-B and of course the venerable Soyuz (1700 launches and counting) which is a closer match to the Falcon 9's capabilities. They're playing catchup with their launch price being the big market attractor while they get the bugs out and improve their throw weight.

What would you be launching and where for 200 mill? A geosync DBS bird costs about 100 million shrinkwrapped for launch with insurance, load integration and launch costs pushing the total price up to about 400 million dollars US after it has been delivered to its final position in the GEO constellation.

Scientific and telecomms platforms can be put into LEO for a lot less, of course but there are a lot more boosters other than the Falcon 9 that can do this job; the Ariane's speciality is DBS launches, two at a time with a side-order of Space Station resupply and reboost ATVs delivering 6 tonnes plus of payload and fuel per shot in a 20-tonne vehicle (the first commercial DragonX resupply mission carried about 500kg of cargo and no fuel).

SpaceX still hasn't attempted even a test GEO launch of a single DBS/GEO payload and is incapable of putting the biggest such satellites in place -- INTELSAT 20 launched by Arianespace in August this year massed about 6 tonnes, a tonne more than the uprated Falcon 9 is expected to be able to put into GEO. The same launch also put a 3-tonne DBS into GEO making the entire launch load over 10 tonnes including ancillary materials, way above anything the Falcon 9 will ever be able to do.

Translated

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Musk is a scam artist

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Space company founder trash-talks competition..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Musk is a scam artist

[Black Parrot]

*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.

Re:Space company founder trash-talks competition..

[Teancum]

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.