Airbus Unveils Its First Stage Reuseability Concept

schwit1 writes: The competition heats up: Airbus unveiled Friday its prototype design to recover and reuse the engines and avionics of its Ariane rockets. From the article: "The Airbus team concluded that SpaceX's design of returning the full stage to Earth could be simplified by separating the propulsion bay from the rest of the stage, protecting the motor on reentry and, using the winglets and turbofans, return horizontally to a conventional air strip. "We are using an aerodynamic shield so that the motor is not subjected to such high stress on reentry," [technical director Herve] Gilibert said. "We need very little fuel for the turbofans and the performance penalty we pay for the Ariane 6 launcher is far less than the 30 percent or more performance penalty that SpaceX pays for the reusable Falcon 9 first stage." Gee, for decades Arianespace and Boeing and Lockheed Martin and everyone else in the launch industry insisted it made no economic sense to try to recover and reuse the first stage of their rockets. Then SpaceX comes along and makes an effort to do so, without as yet even coming close, and suddenly everyone agrees it is economically essential to do it as well. Isn't competition wonderful?

Comments

the more the merrier...

[Karmashock]

Is the airbus project worth anything? I have no idea. But the more money thrown at this issue the happier I am really.

We need to get into space and we've allowed our space programs to atrophy.

Re:Very "original"

[Rei]

When I think of "reducing costs", adding a couple turbofans to something doesn't jump to mind. Even if it gives them a better mass ratio than Falcon 9, that's a second powertrain to build and maintain. And then they have to rebuild the tank and re-mate it (although it saves some transportation costs).

Might prove more economical, but I doubt it.