15 thoughts on “Ariane”

  1. The entire interview seemed more like a caricature of a French CEO. Even Der Speigel’s interviewer seemed flummoxed by Charmain’s answers.

    It’s ironic, because in the 1980’s, Arianespace actually built a better mouse trap, and started catching a lot more mice than moribund U.S. launchers, who were structured to capture and massage vast swaths of U.S. government payloads which mostly could not launch with any other launcher anyway. And because of the lack of real launch market competition, Ariane (like ULA) had the luxury of keeping their business as a jobs program. What little price pressure there was got provided by Roscosmos with its rock bottom labor costs.

    They can still keep the jobs program if they want, if ESA is willing to keep subsidizing it by guaranteeing the 12-20 European payloads per year they need to stay afloat. But the price of that choice will mean abandoning most of the competitive global launch market by the mid-2020’s – especially the LEO market.

    1. They can still keep the jobs program if they want

      Its funny because they would create more jobs if their launch program participated in the capitalist economy.

  2. So the U.S. government paying more for a SpaceX rocket (that is still cheaper than Ariane) is bad but the EU subsidizing his rocket is good because… jobs? Ask a socialist how to fix a problem and you get a socialistic answer.

    1. The US government is paying more for SpaceX launches because the bureaucrats want their say in everything and SpaceX is saying, “OK, but it will cost you.” In the best case, perhaps eventually the government will start to ask, “Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

      Nah, who am I kidding. The bureaucrats have to justify their phone-baloney jobs and it’s not like the extra expense comes out of their pay.

    2. Ask a socialist how to fix a problem and you get a socialistic answer.

      It did read like an interview with Bernie Sanders or Maduro.

      We really need to limit our cooperation with the Europeans. They will want to turn everything into a marxist experiment. It would be horrible to get tied into something like that on the Moon or Mars without other outlets to let our human spirits flourish.

  3. Geez, maybe something got lost in translation, but it seemed like Monsieur Charmeau was having a bad day…his PR people should have rescheduled.

    Does anybody know what he’s talking about when he said Jeff Bezos went to Germany and told them not go to space?

    Getting 7 contracts by end of June seems unlikely…

    Apropos, does anybody know why JWST is launching on Ariane?

    1. JWST is a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and CSA, and part of ESA’s €300 million contribution is providing the launch vehicle.

    2. Re “Why does Jeff Bezos come to Germany and declare that the country should not go to space?”

      I don’t know. Mr. Bezos was in Germany late last month to receive the Axel Springer Award, and presumably he made some remark which M. Charmeau interpreted thusly.

      Here is one 48 minute public interview he gave, but scanning the transcript I don’t what he said which would have prompted that interpretation, unless it was a mention that he liquidates $1B per year to fund Blue Origin. M. Charmeau may feel that Germany lacks such a deep pocketed individual with an interest in space. I too would love to hear what else he said which could have prompted M. Charmeau remark.

      I dislike the “Rocket Billionaires” narrative because the most influential one (at the moment) isn’t a billionaire who is spending his money playing around in space, but was a millionaire who became a billionaire by founding a rocket company, creating wealth, and bringing the commercial launch industry back to the US.

  4. Araine has long been accused of hypocrisy on the subsidy issue; accusing SpaceX of being subsidized because of winning bods on government launches, while taking subsidies of a greater degree itself.

    Kudos to Mr. Charmeau for clearing that up by converting an accusation of hypocrisy into stated fact.

    I also wonder if he’s dumb enough to be oblivious to the fact that treating a launch system (or anything) as a jobs program is the problem, or if he’s prohibited by politics from admitting it?

    @ Pug Sanchez; JWST is launching on Ariane because ESA is a partner in the JWST program, and is contributing the launch (and will pay Ariane). It’s as if NASA pais for a Spacex or ULA launch as their contribution to a joint project. Ariane would call that a subsidy of SpaceX or ULA, but when ESA does it for Ariane, they don’t call it that.

  5. It seems my very tiny violin is lying on floor shattered into a million splinters.

  6. If I were them I might try something like partnering with SpaceX, for example to make a replacement upper stage for the F9 or F9H (either a high energy stage using LOX/LH2 or a recoverable stage, perhaps a mini shuttle). They could also arrange to have F9/F9H launches from Kourou, assuming ITER doesn’t interfere.

    This all becomes obsolete if BFR works as hoped, but they’re irremediably screwed in that case anyway.

    And, of course, they might set themselves thinking what they can do in space if launch costs continue to rapidly decline. Maybe accelerate a manned space program now that economical manned satellite servicing is on the feasibility horizon?

    1. They should focus on building payloads for their space based government facilities. Lower launch prices allow for more launches and more money they can spend on payloads. How many jobs would that allow them to fund? Who knows.

      It is the same thing NASA should be doing and is the same thing the new entrants to the space race will be doing shortly.

  7. Perhaps if ArianeGroup can hold out until France becomes an Islamic Republic, the ruling mullahs will give it contracts to build missiles with which to threaten whatever remains of non-Islamic Europe.

  8. The problem with the European space launch industry has always been that the government sector launches a lot less satellites than the US does. Just the DoD and NRO launch more mass than all the civilian operators in the USA for example. This is not the case in Europe.

    Like he said, for there to be a business case for a reusable you need a minimum amount of launches per year, and since they can’t get to that amount of launches, they have to continue to use an expendable rocket approach. Of course the jobs matter. How can you retain the worker base if you only keep the production line operational for a quarter? Eventually the workers will go away and expertise will be lost. Also, an expendable costs a lot less to develop than a reusable, and you don’t need the extra reusability infrastructure for one.

    But to a large degree this is self inflicted. When Ariane 5 increased the launch costs per mass over Ariane 4 this was supposed to be fixed with multiple launches with the ESC-B upper stage and a lower cost launched based on an enlarged Vega rocket. Instead they started launching Soyuz from Kourou and cancelled ESC-B development after spending a considerable amount of money developing the Vinci engine for ESC-B. Had ESC-B and the larger Vega rocket come into service, Soyuz launches wouldn’t have become necessary as the same costs could have been achieved with European rockets. Instead they outsourced rocket launches to Russia and lost precious development time on the Ariane series.

    The EU governments also never funded the LOX/Methane engine which was proposed back then, over a decade ago, and only now, after SpaceX has eaten their lunch, have they given a pitiful amount of resources to the Prometheus engine. It’s kinda late for that considering it typically takes them 5 years to develop an engine.

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