Does new expendable rocket Ariane 6 have a future?
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- Опубліковано 8 лип 2024
- The new European launch vehicle Ariane 6 launched for the first time today. Delayed, expensive, and expendable, many have criticized Ariane 6 for already being obsolete and not competitive against reusable rockets such as SpaceX's Falcon or Starship. But Ariane 6 does have a specific customer base and a specific purpose for those customers, so for the time being, its market share is mostly safe.
Post-video creation, during an ESA press briefing, it was announced that the Ariane 6 initial flight experienced an anomaly.
Thumbnail background image credit: ESA, CNES Arianespace, & ArianeGroup
Europe aims to end space access crisis with Ariane 6’s inaugural launch: spacenews.com/europe-aims-to-...
Ariane 6 manifest as seen on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6
Ariane 6 first flight (Official broadcast): • Ariane 6 first flight ...
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It’s only been 10 years, give them time to catch up :)
Ariane has over 40 launches booked through to 2035 including 18 for Kuiper.
All these newer rockets make me realize the absolute absurdity of what the Apollo Program accomplished in the timeline set to land on the Moon and return to Earth before the end of the decade.
The Saturn 5 was amazing enough, but they were driving space cars on the Moon, keeping people alive in mobile suits, launching from the Moon perfectly executed to rendezvous with a lunar orbiting ship and return to Earth.
Now, a rocket to just drop off a few satellite's in LEO takes forever to get dialed in.
@@PowerScissor so true!
nasa did take insane risks....there was basically a 50/50 chance for them on their first attempt. all of the missions has lif thretenglingly mishaps which required quicknthinking and various mc gyveristic solutions. it was only the last mission where they got thing dialekt in enough to actually get a relatively smooth operation. but yes, they did fulfill the missions they set out to do and that is a success, no doubt about that.
I think this is a reasonably good debut for Ariane 6 despite the deorbit anomaly, it delivered payloads to orbit which counts as mission success IMO.
@@ross077 The anomaly happened after I made the video, but I do think a mostly successful first launch is a decent start.
How did i not find your channel before!? Subscribed!
Thanks!
Considering the second stage APU didn't function, it cannot deorbit the 2nd stage, release its last two deorbital test satellites and it is now space junk, I think characterizing the mission as successful is an overstatement. The reliability of the APU is critical to the 2nd stage relight capability. Clearly that function will have to be fixed with certainty before any 2nd stage relight missions are attempted. ESA showed a positive face at their press briefing, however, I am certain the disappointment is deep.
@@WWeronko Yes, I made this video before the press briefing where they announced that anomaly. Hopefully they can fix whatever the issue is quickly for the next launches.
The second stage was successfully relight, but not for another time.
The mission is a successful demonstration, also successful in the sense, that it can deliver a satellite accurately into any orbit, but the full mission has not been achieved.
Did people call SpaceX unsucessful after they crashed a booster into a landing ship after a successful satellite deployment?
Thank you for the video. Regretfully there was an issue with the second stage. I imagine this will require a full investigation and significant further delay to the program?
@@progkarma944 Yes, you’re probably correct. We’ll wait to learn more.
The thing with Starship that everyone seems to fail to comprehend is Musk's claims it will cost low single digit millions per launch or they will build a Starship every few days are not aspirational goals. Starbase is not an R&D facility it's a factory. There is only so far you can throttle a factory. If you build the factory to turnout one of something every day you can't slow the production line down to make only one a month or a couple a year. Moreover the entire supply chain that feeds the factory can't throttle to supply vastly less then their production facilities were designed to produce.
So now that Starship IFT4 proved the basics of Starship flight system is going to work and SpaceX is constructing a factory to turnout hundreds of starships. I ask what use is an expendable rocket that cost north of 100 million USD and can launch not even once a month? When Starships are flying like airliners and someone wanting a 6 ton sat has a choice of booking an Arian 6 at 100 million + USD 2 or 3 years ahead of time or they can book a ride share on a Starship for IDK 5 million USD and have it launched within a couple of weeks. Why would anyone even ESA use Arian 6?
"When Starships are flying like airliners..."
That will never happen, chemical rockets liftoff mass is about 7% structure and engines, what makes their structural margins extremelly low to be reused so many times. (I would be surprised if each Starship survives 50 launches)
Also, from an economical perspective, there is not enough launch demand that justifies those prices. Taking into account a U$ 10 billion expense in R&D, SpaceX would need TENS OF THOUSANDS OF LAUNCHES to recover their investment if they were selling launches at U$ 5 million each.
People are generally too amazed about Elon's claims (such as 100 or even 1000 starships built per year), what make them don't realize all he says are more PR, not different from what he does at TESLA in order to boost the value of its companies.
If a spacecraft someday flies as frequent as airplanes today, that will be due to more advanced propulsion systems and the creation of hundreds to thousands new business opportunities in space.
@@luigeribeiro Falcon9s which are made of aluminum, a material far less durable than stainless steal are already north of 20 launches and SpaceX now plans to reuse them up 100 times.
As far as Musk trying to pump the value of his stock goes...That doesn't make sense given SpaceX is a private company. So what the public thinks it's worth has little effect on share value. Musk and members of his family own over 50% of the company. Pretty much all the other investors are as committed to non monetary goals for SpaceX as Musk. So also don't really care about the valuation of the company.
As far as pricing and demand go I said 5 million rideshare. launching a 6 ton sat by itself on a rocket that can lift 150-250 tons would be very wasteful. Instead you launch it with say 20 other sats.
The customers get prices so low they can't even think about other launch providers and SpaceX makes a 100mill or so for the launch. Or maybe charge 25 mill per sat so they are only 5x cheaper than Arian 6 and pocket a cool 1/2 billon in profit.
Yes at those prices and with Starship's crazy high launch tempo they could easily absorb all current launch demand with still only a few Starships.
However with Starship's lowering launch cost by 2 or more orders of magnitude and payload capacity by at least and order of magnitude will create new launch demand.
Such as completing Starlink network which itself will require hundreds of launches then weekly launches to replace sats as they reach end of life. Other customers too no longer constrained by mass, volume or launch tempo will start to design future payloads to take advantage of Starships capabilities.
Then there is suborbital transportation, Actually operating Starship as an airline.
Finally we have what Starship is actually being designed for which is transporting at least 1 million tons of cargo and tens of thousands of people to Mars.
@@THX..1138 "Falcon9s which are made of aluminum, a material far less durable than stainless steal are already north of 20 launches and SpaceX now plans to reuse them up 100 times."
You clearly don't understand what specific strength is, among several other things.
It is easy to come to wrong conclusions when we don't know things and are amazed by those conclusions.
@@luigeribeiro Well SpaceX has the best aerospace engineers in the world working for them. They've built by far the most powerful rocket in the history of the world... But I'm sure you probably understand their vehicle better than they do.
Dream on!
Once Starship achieves rapid reusability, I expect in five years at the most, what will make most sense for the ESA is to license it, not just for operations but production. Pretty sure Elon would be happy to do it as it would get Europe firmly into the interplanetary colonization business.
Haaaaa Pay and Amerian you are no Patrot at all
ITAR says no
Starships is years away from working - if ever.
«Interplanetary Colonisation Business» is a unicorn with the only goal to collect money. It will not happens within the next 100 years. We have to concentrate to solve our problems on our earth and not wasting time and money on castles in the air.
Yeah but delays are very commen for new Rockets like SLS 5 years delay, Vulcan 4 Years, Ariane6 also 4 years and Japans H3 3 years delay which also needed 3 launches before it worked and those are all much less ambitious than Starship
These comparisons are quite odd. Ariane in its two configurations has roughly the same capability as Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, in both cases comparing fully expended with partly reusable. So that is the current competition, not Starship. Also SLS is not a realistic competitor: it is a ludicrously expensive rocket targeted on very low volume deep space exploration missions and no way it will be even close to being price competitive with Ariane (or any other rocket!).
@@john_hind I made the comparison to SLS because of its mission and purpose, and the comparison makes sense. I don’t know why the journalist at Space News compared it to Starship.
@@lauraforczyk Yes, I got the point about 'sovereign rocket capability', but I do not think the US sees SLS in that role (maybe it was conceived that way at its inception, but very much in the context of crewed spaceflight). It's national security launches are mostly contracted to the likes of SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin (in anticipation of the latter getting to orbit within our lifetime!). It does not have a problem seeing these as 'sovereign' because they construct and are regulated within the US. As far as I know, Ariane has no plans for crewed exploration which is the main focus of SLS. I think NASA has really accepted that SLS is far too expensive for any commercial launches or even for non-crewed exploration payloads for which there are simply much more cost-effective options. Given a little time the penny will drop in relation to crewed missions too!
I wonder if Airbus can come up with a version that allows each launch to recover the engines making it somewhat reusable?
There are concepts for Themis boosters that land like Falcon9. Also the core stage has similar plans. IMO this should be sufficient to make Ariane 6 evolution somewhat competitive as for me reusable upper stages are unproven and with little gain.
Can you talk about how the programme was funded? Cost plus? Etc
It's a public-private partnership with €2.815 billion contributed by various European governments and approximately €400 million by industry.
@lauraforczyk thankyou. If it isn't profitable in the future will the governments be propping up the private bits?
Arianespace and its European industrial partners have made the Ariane 6 the orbital lift vehicle of the future. With two fairings and four optional boosters to reach different orbits, the rocket will be useful. I guess it takes a month to build because it launches once a month. These Europeans are so wasteful that they just leave the spent rocker floating around in space…as far as I know. I do know it costs too much to add the extra fuel so it can return and survive landing on Earth.
‘Only rich people who can afford to blow up prototypes until they master the landing of the rocket…’
I do see the Ariane 6 being used for years by Europeans, at least..? Oh, it is a heavy lift vehicle that can reach the future nuclear space tug…
I can hear fans on the background lol
Sorry! I have always wondered, if I turn the fan off, will you hear the kids more? It's never quiet in this house.
Hi again lol, It was a beautiful launch.
So..... Ariane 6 is a grift..... like SLS.
I wouldn't call it a grift. It's a necessary development step that secures Europe's access to space without relying on Russia or the US. It's sad that it doesn't have any reusable parts, for sure and I hope the next iteration will fix that. The SLS meanwhile is a boondoggle which started life with being shot in the knee by the way NASA is forced to operate thanks to Congress.
Ariane 6 is booked out for several years.
and they are making a law to find customers for ESA rockets
They already have customers for the next few years.
SLS is dead and will be replaced by SpaceX. Ariane 6 will have the same fate.
Giants falls. Remember Bethlehem Steel, Lehman Brothers, Amoco, Circuit City etc.? Yes, SpaceX is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of industry, however, one or two catastrophic catch attempts could set them back years, if not permanently.
The West needs several successful space companies if we hope to continue to have uninterpreted access to space.
No. Catch failures would be messy but hardly catastrophic as the ships will have little fuel on board for the landing.
SpaceX may also be a giant which falls.
No. Not if they use disposible rockets
After November there might not be a USA as a functioning state any more, so yeah plenty customers after the collapse of Trumpghanistan... Let's hope it won't happen though..
What drugs are you taking 😅