SpaceX, Blue Origin and friends

SpaceX:
>Secured another $100 million in VC funding
This is in addition to $350 million raised over the summer.

Blue Origin:
>in talks with US Congress over "Blue Moon" program to return to the moon
>Commercial launches scheduled for

Arianespace:
>sweating over losing customers in the EU to US launch companies, particualry SpaceX
>Ariane 6 slated for 2020 launch

What else is going on in the world of commercial space operation? For the thread, can we pretend we can get along and keep the CEO dickwaving to a minimum

Other urls found in this thread:

arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/the-second-launch-from-russias-new-spaceport-has-failed/?comments=1
arstechnica.com/science/2017/12/with-bowie-playing-on-the-radio-elon-musk-plans-to-launch-his-tesla-to-mars/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

jeff bezos cant do anything right

>For the thread, can we pretend we can get along and keep the CEO dickwaving to a minimum
Jeff who?

Jeff who?

Whats the point of even building an Ariane 6
They need to start from the bottom up, building a a reusable rocket.

Man, looking at those tunnels big enough to walk into really reminds me of your mom.
I guess it must be the burn marks and soot.

Jeff "$100 000 000 000" Bezos

russia just lost another rocket

arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/the-second-launch-from-russias-new-spaceport-has-failed/?comments=1

Jeff 'The Embezzler' Bezos

Arianespace seems to be sticking its fingers in its ears and going LALALALA at this point. It's obvious that reusable boosters aren't just possible, they're economical. If a barely 16 year old private startup company with zero experience can start from (almost) scratch and develop a reusable booster, so can Arianespace, especially since they have more money to work with and could easily buy up the engineers that have left SpaceX in the past decade.

They won't do that though, because they refuse to state that reusability can be economical, because that would have them not only throw out Ariane 6, but also all those smaller solid motor launch vehicles. They have a solid rocket supply company in their industry, and a reusable rocket would see that company's business evaporate. It's sorta like how SLS could have had liquid fuel boosters developed for it that would have seen its capabilities and safety increase, but the fact that that would cut out business for Orbital ATK made that idea dead in the water.

Even if it cost just as much to launch a reusable booster compared to a brand new booster every time, it would still make more sense to try to recover the booster when possible. That's because when you can recover your hardware and inspect it, you can do all sorts of inspections and gather information that would otherwise be impossible to get, which can catch possible points of failure before they ever result in a loss of payload.

I don’t feel bad for arianespace or any other space company that refuses to adapt to changing technology. If these dummies are going to pout and stop their feet into bankruptcy, good for SpaceX. Privatization was the best thing to ever happen to this industry

>It's obvious that reusable boosters aren't just possible, they're economical
That's well and all, but spacex is not profitable while arianespace is.

Can you please provide evidence for your post

>I don’t feel bad for arianespace or any other space company that refuses to adapt to changing technology.
Exactly. Particularly state-backed companies. It's not like they are going to go bankrupt even if they keep losing business. When better companies start to bite a larger piece of their business, they will just swallow their words and ask the EU for more money to develop their reusable rockets.

I’m glad that people like Elon are trying to innovate and push us closer to mars. It would’ve been another 30 years at LEAST on the SLS program

Arianespace only makes any money because ESA needs a launch vehicle of their own. SpaceX on the other hand has the pricing and the potential launch cadence required to actually, really make money from commercial customers.

If SpaceX charged as much as Arianespace they'd make more money than the latter by far.

But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of reusable launch vehicles?

They are absorbing the R&D costs now so we can get a taste of final pricing early.

Didn’t think of it that way. neat

The strange thing is when they publish a paper saying "Reusable booster is NOT economical!", when the paper says it WOULD be economical with as little as 20 launches a year!

Very odd

I think bureaucratic/political inertia is a serious problem for them.

because these people would rather make money than see the industry advance. i know dreams don't put food on the table, but there's a point where greed just flat out stagnates things. i.e. any US military contractor

Can't just blame the companies for this state of affairs
Arianespace is just a small front for selling commercial launches, they don't produce their own vehicles or maintain any infrastructure.

well you can definitely blame companies when they go out of their way to preseve the status quo. Lockheed and Boeing sued to lock spacex out of launch contracts, Arianespace would rather make disingenuous powerpoints as to why recovering vehicles and reusing them is much more expensive than building a new rocket for each launch

There’s been coordianted efforts to stop companies from progressing, all in the name of preservation of the way things are, nothing changes. its nuts

ELON DID NOTHING WRONG

SpaceX needed to drastically undercut Arianespace, and still needs to.

Arianespace has a long, excellent record and mature vehicles with predictable launch rates and schedules. SpaceX started selling launch contracts when they didn't even have a working vehicle. They didn't do their first Falcon 9 commercial launch until 2013. Since then, they've blown up two payloads, grown a huge backlog, and they're still pretty much experimenting with every flight.

It'll be different when they've got mature Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flying, and clear their backlog and can basically fly a payload on two weeks' notice, but they're still a young company that's getting its act together and there's more uncertainty about when and whether a payload will go up than there is with Arianespace or ULA.

the width of a falcon 9 first stage is determined by the us highway system? it's as tall and wide as possible that can be carried cross country?

i doubt the BFR will ever see the light of day, i think they're going to just adapt the raptor to the falcon 9 for higher performance for convenience

>SpaceX needed to drastically undercut Arianespace, and still needs to.
they just need to make 2x falcon launches cheaper than a double decker ariane 5

>>SpaceX needed to drastically undercut Arianespace, and still needs to.
>they just need to make 2x falcon launches cheaper than a double decker ariane 5
No, they don't just need to match price per payload, because it's not the same. Arianespace hasn't blown up two Ariane 5 payloads in the last couple of years, and isn't about to switch to a new launchpad and make major modifications to their old one, replace their main vehicle with a major new revision, and start flying practically everything on used rockets then shift their best engineers from fixing problems with the current vehicle to working on a new project.

I'm personally much more enthusiastic about SpaceX, but from the customer's perspective, a SpaceX launch slot with the same no-earlier-than date is significantly less desirable than an Ariane 5 slot. Only lower price or earlier date could make up the difference.

>Ariane 6 slated for 2020 launch

Why even bother at this point?

because they need to give the appearance of progress to keep the EU cash flowing

SpaceX is going to be launching 30+ payloads next year
That backlog is hopefully going to disappear soon
It was two unforseen failures that put it there, after all.

Arianespace is focused on GSO sats too, cheap LEO sats might largely replace the demand for big GSO birds

What SpaceX will look like in 2020 or 2021 is going to be very different from today, they'll have 4 launch pads and years of practice on a finalized Falcon 9.

>i think they're going to just adapt the raptor to the falcon 9 for higher performance
>it's as tall and wide as possible

These two statements contradict. Raptor is more efficient than Merlin and has more thrust, but kerosene is much denser than chilled methane, so in a volume limited rocket the lower density of the fuel actually reduces performance.

Also, BFR won't need to be transported cross-country. It's going to be built near to the ocean and be shipped to the launch complex by boat.

Spacex is betting on customers being ok with reused rockets. Right now, that allows customers to jump ahead of the line to launch their rocket. Eventually, they shouldn't care and they'll just have a rocket ready and waiting for whatever customer is up next.

They definitely still need to iron out some issues though, but I think being able to recover the rockets is catching alot of problems that would have gone unnoticed if they just chunked them. Makes me wonder what issues still exist with the other rockets that haven't cropped up yet.

>when the paper says it WOULD be economical with as little as 20 launches a year!
Ah, but you see, if it's NOT economical, then they won't have 20 launches a year because it costs so much! And that's almost a launch every other week, nobody can keep up that kind of schedule, so it must be impossible to have enough launches to make it economical! PROBLEM SOLVED!

>Arianespace would rather make disingenuous powerpoints as to why recovering vehicles and reusing them is much more expensive than building a new rocket for each launch
It probably is, as long as you use any other recovery method than landing the rocket on its butt, which we all know is impossible, so let's not even consider it. What? SpaceX already did it? They just got lucky. Over a dozen times so far? Sacré bleu, you Americans and your mythical stories!

It's also that politics creates their vehicle design, since they want 2 different liquid rocket engines, plus solid boosters.
This doesn't lend itself to any practical reuse scheme..

Good it deserves the money

Young Sheldon (early '80s Sheldon as a kid) just suggested to a NASA guy to land rockets to re-use them.

I kekked.

wrong

>Lockheed and Boeing sued to lock spacex out of launch contracts
what justification?

at this point everyone in the ESA knows that they're still hopelessly tied to Roscosmos and the Soviets

>Buh mah defense contract monopoly!

Musk is launching a tesla roadster to mars on the maiden falcon heavy launch.

This is unbelievable. Holy shit.
arstechnica.com/science/2017/12/with-bowie-playing-on-the-radio-elon-musk-plans-to-launch-his-tesla-to-mars/

>big meeting in a big company selling big rockets for big money
>"so ugh, why don't we cut sales in half by using one rocket twice! Ain't that awesome!"
Tell me, user, how long do you think that faggot will be employed there?

This is what happens when you're a state run company. Arianne will get subsidised by taxpayers, so they don't worry about actually doing anything. Also see NASA in the US.

If.

Because the Ariane 6 is the superior launch vehicle within its class.

NASA does research and doesn't actually build anything

they do get gobs of money to contract things out like satellites ( i.e. hubble, saturn program, shuttle program)

Ariane 5 has the advantage of being the older vehicle. It's not that ESA is just better at rockets. Ariane 5 had more early failures than Falcon 9, but they had over a decade to get the problems straightened out before Falcon 9 started flying at all. It also has a larger payload capacity, even after all of the F9 upgrades.

Ariane 6 won't have either advantage. It'll be taking its first flights, and starting to work the bugs out, years after the maturation of Falcon 9/Heavy, a vehicle family much cheaper, far more capable, and better able to meet demand.

Ariane 6 is a bit like proposing to build a new biplane to compete with the first jetliner, especially when you consider that BFR is on about the same schedule as Ariane 6.

>BFR is on about the same schedule as Ariane 6.
I'll eat my keyboard if BFR will even be remotely on time and functional.

>Arianespace

ESA is an absolute shitshow. Bureaucratic as fuck. I reall wish they would try to push innovation in the rocket industry. Like I wonder if they even try to make competitive contracts or just instantly give it to Ariane.

Absolute mad man.
Pictures of tesla in space with Mars in the background on billboards. Nice campaign.

This is what happens when you are a monopoly. Same goes to ULA. Claws deep in state structures. Lobbying is killing UE, US is already run by corpos.

ESA is one of the few nice and functioning things in europe. with only a bit of funding they could do amazing things. eu and brussels is the problem. ever wonder why there is never a eu flag on any of the launchers or payloads...?

The Ariane 6 is still the launch vehicle which which will deliver the satellites way closer to their operational orbit than the competition, so satellites can operate months soner.

Because ESA isn't part of the EU.

Have you been to ESA yet? Yeah they function way better than almost all EU political bodies but they suffer from something most science 'companies' suffer from. Where you promote engineers and scientists to manager positions and they have no idea how to manage projects.

Also most of the people working there are pretty cutthroat and just want to make their own career succesful.

1) It doesn't take months to circularize from GTO to GEO with conventional satellite propulsion, only all-electric-propulsion satellites.
2) SpaceX has also been experimenting with upper stage restarts after long coasts, and it'll start making sense to offer this for GEO circularization once Falcon Heavy is flying.
3) Proton has included a circularization stage (Briz) for ages.
4) Western launch customers have generally shown a preference for simply launching a larger satellite, and thereby usually retaining the reserve propellant for this maneuver for stationkeeping.

OP forgot to mention that Boeing is making this thing, which will serve as a two-stage-to-orbit system. It takes off as a rocket, launches it's payload then returns to the airport to land on a conventional runway.

NASA builds a lot of things, SLS is just a part of the things on their plate (and largely a device to ensure Southern legislators keep voting them money). Also SLS at least has a place, even against SpaceX it has a higher maximum payload which is unique (at least, for now).

Honestly I think this is a way bigger threat to NASA and SpaceX than anything else. If Boeing can actually build a rocket that meets the USAF's specs (10 flights in 10 days, runway landings) then both SLS and FH look antiquated by comparison, as both need specialized recovery equipment. More importantly, since it'd basically be a not shit STS (as in an STS that has no payload or crew bays, and only exists to get things into orbit eg a shuttle) it would actually stand a chance of mass production, a thing which Boeing is uniquely equipped to do and could easily bury SpaceX with by out-producing them.

get a load of this retard

True for the majority.

The percentage of scientists who do meaningful work is small, single digit or fractional. Most are just careerists who are only concerned with the status of being called a scientist. They only suck up funding, occupy positions, lower the signal:noise ratio, and contribute to claims of "consensus" on bogus science.

>it has a higher maximum payload
For a small fraction of the cost of the SLS you could just pay SpaceX or wheover to do a multi-launch mission

Jeff who owns WaPo.
BE will win the commercial space race because they have the political blessing of the responsible elites who care for all us.