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ArianeGroup CEO Finally Says Quiet Part Out Loud
By Andrew Parsonson - December 8, 2023
https://europeanspaceflight.com/arianeg … -out-loud/

Quite astonishing. The ArianeGroup CEO suggests the previous design of the Ariane 6 using two large SRB’s for its first stage instead of a liquid-fueled core would have been better. He hasn’t gotten the point reusability is essential to be competitive with SpaceX.

It’s like Tory Bruno head of ULA questioning whether reusability is worthwhile. Here it is with SpaceX beating ULA into the ground with their price cuts from reusability, with ULA being driven to the brink of bankruptcy, and with ULA opening themselves up for sale to forestall going under, and the CEO doesn’t know why.

The New Space starts-ups all recognize the importance of reusability. Old Space has become old and decrepit.

  Bob Clark

CNES Boss on Damage Control for ArianeGroup on Ariane 6 Failures.
By Andrew Parsonson -
November 6, 2023
In a startling revelation, Baptiste pointed to one “large subcontractor” in particular “from a neighboring country” that he says is “demanding price increases of nearly 60% from ArianeGroup, while the same country’s space agency vehemently criticizes the cost of the programme.”

France neighbours Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. There are subcontractors from all five countries working on Ariane 6. However, considering the size of the contributions of each country, large Ariane 6 contractors are probably limited to Germany and Italy. As far as I know, neither ASI nor DLR has openly criticized the price of Ariane 6, but the bad blood between France and Italy when it comes to their respective launcher programmes has been well documented. And the only Ariane 6 subcontractor of note from Italy is, of course, Avio. The company is contracted to contribute to a number of Ariane 6 systems but is most notable for its contributions to the development and production of the P120C solid boosters through a joint partnership with ArianeGroup called Europropulsion. This is far from confirmed, but it is possible that this is the subcontractor Baptiste was referring to.
https://europeanspaceflight.com/cnes-bo … -failures/

The Ariane 6 SRB manufacturer demands a 60% price increase. European tax payers paid billions of dollars for the development of the Ariane 6, but they are not permitted to know the cost of the components of that launcher: 60% higher than what?
What is the price now being demanded for the SRB’s?

If you look up cost of Vulcain engine used on the core that is openly given as €10 million. But the cost of the SRB’s? That must not be asked or answered!

  Robert Clark

Europe is beginning to freak-out about the inability of the Ariane 6 or the Vega-C to compete with SpaceX in price. A translated article from the French:

———————————————————————————————————————

Europe's space rockets on the verge of implosion.

By Véronique Guillermard

Ariane 6. S MARTIN / S MARTIN

DECRYPTION - The Europeans are torn apart over public aid for the operation of Ariane 6. Berlin and Rome want to put an end to ArianeGroup's monopoly in heavy launchers.

It is a summit of European space ministers, accompanied by a council of the European Space Agency (ESA), which will be held on November 6 and 7 in Seville, Spain. In the background, the unprecedented European rocket crisis. Europe no longer has independent access to space. Ariane 6, four years late, will not fly before 2024. It is therefore not yet ready to take over from Ariane 5, which carried out its final mission last July.

Vega C, the new version of the small Italian Vega rocket, is unavailable until the end of next year, since the failure of its first commercial mission at the end of 2022. And it is no longer possible to count on Soyuz, since the cessation of cooperation with Russia, in the wake of the aggression of Ukraine.

Rethinking European strategy

Hence the urgency to fundamentally rethink the European strategy in terms of space transport. And, in the short term, to do everything possible to make Ariane 6 a success, by agreeing on its operating conditions. These have given rise, for weeks, to a standoff between the 13 ESA member states out of 22, which finance the program, and ArianeGroup, the prime contractor for Ariane 6, as well as its subcontractors. . The industry is in fact calling for a reassessment of public support, in order to balance the operation of the new rocket. In short: a substantial annual subsidy so as not to lose money on the commercial market. ArianeGroup is asking for 350 million per year, more than double the amount granted in 2021.

Also read|Space tourism, giant rockets, constellations... The rush for the stars is causing risks to explode

However, when Ariane 6 was launched in 2014, ESA and Cnes (National Center for Space Studies), to which the European agency had until now delegated project management of the Ariane rockets, had agreed to leave this responsibility of project management at ArianeGroup, just created by Airbus and Safran. In return, the latter had promised to no longer request public support for exploitation. “Industrialists have not kept this commitment and have requested public support from 2021,” specifies Toni Tolker-Nielsen, director of space transport at ESA.

In 2021, we estimated the need for Ariane 6 at 140 million per year for a launch rate of 9 rockets per year.

Toni Tolker-Nielsen, director of space transportation at ESA

Request accepted due to a profound change in the market since 2014, with the rise of SpaceX, which slashed prices with the Falcon 9 launcher, and the arrival of high-speed internet constellations. Without forgetting the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. “In 2021, we estimated the need for Ariane 6 at 140 million per year for a launch rate of 9 rockets per year,” specifies the director of space transport at ESA. This help covers the first 16 missions.

The rule of geographic return

Since then, manufacturers have had to deal with the return of inflation, the rise in energy prices and the additional costs linked to Ariane 6 delays. “As it is not possible to pass on the entirety of inflation on commercial customers, States are once again called to the rescue,” summarizes Toni Tolker-Nielsen of the ESA. The fact remains that the 13 states do not want to sign a blank check. In particular France and Germany, the two biggest contributors to the Ariane 6 program, from which their industry captures the largest benefits. “Industrialists from these two countries share 50% and 20% respectively of the added value of Ariane 6,” specifies the ESA. “There will be no new subsidy without compensation. It will be give and take,” we summarize.

ESA requires an effort to reduce industrial costs. According to our information, ArianeGroup has accepted “a double-digit reduction in its costs.” Negotiations are proving more difficult with the 600 European subcontractors. They are protected by the Geographic Return (GEO) rule, which states that each State contributing to a program receives a workload aligned with its financial commitment. This benefits its manufacturers, without ArianeGroup being able to choose them or negotiate prices. “Certain price increases made by suppliers are not justified. They must make an effort adapted to their size,” emphasizes Toni Tolker-Nielsen.

Also read|Francis Rocard: “The objective of landing men on the Moon in 2025 with Starship seems unrealistic”

The ESA also requires new governance which gives it the right to review and audit Ariane 6. This is to ensure that all manufacturers respect a fair price policy. And that Ariane 6 is not sold off on the commercial market, to the detriment of institutional customers. The ESA, the European Commission, Eumetsat, which operates the weather satellites, and the States have already agreed to pay more than commercial satellite operators. The Europeans have adopted the same logic as NASA and the Pentagon, who often buy their launches twice as much, so that SpaceX is ultra-competitive on the commercial market. It is therefore via a massive and overpaid public order that SpaceX is in reality also subsidized. The American institutional market is in fact five times larger than the European one.

Price and competition

But, on the Old Continent, “the institutional prices defined in 2021, which have not increased since with significant inflation, cover the launch costs, no more”, specifies Toni Tolker-Nielsen, of the ESA. However, if the price charged to institutional clients increases further, they will be tempted to turn to American, Indian or Japanese rockets. In the absence of an equivalent to the Buy American Act, a federal law that came into force in… 1933, European countries are not obliged to buy Ariane 6, which they nevertheless finance! A grotesque situation. Berlin has never been without it: in April 2021, an observation satellite was entrusted to SpaceX, to the detriment of Ariane 5.

The German Spectrum mini-launcher. Isar Aerospace

The ESA hopes to reach an agreement on the operation of Ariane 6 (subsidy, cost reduction, new governance) by next Monday. This new psychodrama around Ariane 6 makes it more necessary than ever to overhaul the space transport strategy. Germany, which dreams of taking leadership from France in heavy launchers, sees this as an opportunity to obtain the introduction of intra-European competition on this market. Which, in the eyes of several specialists, would create emulation beneficial to innovation.

France is not afraid of competition, it draws on decades of expertise in a complex and risky industry

Close to ArianeGroup

In mid-2021, Berlin has already obtained a competitive bid from Paris in the mini and microlauncher segment. ArianeGroup immediately reacted by creating a new entity, MaiaSpace, in start-up mode, with the mission of developing a mini-launcher, ready to fly in 2025. And starting point for a new family of rockets. “France is not afraid of competition, it draws on decades of expertise in a complex and risky industry. But it requires its corollary: total freedom for the industry, which was not the case for Ariane 6, whose difficulties can be explained by maintaining the geographical return,” explains a person close to ArianeGroup.

Also read|“Europe’s spatial disconnection”

Across the Rhine, where it is repeated that the historic manufacturer has not kept its cost and deadline commitments, Berlin is counting on Isar Aerospace or RFA to take the lead. The German outsiders are developing mini-rockets which are expected to give rise to a range of increasingly powerful launchers.

The Italian rocket Vega E. Jacky Huart

In its fight, Germany is joined by Italy. Avio, the manufacturer of Vega, has, on good authority, received the creation of MaiaSpace very poorly. “A decision taken against Italy, aiming to do without Vega rockets,” according to a person close to the Italian group. The latter is developing Vega E, a version 20% more powerful than VegaC, which is due to make its first flight in 2026. It will be a direct competitor to one of the two versions of Ariane 6. This encourages Rome to regain its independence commercial. So no longer go through Arianespace, which markets European rockets, revealed La Tribune at the end of October. In order to calm things down and get Avio on board in preparing for the future, he was asked to become a shareholder in MaiaSpace. Proposal declined at this stage.

Ariane 6 delays and difficulties

For its part, the ESA has decided to rethink its role. The delays and difficulties of Ariane 6 “show that the next launchers will have to be developed in a radically different framework from the one we know today,” predicted, in the spring, Philippe Baptiste, president of Cnes.

Should rockets be taken out of the ESA framework? The idea is promoted by certain manufacturers. From a very good source, launchers should be considered as objects of sovereignty, treated at community level by the European Commission, and not by the ESA. Brussels has already equipped the Union with strategic infrastructure with Galileo (navigation and positioning) in order to free itself from American GPS, Copernicus, the world number one in Earth observation, and the future Iris2 constellation. However, there is no consensus on this path. Or should the ESA be transformed into a real EU agency, modeled on NASA, which buys rockets and manned capsules without getting involved in their design?

Also read|The European space elite joins forces to put the Iris 2 constellation into orbit

On the verge of implosion, Europe's launchers must urgently put everything back together. And create new effective governance and put an end to the GEO return rule, which undermines the competitiveness and speed of execution of the industry, without taking into account real skills. The system is running out of steam. The shock wave caused by SpaceX's successes highlighted this.

In Seville, the Europeans must succeed in going beyond their divisions. Otherwise, they risk fratricidal wars. To the greatest benefit of SpaceX… whose ultra-domination (68 successful launches at the end of October, out of 100 planned for 2023) worries customers, eager to have the choice.

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Original article in French:

L'Europe des fusées spatiales au bord de l'implosion
Par Véronique Guillermard
https://archive.ph/XldxI

Usually, to make some great advance in a technical field you need the great experts in the field to make the key insights. Quite ironic is that in order to solve the crisis in the European launch industry all it requires is someone, anyone to simply  ask some pointed questions.

EU Space Week is this week:  https://www.euspaceweek.eu/

Every European space journalist will be reporting on it if not being there in person. Will any journalist or anyone in the audience ask the questions of the ESA:

“Does a single P120 solid rocket used for the Ariane 6 SRB’s and the Vega-C first stage really cost €20 million?” “So that the two SRB’s on the Ariane 62 cost €40 million, and the four on the Ariane 64 cost €80 million?” “So that out of the €115 million ($125 million) recommended price of the Ariane 64, €80 million is just for the 4 solid side boosters?”

For if the answers to those questions is yes, then it becomes clear why the current version of the Ariane 6 is not price competitive to the SpaceX Falcon 9. And it also becomes clear how to get an Ariane 6 version that matches the Falcon 9 both in payload and price:

Towards return of Europe to dominance of the launch market.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/ … nance.html

  Bob Clark

Does the report give an estimated mission cost?

   Robert Clark

Oops—It looks like the Ariane 6 rocket may not offer Europe any launch savings
Europe is subsidizing the launch of Internet satellites for Jeff Bezos.
ERIC BERGER - 10/12/2023, 11:26 AM
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/o … h-savings/

The recent news is ArianeSpace will be asking for a €350 million($380 million) a year subsidy to keep the Ariane 6 launches going. Berger notes in this article that at a launch cadence of 5 launches per year this is a subsidy of $75 million per launch. This means European tax payers will be paying over a billion dollars for the 18 launches on the Ariane 6 of the commercial venture the Kuiper satellite system of Jeff Bezos. Effectively, European tax payers will be paying a 1 billion dollar subsidy to Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world.

European tax payers have the right to ask where the great expense of the Ariane 6 launcher is deriving from.

No one in European space community is willing to ask or answer the question, “How much just to add a second Vulcain to the Ariane 5/6 core?”

Then can someone, anyone in the European space community at least ask the question, “Does a single P120 solid rocket used for the Ariane 6 SRB’s and the Vega-C first stage really cost €20 million?”
“So that the two SRB’s on the Ariane 62 cost €40 million, and the four on the Ariane 64 cost €80 million?”

  Robert Clark

ArianeSpace Vega solid rocket launcher is also having trouble competing with SpaceX:

The Accidental Monopoly
How SpaceX became (just about) the only game in town
Jeff Foust
October 13, 2023
SpaceX came with these Transporter missions, which have been really disrupting,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. They have been a boon for smallsat developers, he acknowledged, offering low-cost access to space. “But at the same time, they have created a big problem in terms of the business case for all of the other players.”
He accused SpaceX of, in effect, predatory pricing, willing to lose money on Transporter missions to drive out competition. He noted that past Vega smallsat rideshare missions sold payloads at $25,000 per kilogram, whereas SpaceX has sold Transporter launches for one-fifth that price. “It’s crazy.”
https://spacenews.com/the-accidental-monopoly/

This has been warned about for several years now:

Europe is starting to freak out about the launch dominance of SpaceX
The Falcon 9 has come to dominate commercial satellite launches.
ERIC BERGER - 3/22/2021, 11:24 AM
However, there now appears to be increasing concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets will not be competitive in the launch market of the near future. This is important, because while member states of the European Space Agency pay for development of the rockets, after reaching operational status, these launch programs are expected to become self-sufficient by attracting commercial satellite launches to help pay the bills.
Economic ministers in France and Italy have now concluded that the launch market has changed dramatically since 2014, when the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets were first designed. According to a report in Le Figaro newspaper, the ministers believe the ability of these new European rockets to compete for commercial launch contracts has significantly deteriorated since then.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03 … of-spacex/

The leadership of the Vega team can not acknowledge the same issue as the Ariane 6 team, large solid rockets are not price competitive. Like with the Ariane 6, to be price competitive the solid rocket launcher Vega needs to be replaced by an all-liquid rocket:

Saturday, November 29, 2014
A half-size Ariane for manned spaceflight.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2014/ … anned.html

  Robert Clark

The Starship HLS lander is overly large. It’s literally a hundred times larger than it needs to be for a lunar lander, assuming the Starship fully-fueled at 1,200 tons propellant and a 120 ton dry mass so 1,300 tons gross mass. But an Apollo style lander could be done at ca. 13 tons gross mass:

Thursday, November 10, 2022
A low cost, lightweight lunar lander.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2022/ … ander.html

The argument is made that it could carry more cargo to the Moon. But remember by their plan each launch must be accompanied by a SLS launch. But the SLS is far too expensive to use for cargo launches, at ca. $2 billion per launch. For cargo instead use commercial launches. For instance the Falcon Heavy could get ca. 15 tons to the lunar surface one way by using cryogenic in-space/lander stages.

  Bob Clark

By the commercial space approach it could be done at a cost in the range of 1/100th the ca. $10 billion estimate of NASA. Firstly, SpaceX and now multiple other launch start-ups like Rocket Lab have shown rockets and spacecraft can be developed by private financing at costs a tenth of that of the usual government financing approach. Secondly, use currently existing stages rather than developing entire new stages from scratch as NASA plans.

In point of fact, by following the commercial approach such a mission could be carried out at a profit:

Low cost commercial Mars Sample Return.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/ … eturn.html

The Ansari XPRIZE offered $10 million for passenger suborbital space flight. The prize was won by Spaceshipone. Peter Diamandis progenitor of the prize suggests this method of incentivizing prizes may be a general method accomplish some key goal at low cost.

NASA could offer say, $200 million for a team that accomplishes Mars Sample Return by the commercial space approach, i.e., being fully privately funded. If nobody accomplishes it, then NASA loses nothing. But if someone does it will be a major accomplishment.

  Robert Clark

News for a NASA led Mars Sample Return mission is becoming worse, primarily because of its estimated $10 billion cost. Actually done by commercial space probably can be done two orders of magnitude cheaper.

At such low cost in fact NASA should offer an incentive prize akin to the X-prize to suborbital space won by SpaceShip one. Say $200 million to the team to do it.

  Robert Clark

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023
Editors' notes
India's moon rover completes its walk, scientists analyzing data looking for signs of frozen water.
by Ashok Sharma
The data is back on Earth and will be analyzed by Indian scientists as a first look and then by the global community, he said.
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-india-moo … rozen.html

The 14-day primary mission of Chandrayaan-3 has been completed, but the water and heavy metal data have not been released to the public. My speculations above may have some validity.

  Robert Clark

Chandrayaan-3 already returning exciting, unexpected data:

ISRO Spaceflight @ISROSpaceflight
Yesterday, ISRO revealed the first ever sub-surface temperature readings from the Moon's South Polar region!

They used the ChaSTE instrument on the Vikram Lander to drill a probe into the Lunar surface and take temp. readings at various depths.?

Results show that while the temp. at the surface is ~50°C ?, it quickly goes down to -10°C ❄️ only 8 cm below the surface!

This observation increases the hopes of finding water ice below the surface near the Moon's South Pole! ?

Image credit:
@VikranthJonna

#Chandrayaan3 #ISRO

https://twitter.com/isrospaceflight/sta … 49021?s=61

  Bob Clark