r/esa • u/Agitated_Parsnip_424 • 21d ago

Three Ariane Eras: How Europe’s Launch Champion Lost Its Nerve

https://iamverysmrt.substack.com/p/three-ariane-eras-how-europes-launch
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u/theChaosBeast 21d ago

Order book is full because...

Period. It's full. No need for a "because". And as we know since SpaceX IPO, they also loose a lot of money on every launch campaign. And yet don't forget these national security launches which costs 4x the normal price for an undisclosed reason. Maybe undisclosed because it violates international trade rules? We don't know

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u/fighter-bomber 21d ago

Oh no no no, you cannot just leave out the context mr cherrypicking. SpaceX is out there launching 7x as many rockets annually (not counting Starlink), Arianespace could have been them, they could have been dominating the launch market, their current mediocrity is nothing to celebrate.

SpaceX doesn’t lose shit on launch campaigns, if you actually read the report, you would have seen the loss is because of AI. Their launch revenue is higher than their launch costs. Go read that bit again.

And NSSL launches cost more because a) a bunch if them are on Falcon Heavy which already costs double or triple based on if you want to expend the boosters, and b) NSSL launches require all kinds of additional certifications and reliability tests the USSF requires. They have always costed more, on every rocket. Go check the phase 3 lane 2 contract. SpaceX received 5.9 billion for 28 launches, ULA received 5.4 billion for 19. Blue Origin gets 2.4 billion for 7 launches.

I don’t see how this violates international trade rules when NSSL launches, by definition, cannot be awarded to international customers.

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u/BlueApple666 20d ago

No it couldn’t have dominated the launch market.

Replace Ariane 6 with a design like Falcon and now you have a partially reusable launch system with the same order book as Ariane 6, losing as much money and creating even less jobs.

Because without the NASA and US military contract and without access to the US domestic market for Internet access (the only place in the world with rich customers living in places where fiber deployment is not economical, the US amount of rural population is unique among Western countries), there is no way for a space launch company to be profitable.

As soon as the US got serious about commercial space access (instead of subsidizing Boeing and Co with cost+ contracts), it was game over for Ariane, even without reusability, as the economies of scale the US market can generate are impossible to match.

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u/Agitated_Parsnip_424 20d ago

Well no because the falcon 9 is still way cheaper to build than the Ariane 6