[bosdev]

> Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much.

It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the cost? How many new types of satellites, technology, human transport will be created?

[grecy]

This mentality is what's holding back the establishment in any field from doing anything radical. The status quo is worth trillions and trillions of dollars, and a lot of people will fight very, very hard to keep it that way, even when it's horribly inefficient, outdated and just plain stupid.

Electric cars? Nope, we've invested too much in ICE R&D and need to pay it back over another 100 years.

Solar? Nope, we promised the private coal plants decades of profits.

Public Healthcare (In the USA)? Nope, waaaaaay too many billions being made on insurance.

etc. etc.

Which is why we need to ignore what the establishment things and just do our own thing whenever possible, or at least support anyone trying to go clean slate.

[1996]

And this is also why the establishment rightfully fears disruption: because they could have done marginal improvements for a long time: they chose not to for valid strategic reasons. But then there is a competitor which leapfrogs all that and who threatens to just wipe them out!

Once it happens, as usual, the establishment begs/lobbies for political protection (think about jobs!) which will often be granted. But political favors can just at best slow their demise.

Reusable spacex rockets will be to the EU spatial industry what uber was to its taxis: turning them immediately irrelevant, and unsavageable as an industry.

A better example might be the high administrative costs of the US healthcare system. Obamacare couldn't cut all these jobs during a downturn, so they were preserved. But even now, for a lot of people it makes more sense to opt out of that craziness and just get healthcare abroad. This sector is ripe for disruption. Maybe not now, but in 10 years even more so.

[ahartmetz]

The taxi thing totally did not happen in most European countries. Taxis are just fine here (specifically: in Germany), and the labor regulations, too, so Uber can kindly take a hike.

[1996]

Political connections make miracles happen!

[ahartmetz]

Not sure what you are talking about.

[1996]

I mean that surely, the existence and political power of taxi unions are orthogonal to the decision by various government to protect the taxis!

The governments have just acted in the interest of the public, as usual.

[marsokod]

To me this is a major reason why the reusable launchers were not developed in Europe. The concept was being studied but never gained traction.

One of the reason might have been vanity but if you look at it with the view point of a CEO from a European firm, reusability was a risky gamble:

1) In order to keep your manufacturing quality, one needs to produce a new rocket every two or three months. Beyond that, the people manufacturing it losses knowledge and unless quality assurance is increased a lot, you will losses quality.

2) EU was doing around 12 launches a year, and that was by being very cheap. You could plan on increasing the market share but that starts being difficult as a lot of what remains cannot use a European launcher for political reasons.

3) For the sake of the argument, let say cheaper price double the market share, that leaves 24 launches a year. Based on a manufacturing of 6 launchers a year, this leaves 4 launches per rocket. And that is with very optimistic numbers (doubling of marketshare, no issue with reusability).

4) If you look at the numbers from SpaceX, 4 launches per rocket is where the reusability starts making sense. But ideally, you want more. 5) The Airbus people have shareholders to account to, not a CEO who does not care risking going banqueroute while pursuing a dream to go on Mars.

So yeah, doable but much more difficult than in a market with better access to investment and to huge cash cows named NASA and DoD

[jlmorton]

Alain Charmeau spelled this out explicitly to Der Spiegel:

> Charmeau said the Ariane rocket does not launch often enough to justify the investment into reusability. (It would need about 30 launches a year to justify these costs, he said). And then Charmeau said something telling about why reusability doesn't make sense to a government-backed rocket company—jobs.

> "Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year," he said. "That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'"

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/alain-charmeau-di...

[1996]

What will make even more sense is when he says to his teams: "Farewell, it was really nice working with you all, too bad the foreign competition slashed prices and bankrupted us"

[WJW]

The solution is therefore pretty simple: taxes will subsidize "industries of national interest". It is for the same reason as the US would never buy Swedish fighter jets, Israeli ICBMs or German submarines. This has been true since the beginning of the nation state.

[1996]

Great idea - note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets, the low quality of Israeli ICBM, and the rarity of German submarines.

A government can subsidize with taxes an industry as much as it wants, and force its products down its citizens throat as much as it can: it will not be able to create quality, which is essential to get a large market demand.

Unless the industry is very hard to replicate for whatever reason like large capital requirements given the available technology (ex: a computer in the 1940s, sending a human to the moon in the 1960s) this create a market opportunity.

Natural market forces such as competition ensure the end result.

EDIT: My bad, I forgot about the Swedish Gripen. It exists, which is no small feat by itself! It is just low quality and rare.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

"Gripen has achieved moderate success in sales to nations in Central Europe, South Africa and Southeast Asia; bribery has been suspected in some of these procurements, but authorities closed the investigation in 2009"

Thanks to bribery, this wonderful piece of technology could be sold to major world powers like South Africa and Hungary.

[WJW]

It is a great idea indeed, but note:

- The Gripen fighter jets (designed and built in Sweden) listing no less than 17 (!) current and confirmed future customers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operational.... The list of nations considering buying those jets is even longer.

- You are either incredibly well informed or not informed at all about the quality of Israeli ICBMs, but since they are ordering submarines capable of launching ICBMs and are capable of launching satellites into orbit, the general state of Israeli ballistic capability is definitely high enough to deliver warheads anywhere on the planet.

- Allegedly, the latest generation of German submarines is good enough to penetrate the defenses of a US navy carrier group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine#Operations). They are in service with both the German and Italian navies with four more ordered by the Norwegians.

Quality helps with generating demand but it is not enough, especially when selling to governments. If you don't believe this, please consider if SpaceX had still gotten the NSA launch contracts if SpaceX had been a Chinese or Russian company.

[mnl]

Actually Saab has been producing fine Swedish jet fighters for 60 years. Ever heard of the JAS 39 Gripen?

[marsokod]

The Gripen is not Swedish?

Competition works when the market is open. But the space market is far from being open. Even building a satellite without including an ITAR or EAR part was politically impossible a few years ago for an EU company.

[dragonwriter]

> note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets

Er, what?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

[rbanffy]

> the low quality of Israeli ICBM,

They really don't need to threaten anyone who lives far from them.

> and the rarity of German submarines.

Which makes a lot of sense given the mission of the German Navy (which is mostly protecting a relatively small coast from almost non-existent enemies).

[rbanffy]

There are a number of reasons why Europe would prefer a more expensive European launcher over a cheap American one. More or less the same reasons the US military has preferred pre-SpaceX American expendable launchers to superior and cheaper European ones for a lot of missions.

[marsokod]

Yes, Europe wants their own launchers anyway as the access to US launches is still a hazardous endeavour for critical payloads. And the recent moves of the US international politics are not going in the right direction.

As long as there is no reciprocity in the full access to the markets, we will live a semi-closed gardens. If the markets open, it won't take long for the European companies to develop a reusable launcher capability. The technology and the knowledge exists already, but there is no political or financial incentive to do that right now.

[golem14]

But the premise that there will only be 10 launches per year is (hopefully) false.

If launches get much cheaper, there are many reasons to launch more stuff. To orbit, to the moon, to Mars, ...

[logfromblammo]

Right. You build the rocket for the 10 guaranteed launches, then you move right on to building the next rocket, because you'll need another in case you lose the first. Then you build another after that, and that one can put up some payloads that were not-so-guaranteed. Then you build another after that, and by then, some of the labor that used to go completely into construction is now reconditioning and inspecting the reusable hardware instead. Eventually, your construction crews are building at the replacement rate for whatever sized fleet of reusable rockets you need to put up the payloads you can cram into your launch pipeline.

As it is, that pipeline is fixed at 10 launches per year. If the pipeline were fatter, they could fit more launches into it. If they can do more launches, they can court more customers.

If cost to orbit is cheap enough, you can do things like launch a big, dumb tank of water, xenon, hydrazine, liquid fuel, food supplies, oxygen candles, or anything else useful only in quantity, and requiring no life support. With those up there, you can do rendezvous-and-go missions, and it costs less money to get to wherever you're going. If you can do more launches, you can spread more missions out across multiple launches.

[rbanffy]

Consider you'd need to invest not only in manufacturing the rockets, but also on shipping them to launch sites, increasing launch site capacities to deal with extra launches, adding extra capacity for fueling the extra rockets, to prepare and mate the payloads (that'll need to be built by someone, somewhere)... Nothing there is really cheap.

In the end, the rocket is not really the most expensive part. It's just the part that, until recently, was expensive and thrown away after a single use.

[marsokod]

Hopefully false, and you need to increase that number to at least 20, more likely 30 to pay for the investment. That is very the problem lies - the risk.

Looking at the spaceflight calendar for the rest of the year, there are 6 flights where Ariane 5 could used, if you exclude all the national missions from non-EU countries. Let's round that to 10 as this does not cover all the remaining launches. So we are at a possible market of ~20 launches a year, with the current cheap prices of SpaceX. In order to justify reusability, Arianespace/Airbus would need to plan on having a 90/100% marketshare of the very competitive market, while their US competitors could benefit from quite lucrative military missions.

[HeadsUpHigh]

>If you look at the numbers from SpaceX, 4 launches per rocket is where the reusability starts making sense.

Shotwell mentioned that SpaceX actually saved money even on their first reused booster which was broken down and inspected to pieces. So I think your number doesn't stand. The Falcon 9 has a unique cost structure compared to other rockets, completely aimed towards making reusability work out as quickly as possible.

[Tuna-Fish]

This is not just about having makework jobs. In order for the engines to be both cheap an reliable, there needs to be continuous line production. An engine put together by workers who build rocket engines for their living is better than one built by people who make rocket engines 1 month of a year, and for the line to work properly there are limits on how slowly things can be built. This means that if your engine demand goes too low, the quality suffers or price skyrockets.

The financial basis of SpaceX reusability is conditioned on having access to a lot of launches, and increasing the market even further by making launches cheaper. If SpaceX ended up only doing 12 launches a year each year from now on, they would lose money from reusability instead of saving it, because they would have pay ~as much to maintain the Merlin line as they do today, and that is probably most of the cost of making rockets. In order for them to make bank, they need to be able to maintain the line, and grow launches to consume all of it. (Hence, StarLink.)

Alternatively, they can produce all the first stages they ever intend to make, a good enough stockpile of Merlins for the second stages, and then shut down the line and get paid for launches without the expense of making rockets. This is what I suspect they'll do, except that at that point they will not shut down the line but will change it to make Raptors instead. Both for Raptor engined upper stages on Falcon 9:s, and eventually BFR.

In any case, Arianespace probably doesn't believe they can raise the launch count enough for reusability to be useful.

[robszumski]

This also exposes the shrewdness in using a rocket with 9 or 27 of your engines, instead of 2 or 3, which allows you to keep a continuous pace with a smaller sized production line vs having to stand it up and down.

This is all aside from the reliability/engine out gains.

[marsokod]

Yup, a mistake done in the 80s with Ariane 5 architecture, that we are still paying. Smaller scale means slower changes and this is being partially addressed with Ariane 6 and Vega C.

Similar issue with the use of solid propulsion, mainly used to also keep it in line with military needs.

[infogulch]

This is like bemoaning plastic factory worker jobs because we've become too good at reusing cups/bags/packaging/whatever and don't need to produce as much plastic anymore. Man that would be a nice problem to have. Mind-bending levels of justification here.

[magduf]

Of all the places in the world, Europe is probably the most ripe for implementing a UBI, which would solve a lot of these problems.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

A basic, subsistence income solves the problem of losing a high-paying job that allows for a comfortable lifestyle?

[magduf]

Well the alternative is propping up the high-paying jobs using subsidies and shutting out competition, which isn't exactly a winning long-term strategy. The high-paying jobs aren't going to stick around unless you force them to with some kind of jobs program which is just taxing everyone else so that this small, select group of people can benefit; why shouldn't everyone get a cushy do-nothing job at taxpayer expense? Clearly, that isn't sustainable or fair.

The UBI lets everyone in society have a safety net so they can go looking for another high-paying job, or get an education in another field to get a new high-paying job.

[Retric]

People get rich from government contracts. That's what drives a lot of this stuff not just jobs for voters.

[Pica_soO]

That and the wish for a stable society- not some aristocratic mess reminding of the late Roman empire, so ready for a final civil war as show down, that its rulers rather collapse the whole problem outwards.

[rbanffy]

First-mover advantage is usually overrated. SpaceX is incurring in huge risks to prove a market hypothesis. When it's proven, other companies will follow. Blue Origin is right behind them.

SpaceX is following a series of failed initiatives - the Shuttle, SSTOs like the DC-X and Venturestar - and trying lots of seemingly crazy things in the process. Let's not get carried away by survivorship bias.

[JumpCrisscross]

> How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the cost?

The old jobs were under your directive. The new jobs are not.

[narrator]

How many jobs would be created by having only 2% of the population in agriculture instead of >50% in the 19th century?

[PeterisP]

More to the point, what would the engine and booster factories do if they had 12 months off each year because all the payloads would fly on cheaper reusable rockets? If the jobs are doing something inefficient, they're going away anyway.

[colordrops]

Cheaper flights would open up new markets which would increase demand. They didn't build a few passenger jets and call it a day, and the same would be true of cheap access to space.

[kilroy123]

In the long run most likely, but in the short term that might not be the case.

[MR4D]

Quoting Charmeau from the article,

  "I think we are in different worlds,” he said. “In the US, they think and they speak like this. Our mission is different. Our culture is different.”

Yes. Yes we do.

As a fun analogy, I'd love to think what would have happened if AT&T had kept their operators and not put in electronic switches.

Commerce would still be back in the 1950's, and everyone would work for AT&T. We'd be making nowhere near as many calls, and business would operate much slower than today, meaning innovation & collaboration would be much slower than today.

But that's the choice