> But how many more decades until ESA finally has a launch vehicle stack with a fully reusable first stage? It’s like theyre still living in the 70s.
Note that NASA also doesn't have one: It only has SpaceX'.
Europe has a fair number of private rocket startups, e.g. Isar, Orbex, RFA ... some have seen government investments. We'll see if/when ESA becomes one of their customers.
> Note that NASA also doesn't have one: It only has SpaceX'.
Another way of saying this is that SpaceX is a contractor; which means that both NASA and the ESA 'own' the same # of reusable rockets (zero), and have the ability to purchase the same number of reusable rockets from the industry (one, from spaceX).
China already ditched their plans for expendable super heavy lift and doubled down on copying Starship after the success of Falcon Heavy. At least long term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_9
I guess there’s still a lot of legacy gov backed ones with full sunk cost dynamics in the short term. Although I admittedly don’t have much knowledge of the business side.
Nobody except SpaceX has developed reusable rocket stages, including other US-based aerospace companies. And it is very unclear how much SpaceX really saves in launch costs.
SpaceX has already reused some Falcons 16 times. They're aiming for 20 and Elon, being Elon, thinks they can do 100x. At this point, the biggest expense will be fuel.
How much cost is there to get a reused stage ready for the next flight? E.g. where does it land on the scale from "replace 30% of the parts due to wear and tear, and do a full disassembly reassembly, saving only 5% of the cost of the booster" to "full up the gas tank like a car and yolo the next ride"?
All I know if is the one tweet from musk years ago that said 90% savings. But ... musk tweets a lot of bullshit so idk
SpaceX has a median turnaround time between landing and re-launch of about 8 weeks, with some as low as 3 weeks. That includes time for returning the landing platform to port, unloading, payload integration of the new payload, etc, so refurbishment is some fraction of that.
There's no way they're stripping the whole thing down and replacing 30% of parts in that short of a timeframe. Especially given they do it in Florida, and don't bring them back to the factory. So it's hard to say for sure, but the time can give us some sense of what they must be doing.
Right, those were two extreme ends of a spectrum I presented, both of which are obviously not true. What I don't know is where on the spectrum their savings are.
It’s hard to compare because the rocket is designed to be reusable, but as someone that is both a fan of launch of vehicles and in/adjacent to the industry: 30-85%, and I’d bet it’s the high end. Falcon 9 is a really, really big deal in launch capability and affordability.
If you're only saving 5% you just let it burn up on the way down since you lose the much in landing fuel weight and legs. While Musks numbers are likely over optimistic the saving are large enough that it's worth the weight.
For all we know, SpaceX could be taking a page of out Amazon's book and undercutting competitors while losing money and sustaining it long enough to monopolize the market. Then they raise prices.
Almost all of spaceXs launches are to launch their own sats. Simply put if their costs were as high as other providers they couldn't afford to do it. Other providers costs are out of control.
I suppose the biggest expense is going to be not fuel (methane and LOX are cheap commodities), but the time of the spaceport, of all the people doing the integration and testing of the stack, which takes weeks if not months with trickier payloads.
Arianespace cannot afford to experiment like SpaceX can, hence they take their time to make sure the first launch will be a customer launch that has a high likelihood of being successful.
ESA has made some amazing contributions to probe and robotic missions. I really wish Europeans weren't always so cynical about the agency; some positive attention might do a lot to light the fire, too.
Thats a good point and it would be nice if humanity could divide and conquer responsibilitys in a more effective way. I mean It would be nice if Europe would specialize in deep space vehicles if this is what their best at.
They could allow SpaceX and the Chinese to compete for the Earth/Mars ship & cycler market, while Europe could step one step further distant. and become the king of ultra-long-haul journeys such as between Jupiter’s moons, the asteroids, etc.
Eventually this could culminate in Europe leading the creation of modern, state of the art new vehicles to run the Grand Tour and go so fast they outrace the Voyagers.
..Somewhere in these paragraphs I totaly forgot to make a good pun about ruling Europa
> I really wish Europeans weren't always so cynical about the agency
It's hard to be anything else but that given the colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects. So much inefficiency and waste just because we can't get our shit together.
We try to be a second USA, but we lack the willpower to do so - we have no clear, democratically backed European leadership (just look into how von der Leyen got into office!), the leadership that we do have is 90% incompetent duds that were shifted off to Brussels because their host countries wanted to get rid of them, the parliament can't even submit own proposals for laws, and the EU barely has any federal tax income so its budget is almost exclusively member state contributions and debt. On top of that, many countries choose to propose highly unpopular laws in Brussels, get them passed there, and blame "the EU" when local voters get enraged.
> colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects
This is simply fiction.
EU is mules better than USA at building infrastructure, cost per mile is 4 to 9 times lower for bridges / roads / tonnels than USA/UK. The financial times has a report on it.
The EU is / has built like 5 record holding tonnels in the past five years, the base tonnel in the alps, the underwater tonnel in scandinavia, etc.
Each of those projects is in the same sort of scale as the much beleaguered Californian rail, or HighSpeed 2 in UK, and is completed 4 times faster and cheaper per mile, with less political in-fighting and sabotage.
I would argue that civil infrastructure is actually one of the most important things for an average joe
> It's hard to be anything else but that given the colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects. So much inefficiency and waste just because we can't get our shit together.
I'm seriously wondering what kind of brainwashing are you reading to think that - and why are you ignorring all the "colossal" successes many of the projects also are.
Well when you want to look at the absolute maximum waste of resources just look at SLS. It's just government space that's inefficient. This is not limited to Europe.
And I personally don't want us to be a second USA. I don't want that high level of crime and social inequality, low level of social welfare etc. Extreme prices of medical care in the US. Ubiquitous firearms. Here we do care about the climate, about privacy, work-life balance (holidays) and so many other things the US doesn't care about. The US measures everything in money. We don't. Quality of life is not about who produces the most billionaires.
The EU is not a great institution I have to admit but I wouldn't trade it for the US. Here I just go to the doctor when I'm sick and I don't have to even whip out my wallet.
Von der Leyen is not the sharpest tool but EU presidents are chosen to be the least offensive to everyone's national interests, not to be some strongman leader. I'd much rather have her in that position than someone like Trump. We don't have a political system trying to tear itself apart.
We're doing just great and launch capability is a tiny rounding error in the equation of what being in the EU means to citizens. It's like Africa laughing at us because we're so inefficient at producing bananas. Sure if you ignore literally everything else it looks like they're better.
Note that NASA also doesn't have one: It only has SpaceX'.
Europe has a fair number of private rocket startups, e.g. Isar, Orbex, RFA ... some have seen government investments. We'll see if/when ESA becomes one of their customers.