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by JumpCrisscross 702 days ago
> Arianne 6 is not about competition, but about strategic independence at the first place

That’s what the Starliner folks said. The fault in their argument was ignoring scale effects.

Ariane 6 buys Europe zero practical launch independence, other than maintaining the workforce (and accompanying skill set). If SpaceX blocks Europe, it’s game over for any constellation operator and, in all likelihood, the European commercial space sector.

Ariane 6 hopes to do 10 launches per year by 2030. That’s a few weeks’ Falcon 9s today. Each Ariane 6 launch requires subsidies to be competitive, and that’s assuming Arianespace’s forecasts hold. (They haven’t.) Every one of those euros could be used, instead, on R&D.

Ariane 6 uses cryogenic fuel. It has no landing system, mass-manufacturing site or refurbishment elements. That means that none of the foundational technologies for reusable launch are being worked on. (Ariane 5E would have been a strategic hedge. But Paris wouldn’t have it.)
2 comments
TheLoafOfBread 702 days ago
It is completely irrelevant how much Falcon 9 cost if political leadership of USA is unreliable and unstable. Flacon 9 could be flying for free, but if you could lose access to it any time, it is like it does not exist.
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JumpCrisscross 701 days ago
> Flacon 9 could be flying for free, but if you could lose access to it any time, it is like it does not exist

The point is Ariane 6 enables nothing new. If SpaceX blocks Europe for some reason, with or without Ariane 6, Europe isn't going to have a LEO constellation. Keeping Ariane 5 (5ME [1]) and developing a reusable platform would have been a smarter use of resources. (It aso wasn't particularly daring, either, over the last decade.) Instead, the ESA gets stuck with SLS but for Brussels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5#Ariane_5_ME

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pfdietz 701 days ago
> Ariane 6 uses cryogenic fuel.

Falcon 9's fuel is cooled slightly, if not cryogenic (RP-1 becomes denser when cold), and of course Starship uses cryogenic methane. And they both use liquid oxygen, although that's an oxidizer, not a fuel.

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