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Previously, the EU-propped Ariane Group's CEO scoffed at the idea of pursuing reusable rockets (the upcoming Ariane 6 is fully expendable) due to Europe having a small market of 5-10 launches per year, as well as the potential effects on rocket-building jobs:
[Chief executive of Ariane Group, Alain] 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!'"
This seems a moment of real irony. Whereas earlier in the interview Charmeau accuses the US government of subsidizing SpaceX, a few minutes later he says the Ariane Group can't make a reusable rocket because it would be too efficient. For Europe, a difficult decision now looms. It can either keep subsidizing its own launch business in order to maintain an independent capability, or it can give in to Elon Musk and SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin. Charmeau seems to have a clear view of where he thinks the continent should go.
Now, the attitude has changed:
Europe says SpaceX "dominating" launch, vows to develop Falcon 9-like rocket
This month, the European Commission revealed a new three-year project to develop technologies needed for two proposed reusable launch vehicles. The commission provided €3 million to the German space agency, DLR, and five companies to, in the words of a news release about the project, "tackle the shortcoming of know-how in reusable rockets in Europe."
This new RETALT project's goals are pretty explicit about copying the retro-propulsive engine firing technique used by SpaceX to land its Falcon 9 rocket first stages back on land and on autonomous drone ships. The Falcon 9 rocket's ability to land and fly again is "currently dominating the global market," the European project states. "We are convinced that it is absolutely necessary to investigate Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies to make re-usability state-of-the-art in Europe."
Ariane Group isn't one of the five companies, but then again, €3 million isn't a lot of money.
Even a fully reusable rocket is on the table:
[...] attitude of the new RETALT project appears to have indicated European acceptance of the inevitability of reusable launch vehicles. Engineers will work toward two different concepts. The first will be a Falcon-9-like rocket that will make use of seven modified Vulcain 2 rocket engines and have the capacity to lift up to 30 tons to low-Earth orbit. The second will be a more revolutionary single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that looks like the Roton rocket developed by Rotary Rocket about two decades ago.
They should mine Elon Musk's Twitter for clues. Try making the rocket out of stainless steel.
Previously: Full Thrust on Europe's New Ariane 6 Rocket
SpaceX's Reusable Rockets Could End EU's Arianespace, and Other News
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday June 27 2019, @05:02PM
Or they'll end up like Colt, Lockheed, Apple and Microsoft: Accumulating money and doing nothing innovative with it. Considering Musk's love of tunnel digging, I'd go with my prediction.
It's all government supported. The launch market is 99% satcoms and that's just one local monopoly or the next whichever way you turn the globe. The Europeans will follow the US lead for the same reason they also produce shitty over-engineered weapons and automobiles: They have, and would like to maintain, an excess of high salary STEM workers. The Russians, Indians and Chinese will just shake their heads and go with the AK47 of launch systems to produce some dirt cheap expandable rockets that they'll manufacture on a line manned by technicians and robots. And before you know it SpaceX will enter that too-big-to-fail companies list from before.
Let me make a little prediction of my own: Soon enough, the state-funded NASA pork train will stop at SpaceX's station. They'll hand out a fat contract under the condition Musk is only to buy from a list of local companies. And just like Tesla, SpaceX will jump at the offer making themselves overpriced and irrelevant to foreign customers.
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