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SpaceX snags launch contract from Arianespace after Vega rocket fails twice
In a rare victory for international launch competition, SpaceX has snagged a contract to launch an Italian Earth observation satellite from European launch monopoly and political heavyweight Arianespace.
After spending the better part of a decade with its head in the sand as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket rapidly came to dominate the global launch market, Arianespace has become increasingly reliant on its ability to entice politicians into forcing European Union member states to launch any and all domestic satellites and spacecraft on its Ariane 5, Ariane 6, and Vega rockets. Save for a few halting, lethargic technology development programs that have yet to bear any actionable fruit, the company – heavily subsidized by European governments – has almost completely failed to approach head-on the threat posed by SpaceX by prioritizing the development of rockets that can actually compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy on cost and performance.
[...] A recent development offers the best look yet at what many European space agencies likely suffer through as a consequence of their governments signing away access to an increasingly competitive launch industry – often seemingly in return for Arianespace selecting contractors or (re)locating development hubs or factories in certain countries. Notably, sometime in September 2021, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) confirmed signs that it was moving the launch of its COSMO SkyMed CSG-2 Earth observation satellite from a new Arianespace rocket to SpaceX's Falcon 9.
[...] SkyMed CSG-1 debuted on an Arianespace Soyuz rocket in December 2019, while CSG-2 was originally scheduled to launch sometime in 2021 on one of the first Arianespace Vega-C rockets. However, in July 2019 and November 2020, the Vega rocket Vega-C is based on suffered two launch failures separated by just a single success. Aside from raising major questions about Arianespace's quality assurance, those near-back-to-back failures also delayed Vega's launch manifest by three years. Combined with a plodding launch cadence and jam-packed manifest for Arianespace's other non-Vega rockets, that meant that Italy would have likely had to wait 1-2 years to launch SkyMed CSG-2 on a European rocket.
Previously:
Upper Stage Issue Causes Arianespace Launch Failure, Costing 2 Satellites
Europe Starting to Freak Out About Dominance of SpaceX
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:06AM
You're confusing pricing and cost.
The starlink missions will eventually be free? Does that mean SpaceX launches are free? It does using your broken logic.
> Now about subsidies and pork, I don't know what you're talking about.
Clearly. Go watch some Thunderf00t videos. Start with:
4TxkE_oYrjU SpaceX: BUSTED!! (Part 1)
The relevant porky bit start at 555s and 1400s. Gotta just love that overcharging Space Force by a factor of 6. No pork there at all, no, no, no, definitely not.
> I know that some SpaceX launches cost more because of complexity and other services required for the payload. That doesn't seem like a subsidy to me.
Addressed in the above vid at the above timestamps. Complexity: the Space Shuttle was (not just a known money sink, but also) human rated. Space X's launches in their $1.6B contract were not. That $1.6B was pure pork. $316M for one launch - more pure pork. One customer with an effectively infinite budget covering the development costs so that other customers don't have to. Call it charity, call it a subsidy, call it pork, call it creaming the taxpayer, call it what you like, it's a distortion of the price that has future distortions of the price as repurcussions. And you're only seeing those distortions.
Or worse.
You might have listened to the projected price promises from Musk which are basically bullshit. Skip to 750s in that vid. Musk's claims about eventual "7 times cheaper", "10 times cheaper", "20 times cheaper", or even "100 times cheaper" space launches from his re-usable rockets are absolutely unsupportable extrapolations compared with horrific money sinks in a non-competitive market, and completely overlooks things like maintenance. And whaddya make of the price increases, as shown at 865s?
You've been sniffing the Musky KoolAid. You're not alone, but that doesn't diminish how out of whack your perspectives are compared with reality.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves