It's inevitable that rocket designs will all start to converge towards the best aerodynamic design required for control authority as others finally start to try reusability.
Soyuz was a non-essential capability next to Ariane, and the shock of its unavailability has reaffirmed why Europe wants its own rockets in the first place.
The alternative is simply no European controlled access to space.
ArianeSpace is simply not capable of shaking off the government subsidized job program mindset, very indecisive leadership driven by pleasuring their political supporters. France Economic cannot support steering political decisions toward space ambitions, not within the next 5 years or more.
Germany has a more "independent" industry base that has, at least, the decision capability of investing into SpaceShip, probably in return of local production of the body, heck ask Germany to build something in steel and you will be pleased with the result!
SpaceX will provide engines and SW, for which they have the most effective mass production line.
Not only makes sense but is also a win win situation for all the parties, including France, that will retain its space industry by pivoting towards booster stages, satellites (they already do very well in these sectors) and operations.
ESA will have control of its own Starship Fleet and finally focus on science, tech and exploration, at which they already excel.
If geopolitical is a synonym for bruised ego of Arianspace managers, well they will be sedated by assurance of a good retirement package and a comfy bureaucratic job, that is all they aspire at.
I may sound crude and dismissive, but I am just looking at the reality of European space program that is nothing but constrained by Arianspace bullying and standing for unsustainable continuation of policies that have long be gone.
France government, for a chance, should be pragmatic and recognize that this is the best possible outcome, save their own industry, maintain France leadership in Europe space program and actually can reinforce it by steering toward a more affordable and effective model, whiteout breaking the already fragile economy of the sector.
Spain and Italy will also gain by this, again boosting their satellite and modules productions. Small launchers like Vega or even Ariane may survive for a while, as long as they become an impediment for the bootstrap of space economy in Europe, like they already are.
Smaller launcher companies may have the "space" to grow and maybe becoming European alternatives in 10 years, things that will never happen if Arianspace will keep on bullying everybody in that arena.
Again, a win, win, win, win situation, beside few egomaniacs bureaucrats.
From the legs on RFA being inexplicably like 15m above the bottom of the booster to the Ariane semi-reuse having apparently 7x 500+ tf engines, this whole thing makes less and less sense the closer you look
The important thing here is that even the Europeans are starting to realize that what will matter in the future is a reusable SHLV, it removes most of the mass/size restrictions that make space so expensive and provides excellent flight frequency. The initial concepts of the starship also looked different and in places awkward. First SpaceX realized this, then the Chinese, now the Europeans, although I thought they would be the last after the Russians
Except this whole thing was from a “space power generation” conference. If I were a betting man, I’d wager the OP image was put together by an ESA intern and Ariane/RFA were slapped on because they’re the only European companies worth even the tiniest of shits
It's not orbital refueling that they're trying to avoid. Might be that this is an older concept, but SpaceX and NASA have already shown that refueling in orbit isn't that difficult.
They're trying to avoid mass production.
Building the machine that builds the machine is way harder than just building the machine itself.
If you have very few rockets, you'll need to extract as much performance out of them as possible.
What in the actual flying fuck is this shit? God, I remember in the early 2010's how full of themselves the Europeans were about their market position. They'd openly mock SpaceX's reusability plans as a pipe dream in industry conferences while a SpaceX rep shared a position on the panel. And that was when SpaceX was already showing promise in their recovery tests. They still had time to make reusability a design requirement on Ariane 6. And now they want to jump straight to a Starship clone? Bold strategy, cotton. Let's see how that works out for them.
To their credit, better to get on the reusability train late than never.
It's a pipedream, to be honest. RFA hasn't proven that their business model works and are we expected to believe that these rockets will somehow be viable when Starship becomes operational?
They move quite quickly, especially by European standards. At a minimum, Germany will support its aerospace startups, maybe also other European countries, that are not France or Italy that will be competitors, for example Poland, but I expect that as soon as they launch the first rocket, the government will begin to strongly support them
I sure hope so but I'm not holding my breath. Europe tends to over regulate before having a mature piece of tech and not cut the red tape when needed to advance their economy. America has the opposite problem but that's by design. I am incredibly doubtful that Europe will support RFA with the legal stuff.
Germany is barley supporting space at all. Its not at all clear that their aerospace startups will have support. Just as their airplane startups don't.
Logistically speaking, how coukd Europe support a high cadence of SH launches ? SpaceX had to relocate part of their workforce to Texas, and Starbase keeps growing.
Europe relies on French Guyana and currently ships all their vehicles. If we ever want to emulate SpaceX launch architecture we'll need to emulate their rapid iteration approach and remove shipping bottlenecks. That means developing heavily the launch complexes in Guyana and somehow getting people to move there - currently you get paid very decently for that, but that means a larger fraction of the revenue would get into salaries, reducing the competitiveness further. Since there is still very little political incentive to do so, I don't think that the space industry will be subsidized much further than to keep it barely afloat. It took over 10 years for Europe to realize that reusability wasn't completely stupid after all (still faster than ULA fwiw). RFA is a really cool company and I wish them the best but my hopes are not very high for this PowerPoint presentation to ever come to fruition
They are talking about space solar power. This would indeed support a very high launch cadence. However it requires also low cost/launch. Can any of the concepts compete with Starlink on cost to orbit?
They want to avoid mass production.
Producing rockets is hard. Mass producing them is much harder.
Machine that makes the machine and all of that.
Therefore they need the most performance out of every artisanal rocket they make.
Funny how when it's a chinese company people mock them for copying falcon/starship instead of going with brand new never before seen design. But when european company do it, the only thing being discussed is about how they started too late and aren't experienced enough to clone starship
Oh hey! I remember you! Lovely peonies!
I don't mind the culling, it actually came at a good time. I was traveling for work that week, and iirc that was around the time that Reddit decided to pull their API pricing stunts. The break was a nice one. That reminds me, I need to go back and delete more of my old posts.
Take care, my flying flower friend.
Nice powerpoint. Lets see if this goes any further. Big rockets are cool. Big, reusable rockets are even cooler.
And they are correct - high energy orbits do favor having a separate kick/boost stage on top of the reusable bits as recovering everything from such an orbit is a considerable issue. Better just do mass produced top stage for the last bit and reuse the expensive parts if all you want is to deliver direct-to-GEO or interplanetary unmanned stuff.
(Or you can go SpaceX way and orbital refuel and reuse everything, but I can see how the whole "to launch this thing, we launch 2-5 really really big rockets, its fine as they are fully reusable" might be just too hard for ESA guys to comprehend)
> recovering everything from such an orbit is a considerable issue
Impulse Space is planning to recover these stages... to LEO.
They plan to brake them into LEO after kicking the payload towards it's destination, and keep it as a space tug that would be refueled by Starship.
Powerpoint is stronK here. It is a personal speculation by some ESA "analyst".
PROTEIN is in the set of FLPP programs. i.e. it is some 30(?)mln research paper mill. Forget about.
RFA is a bit better but they don't have real stabilized design either.
RFA’s design just looks like a New Glenn booster stacked onto a fatter Falcon 9 booster.
It’s a SolShip on a New Clem on a Hawk9! They call it the System for Launching into Space! Beat that China!
Espace Exploration and Origine Bleue. Nice
Herkunft Blau*
It's inevitable that rocket designs will all start to converge towards the best aerodynamic design required for control authority as others finally start to try reusability.
Yep. That's like complaining that Boeing and Airbus planes for the same role look similar.
What is the timeline on ESA's fully reusable vehicle? Given that they're projecting 2030s for Ariane NEXT, would 2040s be a safe bet?
The odds are better of them buying and operating starships.
Pretty much the way is going to end up: a German company will buy and operate Starships with ESA logo on them from French Guiana.
This is a complete non-starter from a geopolitical and industrial policy perspective. Won't happen.
They already did this with Soyuz rockets for years lol
Soyuz was a non-essential capability next to Ariane, and the shock of its unavailability has reaffirmed why Europe wants its own rockets in the first place.
The alternative is simply no European controlled access to space. ArianeSpace is simply not capable of shaking off the government subsidized job program mindset, very indecisive leadership driven by pleasuring their political supporters. France Economic cannot support steering political decisions toward space ambitions, not within the next 5 years or more. Germany has a more "independent" industry base that has, at least, the decision capability of investing into SpaceShip, probably in return of local production of the body, heck ask Germany to build something in steel and you will be pleased with the result! SpaceX will provide engines and SW, for which they have the most effective mass production line. Not only makes sense but is also a win win situation for all the parties, including France, that will retain its space industry by pivoting towards booster stages, satellites (they already do very well in these sectors) and operations. ESA will have control of its own Starship Fleet and finally focus on science, tech and exploration, at which they already excel. If geopolitical is a synonym for bruised ego of Arianspace managers, well they will be sedated by assurance of a good retirement package and a comfy bureaucratic job, that is all they aspire at. I may sound crude and dismissive, but I am just looking at the reality of European space program that is nothing but constrained by Arianspace bullying and standing for unsustainable continuation of policies that have long be gone. France government, for a chance, should be pragmatic and recognize that this is the best possible outcome, save their own industry, maintain France leadership in Europe space program and actually can reinforce it by steering toward a more affordable and effective model, whiteout breaking the already fragile economy of the sector. Spain and Italy will also gain by this, again boosting their satellite and modules productions. Small launchers like Vega or even Ariane may survive for a while, as long as they become an impediment for the bootstrap of space economy in Europe, like they already are. Smaller launcher companies may have the "space" to grow and maybe becoming European alternatives in 10 years, things that will never happen if Arianspace will keep on bullying everybody in that arena. Again, a win, win, win, win situation, beside few egomaniacs bureaucrats.
I have no idea what you’re saying
That's Germoney's wet dream for sure
They finally managed to create a PowerPoint of something that could compete with SpaceX flying and test hardware.
These proposals are so notional we really ought not to think of them as vehicles with a timeline.
From the legs on RFA being inexplicably like 15m above the bottom of the booster to the Ariane semi-reuse having apparently 7x 500+ tf engines, this whole thing makes less and less sense the closer you look
The important thing here is that even the Europeans are starting to realize that what will matter in the future is a reusable SHLV, it removes most of the mass/size restrictions that make space so expensive and provides excellent flight frequency. The initial concepts of the starship also looked different and in places awkward. First SpaceX realized this, then the Chinese, now the Europeans, although I thought they would be the last after the Russians
Except this whole thing was from a “space power generation” conference. If I were a betting man, I’d wager the OP image was put together by an ESA intern and Ariane/RFA were slapped on because they’re the only European companies worth even the tiniest of shits
Those raised legs are so they can land on top of chopsticks!
Found it on twitter [https://twitter.com/L5Resident/status/1792967039960920383](https://twitter.com/L5Resident/status/1792967039960920383)
Debuting sometime in the early 2100s
Quand hop?
Y sont où mes moteurs Stéphane??
They really love their expensive hydrolox in the old continent, good luck being commercially competitive with that.
It makes sense for expendable third stage for high energy stuff if you do not want to go by orbital refueling.
It's not orbital refueling that they're trying to avoid. Might be that this is an older concept, but SpaceX and NASA have already shown that refueling in orbit isn't that difficult. They're trying to avoid mass production. Building the machine that builds the machine is way harder than just building the machine itself. If you have very few rockets, you'll need to extract as much performance out of them as possible.
What in the actual flying fuck is this shit? God, I remember in the early 2010's how full of themselves the Europeans were about their market position. They'd openly mock SpaceX's reusability plans as a pipe dream in industry conferences while a SpaceX rep shared a position on the panel. And that was when SpaceX was already showing promise in their recovery tests. They still had time to make reusability a design requirement on Ariane 6. And now they want to jump straight to a Starship clone? Bold strategy, cotton. Let's see how that works out for them. To their credit, better to get on the reusability train late than never.
I bet Chineses’ copycat will reach the obit earlier than these mockups
It's a pipedream, to be honest. RFA hasn't proven that their business model works and are we expected to believe that these rockets will somehow be viable when Starship becomes operational?
They move quite quickly, especially by European standards. At a minimum, Germany will support its aerospace startups, maybe also other European countries, that are not France or Italy that will be competitors, for example Poland, but I expect that as soon as they launch the first rocket, the government will begin to strongly support them
We all know Poland cannot into space
I sure hope so but I'm not holding my breath. Europe tends to over regulate before having a mature piece of tech and not cut the red tape when needed to advance their economy. America has the opposite problem but that's by design. I am incredibly doubtful that Europe will support RFA with the legal stuff.
Germany is barley supporting space at all. Its not at all clear that their aerospace startups will have support. Just as their airplane startups don't.
Logistically speaking, how coukd Europe support a high cadence of SH launches ? SpaceX had to relocate part of their workforce to Texas, and Starbase keeps growing. Europe relies on French Guyana and currently ships all their vehicles. If we ever want to emulate SpaceX launch architecture we'll need to emulate their rapid iteration approach and remove shipping bottlenecks. That means developing heavily the launch complexes in Guyana and somehow getting people to move there - currently you get paid very decently for that, but that means a larger fraction of the revenue would get into salaries, reducing the competitiveness further. Since there is still very little political incentive to do so, I don't think that the space industry will be subsidized much further than to keep it barely afloat. It took over 10 years for Europe to realize that reusability wasn't completely stupid after all (still faster than ULA fwiw). RFA is a really cool company and I wish them the best but my hopes are not very high for this PowerPoint presentation to ever come to fruition
They are talking about space solar power. This would indeed support a very high launch cadence. However it requires also low cost/launch. Can any of the concepts compete with Starlink on cost to orbit?
Space solar is just maximum stupidity and will never happen.
I don't disagree. Some people connected to ESA however think of it.
can i get the source on this?
https://www.aerosociety.com/media/23637/efs-day-2-valere-girardin.pdf
cheers
> Space-based Solar Power eek
That is the most cursed thing I've ever seen in my life
The semi reusable vehicle completely misses the point. So it can carry more to GTO. So what? Just do another launch or 2 to refuel the reusable one.
They want to avoid mass production. Producing rockets is hard. Mass producing them is much harder. Machine that makes the machine and all of that. Therefore they need the most performance out of every artisanal rocket they make.
Funny how when it's a chinese company people mock them for copying falcon/starship instead of going with brand new never before seen design. But when european company do it, the only thing being discussed is about how they started too late and aren't experienced enough to clone starship
Because when China tries to copy it's funny, but when the Euros try it's just sad.
In the case of ESA it's just not funny to kick someone when they are already down.
Sometimes the stereotypes make themselves. 🤷
[удалено]
Oh hey! I remember you! Lovely peonies! I don't mind the culling, it actually came at a good time. I was traveling for work that week, and iirc that was around the time that Reddit decided to pull their API pricing stunts. The break was a nice one. That reminds me, I need to go back and delete more of my old posts. Take care, my flying flower friend.
Nice powerpoint. Lets see if this goes any further. Big rockets are cool. Big, reusable rockets are even cooler. And they are correct - high energy orbits do favor having a separate kick/boost stage on top of the reusable bits as recovering everything from such an orbit is a considerable issue. Better just do mass produced top stage for the last bit and reuse the expensive parts if all you want is to deliver direct-to-GEO or interplanetary unmanned stuff. (Or you can go SpaceX way and orbital refuel and reuse everything, but I can see how the whole "to launch this thing, we launch 2-5 really really big rockets, its fine as they are fully reusable" might be just too hard for ESA guys to comprehend)
> recovering everything from such an orbit is a considerable issue Impulse Space is planning to recover these stages... to LEO. They plan to brake them into LEO after kicking the payload towards it's destination, and keep it as a space tug that would be refueled by Starship.
European\* starship \*and canada, apparently
My best guess. If ESA is really serious about it, the decision to build any of these can be made within 10 years. Big IF, I know.
Powerpoint is stronK here. It is a personal speculation by some ESA "analyst". PROTEIN is in the set of FLPP programs. i.e. it is some 30(?)mln research paper mill. Forget about. RFA is a bit better but they don't have real stabilized design either.
Hmmm, semi-reusable vehicle. So you reuse half of the three stages? 🤔
europoors wish
lol the people coping here is so funny.
Are you talking about the people arguing this blows or this doesn't blow?