back to article Euro spacemen clear Ariane 6 for liftoff

The European Space Agency (ESA) has committed to building a new generation of Ariane launch vehicles. The Ariane 6's four-stage design has been on the table for over a year, but ESA member states hadn't signed off on its construction. At this week's ESA Ministerial Council that changed, with the Resolution on Europe's Access …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whooooosh!

    And hopefully only the right sort of bangs

  2. Rustident Spaceniak
    Boffin

    It's actually two-and-a-half stages!

    Nothing is settled yet, but the latest iteration of Ariane 6 isn't four stages any longer. It's the so-called industrial compromise version that comes in two sizes; each with a liquid first and second stage, plus solid boosters - two for the so-called Ariane 6.2 (or 62), four for A6.4. Apart from that, they're pretty much the same.

    This latest iteration (which may still evolve quite a bit) was mentioned by Mr Dordain, ESA secretary-general, as the current baseline, and we may assume (I hope) that he knows what he wants.

  3. Mage Silver badge

    Great stuff.

    Most non-tech people haven't heard of ESA, NASA is better at publicity. Yet Arianespace launched 61% of the current in orbit satellites, was 1st commercial launch company and does over 50% of launches.

    The European Space Port was started in 1960. It now has a pad for Soyuz launches. In South America, though most control/co-ordination seems to be in Darmstadt, Germany. There seems to be a back-up centre in France (probably a CNES facility), anyone know where?

    The connections, funding and membership between Arianespace, ESA (Canada is an associate Member, UK seems not, but EU funds over 20%, so UK pays anyway, there are non-EU European members) and CNES (the French equivalent of NASA) is fascinating. Arianespace seems majority French owned (or they are biggest) with Germans 2nd biggest.).

    Spaceports and Launch tech are crucial to getting the parts up to assemble a Spacedock, or a Generation ship Starship. Arianespace doesn't get the headlines of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic or others, perhaps because they just keep iteratively advancing capability and reliability?

    ESA and CNES are MUCH more than Arianespace. Even if Arianespace was under cut out of business, there would still be ESA funding using other launch platforms. ESA & CNES do Science, Research, Exploration, Satellites for Weather monitoring, resource, gravity and climate. Also the only civilian alternative to Military GPS (The US and Russian systems exist for Military reasons and can be disabled for civilian use).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great stuff.

      UK is a major member of ESA - goes a long way to paying my salery! However Arianespace is not a part of ESA - it is an independent company (albeit spun off after ESA developed the Ariane 3 and Ariane 4), however ESA still has a vested interest in Ariane launches and hence helps fund the development of each Ariane generation.

      Arianespace launch control is located on Devil's Island. Darmstadt is the location of ESOC (European Space Operations Centre) that manages ESA satellites and deep-space missions.

      1. Mage Silver badge

        Re: Great stuff. UK in ESA

        You should fix the Wikipedia entry for ESA.

        Actually ANYONE should fix it. It's a bit confused and rambling.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great stuff.

      The connections, funding and membership between Arianespace, ESA (Canada is an associate Member, UK seems not, but EU funds over 20%, so UK pays anyway, there are non-EU European members) and CNES (the French equivalent of NASA) is fascinating.

      Just to be clear, the UK was and remains a founder member of the ESA. However it's not one of the owners of the Arianspace company.

    3. Irongut

      Re: Great stuff.

      Non-tech people heard of ESA and particularly Ariane plenty during the 80s. Every time they tried to launch it, it blew up. *

      * This may not be entirely accurate but I recall seeing a lot of failed launches on Newsround.

      1. Grikath

        Re: Great stuff.

        That may be because successful launches are not as "newsworthy", or interesting to watch...

      2. Mage Silver badge

        Re: plenty during the 80s

        So non-tech people under 40?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Great stuff.

        Arianespace had 33 launches during the 80s (and 1 in 1979). 30 were successful and 4 failed, although only 2 of those "blew up".

        No, it wasn't "entirely accurate" - more prejudice than fact, in fact.

  4. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Doh!

    Why oh why oh why do El-Reg commentards insist on using "hauling payloads" when it comes to rocket launches?

    Pushing, throwing, projecting, firing, launching in fact anything "pushy" is good. "Hauling" suggests there's a bleedin' great trailer on the thing getting gently toasted in rocket exhaust ... have you ever seen a tow hitch on a Saturn V?

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Doh!

      Seen the "thing to help people escape really fast..."

      http://xkcd.com/1133/

      Rockets are above the payload...

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Doh!

        That's because we want to hear bearded truckers in wifebeaters deadpanning on open radio while they take the Nth trip to orbit with an array of random rusty container that were thrown out of a factory gate in Shenzen 24h earlier, not delicate circus stunts to maybe get a few precious kilogrammes to GEO.

        We are a long way from that.

  5. AnonymousCoward

    Software reuse

    Lets hope they have learned the lessons around component reuse that felled the first Ariane 5 launch.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(spacecraft)

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Software reuse

      Pretty sure Eiffel is still not on the menu and they are messing around in the "reduced C" language design space. Of course, Ada is there, too.

      OTOH, a must read for anyone past the larval stage of pizza-fueled hacking (which we all liked but one has to leave childish things behind): Reasoning and Veri cation - State of the Art and Current Trends

  6. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    I see that ...

    SKYLON is nowhere.

    I wondered how ESA would manage to avoid funding an all-British proposal. Just ignoring it seems to be the preferred option...

    1. Rustident Spaceniak
      Stop

      Re: I see that ...

      Skylon is certainly nowhere in a project with a 2020 first-launch target. It is, however, in ESA's long-term plans and that's already a great success for the British (and a tantalizing prospect for all of us). So, just get your facts straight before you start complaining. Oh well, apparently you're British. Just give it a try, OK?

      1. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

        Re: I see that ...

        Score 0 for research.

        Skylon timescale is entirely dependent on funding. Reaction Engines have said that if they had full funding, they could deliver a vehicle in 2020. Exactly matching the Ariane. But, of course, they won't be given any, and instead will just be kept 'in long-term plans'. As they have been since the 1980s.

        If you don't know how to Google, try these URLs:

        http://sen.com/news/skylon

        http://spacekate.com/2014/skylon-the-answer-to-uk-space-dreams/

  7. FlatSpot
    Thumb Up

    LUNAR MISSION ONE: A new lunar mission for everyone

    Talking of funding...... come on almost there....

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarmissionone/lunar-mission-one-a-new-lunar-mission-for-everyone

    :)

  8. dwightlooi

    How is Ariane 6 cheaper?

    The silly thing is that Ariane's problem isn't the Ariane 5, it is the Astrium organization itself. The Ariane 6 as a rocket is entirely conventional and doesn't really save any money. The Ariane 6 is a 2-stage liquid fueled rocket with strap-on solids launched in Guiana. The Ariane 5 is a 2-stage liquid with strap-on solids launched in Guiana. Neither are reusable. Neither are horizontally integrated. Both require over the water transportation half way around the world to be launched. Both are built in numerous countries but numerous vendors with an expensive and expansive payroll. What has changed? Not much. In fact, similar savings -- if any -- can be had if you simply take the Ariane 5 design and have fewer subcontractors build it. The only reason there is a new rocket is because it makes it more convenient to re-distribute the work to fewer vendors under the premise of a switching new rocket.

    SpaceX is cheap predominantly because SpaceX as an organization does more for a lot less human resource baggage -- a lot more. This is an organization which was able to build three new engines, 3 new rockets and one new space craft in about 8 years while spending about $500 million in that period. SpaceX does everything in house -- the stages, the engines, the final assembly and the flight operations. SpaceX doesn't spend a huge amount of money every 10~20 years to develop something then languish new developments for upwards of a decade -- they have a small team of R&D guys which is constantly in R&D mode so there isn't a lot of relearning and realignment of resources everything some new spacecraft or engine is being conceived. Given the Ariane 6 development budget of 6 billion we know that their structural costs haven't changed very much. Vehicle wise, the Falcon 9 is designed to be horizontally integrated -- which is faster, cheaper and does not require much in terms of an assembly building. The Falcon 9 is limited to 3.7m in diameter and very long mainly because this allows it to be trucked across the USA from California to Texas to Florida without specialized transports, rails, aircrafts, barges, etc. The Falcon 9 uses a lot of engines, but each is pretty small and can be churned out on run-of-the-mill CnC machines, minimal manual brazing and can be assembled by one man without stairs or cranes. The Falcon 9 uses easy to handle fuel, eschewing performance for unfussy operations, relying instead on using a heavier vehicle for a smaller payload. And, it is designed to realistically reuse the first stage. Ariane 6 does not make Astrium more like SpaceX structurally. It does not give them a launcher that is architecturally all that different from the exisiting Ariane 5. And, there is no plans to recycle any part of the vehicle.

    Ariane 6 being cheaper is either wishful thinking or will require that Astrium fire 75% of their people and continue to function well on the remaining. If I have to hedge my bet today, I'll bet on it being wishful thinking. They'll probably cut their margins a bit, cut the workforce a bit, streamline things a bit, but not enough. And, in the end, they'll probably miss their cost targets and go crawling back to the European taxpayers for subsidies.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How is Ariane 6 cheaper?

      Astrium does not exist; it's was officially renamed as "Airbus" this year.

      'nuff said.

      1. dwightlooi

        Re: How is Ariane 6 cheaper?

        The point remains... it's a similar vehicle architecture built by the same high cost organization. How is it supposed to be cheaper?

        The European government and taxpayers may be OK with a spending tax euros to keep an european space infrastructure. That is not necessarily a bad idea. But, if they actually want a cheaper rocket and cheaper access to space. The Ariane 6 and the organization behind it -- IMHO -- is unlikely to deliver.

  9. Borg.King

    Same roll rate

    as the Ariane 5?

    You know, so the software can't tell it's different hardware and not core dump everything it knows into the navigation computer.

  10. John Smith 19 Gold badge

    A few notes.

    Part of the justification for the mostly-solid A6 was its commonality with the SRB's on the Vega, which is already flying.

    Part of the A5 problem is that the upper stage is not relightable. This means that when Ariane try to get 2 sats to launch together they have to close to the same part of the GEO orbit.

    While I can sort of understand this for the LH2/LO2 US Astus propellants are hypergolic and ignite on contact.

    The other issue is that sat weights have been creeping up and getting a heavy + medium weight pair together is getting harder. However the payload rise is not beyond the bounds of an upgrade starting with the Vehicle Equipment Bay . This thing is in carbon fibre and is less than 1/2 the diameter and no taller than the one on the Saturn V (whose computer weighted about 50Kg and whose gyros weighed another 50Kg without the GN2 to spin them up) yet it weighs the same (the Saturn one was built in Al honeycomb by IBM, not a company known for their light weight structures engineering). The Saturn V Instrument Unit was also designed to carry a 100 tonne Apollo stack on top.

    IMHO there is something seriously wrong with this design.

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