<story><title>As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/as-the-spacex-steamroller-surges-european-rocket-industry-vows-to-resist/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>1996</author><text>Great idea - note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets, the low quality of Israeli ICBM, and the rarity of German submarines.&lt;p&gt;A government can subsidize with taxes an industry as much as it wants, and force its products down its citizens throat as much as it can: it will not be able to create quality, which is essential to get a large market demand.&lt;p&gt;Unless the industry is very hard to replicate for whatever reason like large capital requirements given the available technology (ex: a computer in the 1940s, sending a human to the moon in the 1960s) this create a market opportunity.&lt;p&gt;Natural market forces such as competition ensure the end result.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: My bad, I forgot about the Swedish Gripen. It exists, which is no small feat by itself! It is just low quality and rare.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Saab_JAS_39_Gripen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Saab_JAS_39_Gripen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Gripen has achieved moderate success in sales to nations in Central Europe, South Africa and Southeast Asia; bribery has been suspected in some of these procurements, but authorities closed the investigation in 2009&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to bribery, this wonderful piece of technology could be sold to major world powers like South Africa and Hungary.</text></item><item><author>WJW</author><text>The solution is therefore pretty simple: taxes will subsidize &amp;quot;industries of national interest&amp;quot;. It is for the same reason as the US would never buy Swedish fighter jets, Israeli ICBMs or German submarines. This has been true since the beginning of the nation state.</text></item><item><author>1996</author><text>What will make even more sense is when he says to his teams: &amp;quot;Farewell, it was really nice working with you all, too bad the foreign competition slashed prices and bankrupted us&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>jlmorton</author><text>Alain Charmeau spelled this out explicitly to Der Spiegel:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; 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&amp;#x27;t make sense to a government-backed rocket company—jobs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;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,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: &amp;#x27;Goodbye, see you next year!&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.spiegel.de&amp;#x2F;wissenschaft&amp;#x2F;technik&amp;#x2F;alain-charmeau-die-amerikaner-wollen-europa-aus-dem-weltraum-kicken-a-1207322.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.spiegel.de&amp;#x2F;wissenschaft&amp;#x2F;technik&amp;#x2F;alain-charmeau-di...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>marsokod</author><text>To me this is a major reason why the reusable launchers were not developed in Europe. The concept was being studied but never gained traction.&lt;p&gt;One of the reason might have been vanity but if you look at it with the view point of a CEO from a European firm, reusability was a risky gamble:&lt;p&gt;1) In order to keep your manufacturing quality, one needs to produce a new rocket every two or three months. Beyond that, the people manufacturing it losses knowledge and unless quality assurance is increased a lot, you will losses quality.&lt;p&gt;2) EU was doing around 12 launches a year, and that was by being very cheap. You could plan on increasing the market share but that starts being difficult as a lot of what remains cannot use a European launcher for political reasons.&lt;p&gt;3) For the sake of the argument, let say cheaper price double the market share, that leaves 24 launches a year. Based on a manufacturing of 6 launchers a year, this leaves 4 launches per rocket. And that is with very optimistic numbers (doubling of marketshare, no issue with reusability).&lt;p&gt;4) If you look at the numbers from SpaceX, 4 launches per rocket is where the reusability starts making sense. But ideally, you want more.
5) The Airbus people have shareholders to account to, not a CEO who does not care risking going banqueroute while pursuing a dream to go on Mars.&lt;p&gt;So yeah, doable but much more difficult than in a market with better access to investment and to huge cash cows named NASA and DoD</text></item><item><author>bosdev</author><text>&amp;gt; Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much.&lt;p&gt;It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1&amp;#x2F;100 the cost? How many new types of satellites, technology, human transport will be created?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WJW</author><text>It is a great idea indeed, but note:&lt;p&gt;- The Gripen fighter jets (designed and built in Sweden) listing no less than 17 (!) current and confirmed future customers here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operational_history&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operational...&lt;/a&gt;. The list of nations considering buying those jets is even longer.&lt;p&gt;- You are either incredibly well informed or not informed at all about the quality of Israeli ICBMs, but since they are ordering submarines capable of launching ICBMs and are capable of launching satellites into orbit, the general state of Israeli ballistic capability is definitely high enough to deliver warheads anywhere on the planet.&lt;p&gt;- Allegedly, the latest generation of German submarines is good enough to penetrate the defenses of a US navy carrier group (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Type_212_submarine#Operations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Type_212_submarine#Operations&lt;/a&gt;). They are in service with both the German and Italian navies with four more ordered by the Norwegians.&lt;p&gt;Quality helps with generating demand but it is not enough, especially when selling to governments. If you don&amp;#x27;t believe this, please consider if SpaceX had still gotten the NSA launch contracts if SpaceX had been a Chinese or Russian company.</text></comment>
<story><title>As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/as-the-spacex-steamroller-surges-european-rocket-industry-vows-to-resist/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>1996</author><text>Great idea - note however the lack of existance of Swedish fighter jets, the low quality of Israeli ICBM, and the rarity of German submarines.&lt;p&gt;A government can subsidize with taxes an industry as much as it wants, and force its products down its citizens throat as much as it can: it will not be able to create quality, which is essential to get a large market demand.&lt;p&gt;Unless the industry is very hard to replicate for whatever reason like large capital requirements given the available technology (ex: a computer in the 1940s, sending a human to the moon in the 1960s) this create a market opportunity.&lt;p&gt;Natural market forces such as competition ensure the end result.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: My bad, I forgot about the Swedish Gripen. It exists, which is no small feat by itself! It is just low quality and rare.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Saab_JAS_39_Gripen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Saab_JAS_39_Gripen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Gripen has achieved moderate success in sales to nations in Central Europe, South Africa and Southeast Asia; bribery has been suspected in some of these procurements, but authorities closed the investigation in 2009&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to bribery, this wonderful piece of technology could be sold to major world powers like South Africa and Hungary.</text></item><item><author>WJW</author><text>The solution is therefore pretty simple: taxes will subsidize &amp;quot;industries of national interest&amp;quot;. It is for the same reason as the US would never buy Swedish fighter jets, Israeli ICBMs or German submarines. This has been true since the beginning of the nation state.</text></item><item><author>1996</author><text>What will make even more sense is when he says to his teams: &amp;quot;Farewell, it was really nice working with you all, too bad the foreign competition slashed prices and bankrupted us&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>jlmorton</author><text>Alain Charmeau spelled this out explicitly to Der Spiegel:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; 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&amp;#x27;t make sense to a government-backed rocket company—jobs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;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,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: &amp;#x27;Goodbye, see you next year!&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.spiegel.de&amp;#x2F;wissenschaft&amp;#x2F;technik&amp;#x2F;alain-charmeau-die-amerikaner-wollen-europa-aus-dem-weltraum-kicken-a-1207322.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.spiegel.de&amp;#x2F;wissenschaft&amp;#x2F;technik&amp;#x2F;alain-charmeau-di...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>marsokod</author><text>To me this is a major reason why the reusable launchers were not developed in Europe. The concept was being studied but never gained traction.&lt;p&gt;One of the reason might have been vanity but if you look at it with the view point of a CEO from a European firm, reusability was a risky gamble:&lt;p&gt;1) In order to keep your manufacturing quality, one needs to produce a new rocket every two or three months. Beyond that, the people manufacturing it losses knowledge and unless quality assurance is increased a lot, you will losses quality.&lt;p&gt;2) EU was doing around 12 launches a year, and that was by being very cheap. You could plan on increasing the market share but that starts being difficult as a lot of what remains cannot use a European launcher for political reasons.&lt;p&gt;3) For the sake of the argument, let say cheaper price double the market share, that leaves 24 launches a year. Based on a manufacturing of 6 launchers a year, this leaves 4 launches per rocket. And that is with very optimistic numbers (doubling of marketshare, no issue with reusability).&lt;p&gt;4) If you look at the numbers from SpaceX, 4 launches per rocket is where the reusability starts making sense. But ideally, you want more.
5) The Airbus people have shareholders to account to, not a CEO who does not care risking going banqueroute while pursuing a dream to go on Mars.&lt;p&gt;So yeah, doable but much more difficult than in a market with better access to investment and to huge cash cows named NASA and DoD</text></item><item><author>bosdev</author><text>&amp;gt; Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much.&lt;p&gt;It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1&amp;#x2F;100 the cost? How many new types of satellites, technology, human transport will be created?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marsokod</author><text>The Gripen is not Swedish?&lt;p&gt;Competition works when the market is open. But the space market is far from being open. Even building a satellite without including an ITAR or EAR part was politically impossible a few years ago for an EU company.</text></comment>