Having the strategic capabilities to access space without having to rely on a far-right billionaire who is a big supporter of the person commiting genocide in Ukraine right now.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Niche of political points.
It is mainly "we can do it too" project now. There are lots of subcontractors, jobs and research put in to it but it won't be price competitive any time soon. It is similar to SLS programe.
I don't think it will have any market outside of European government contracts.
I suspect, for very large constellation projects or similar, which would be adversely affected by a launch provider abruptly stopping launches for any reason, they might want to buy a few launches for redundancy purposes -- just risk mitigation.
I mean operators that aren't Starlink, in this case.
One day Musk will completely lose his mind beyond his current level of having lost his mind
While I agree with you that this is possible, I don't think Ariane 6 is in any position to replace Falcon 9.
I think the only niche will be stubborn European governments.
I mean in any case it’s good to have a backup to not have to rely on someone as uhh… unfavourable and unpredictable as Musk, but that’s disappointing to hear.
Yeah, unfortunately, SpaceX is streets ahead of anyone else in the launch industry in terms of reusability and, in turn, price. In a purely capitalistic system, they’d be putting everyone else out of business, but the US government wants a second source vendor, so ULA stays around, and foreign governments want independent access to space, for a combination of national security and pride, so the Russian, Chinese, Indian, and European space agencies keep on trucking.
I suspect in 10 years or so that’ll change. There are lots of new space companies, it just takes a long time to build a new rocket.