7 comments

• Jeff Wright

  July 2, 2023 at 11:37 pm

  SpaceX and ESA
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8vY-4zWKsJM
• Tom

  July 3, 2023 at 1:31 pm

  Any insights as to the fate of the 2nd stage that sent Euclid to the L2 Legrange point? It was certainly close behind Euclid when it deployed usings simple springs. I didn’t notice an engine nozzle on Euclid either so I’m guessing that both vehicles would coast to the L2 point and be captured in the gravity field.
  Does the 2nd stage have the ability/extra fuel to “de-orbit” or to put itself far away from the L2 area?
• Edward

  July 3, 2023 at 2:35 pm

  The whole world is on track for 182 launches this year, with the possibility (but not probability) of 200. To get there, the world would have to launch 109 times over the rest of the year, about 18 times a month and 20% higher cadence than in the first half. SpaceX is on track for 88 launches this year. To meet their goal of 100, they will have to launch 56 times over the rest of the year (about 9 per month, more than two per week), a 15% higher cadence. China, however, is on track for only 48 launches. Just to match their total launches from last year they will have to launch 38 times over the rest of the year, more than half-again the rate of the first half of the year.
  ________________
  Robert wrote: “This ESA science mission would have normally been launched on an Arianespace rocket, but Europe’s ability to launch anything now is nil, as it is about to retire its Ariane-5 rocket (with one launch left) and has so failed to get its replacement, Ariane-6, operational.”

  How about that? SpaceX got the job, because Arianespace could not do it. Arianespace could not do it because SpaceX competition has forced the Europeans to make better launch systems, which they were not yet ready to do. ULA is in a similar situation for similar reasons.

  For the entire history of space travel, governments have been in charge of launches, and their efforts were half-fast (say that fast, and you get the real word). Marxism, the United Nations, and the Outer Space Treaty (and global warming, the Netherlands’s nitrogen panic, as well as the recent Wuhan flu panic) are all based upon the assumption that government is the solution, not the problem. The United States, free-market capitalism, and commercial space are all based upon the Adam Smith observation that We the People are better at solving our own problems than government can do. In 1776, England’s American colonies revolted against its centralized control and mercantile economy, and Smith Inquir(ed) into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, thus modern economics was born. Production of goods and services, not trade, generates wealth. Under mercantilism, government controls trade, because it thinks that trade is the source of wealth, but trade is only the means of distribution of wealth, and mercantilism was Britain’s method of distributing wealth to itself. Under Marxism, government controls production, because production is the source of wealth. Under free-market capitalism, We the People, not government, control both production and trade, so we control the source and the distribution of wealth.

  By the 1990s, commercial space companies — pretty much limited to communication companies — begged the launch providers to improve their launch systems in order to reduce the cost of access to space. The analysis showed that if the price of access to space was reduced from $10,000 down to $2,000 per pound then there would be a dramatic increase in the demand for launches. The recommendation was to develop reusable launch vehicles in order to reduce that price. In 1995, Peter Diamandis offered $10 million that he didn’t have to anyone (non-government) who could launch someone to space (Karman line) twice in two weeks using the same launch vehicle. No one knew how to do that, at the time, but he had more than a dozen groups signed up to try. Nine years later, Scaled Composites won the prize, and by then Diamandis had a sponsor who donated the prize.

  Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic decided to capitalize on this new industry by putting tourists and experimenters into suborbital space with reusable suborbital launch vehicles. SpaceX later decided that they could use reusable launch vehicles to go to orbit, a concept that rocket scientists and engineers had thought to be impossible or uneconomic, but they hadn’t even developed reusable suborbital sounding-rockets. The government’s engineers were dcontent with what they had. Governments may not have been able to develop economical booster rockets, but for inspired innovative free-market capitalists, it was merely a challenge.

  Challenge accepted.

  Challenge completed.

  There is now a dramatic increase in the demand for orbital launches. Not only did the launch price drop, but SpaceX had the new problem of finding storage space for its fleet of first stage booster rockets. And fairings. The rest of the world launches their rockets almost as fast as they can make them, which isn’t so fast, but SpaceX can launch any time that a launch is needed or requested.

  Even with the answer at hand and in plain view, well-funded government space programs are completely unable to find ways to compete with the innovative civilians, who have to raise investment capital in order to achieve their goals — which is where the capitalism part comes in. Blue Origin is on the verge of its own reusable first stage, and Rocket Lab is developing its own version. ULA continues to talk about reusing the first stage engine compartment, but isn’t working much on accomplishing it — they may be too close to their preferred customer, government, to feel hungry enough to try harder. Arianespace is trying to get their less expensive rocket on the launchpad, but a reusable rocket is still a dream for them, assuming they are dreaming of better launch vehicles.

  SpaceX met the challenge set by the free-market customers, demonstrating that reusability is as economical as the 1990s customers thought it would be. Two free-market capitalist companies accepted the challenge set by SpaceX’s Falcon rockets. Meanwhile, SpaceX is not resting on its laurels but is working hard to make it affordable to go to Mars with colonists.

  SpaceX is working on the next challenge: Starship’s complete reusability. The only thing that may be in the works to challenge that much reusability is Reaction Engines Limited’s Skylon air-breathing rocket, whose SABRE engine is still in development.

  By solving the commercial space community’s problem of the 1990s, SpaceX both caused and solved Europe’s Euclid launch problem. Europe had to develop a new rocket, but it wasn’t ready in time.

  The mercantile economics that space had been based upon has not worked today any more than it worked a quarter millennium ago. The solution was free-market capitalism, which has worked well ever since the Plymouth Colony chose it over its early version of Socialism.

  When government is in charge, all we get is what government wants: its own problems solved. When We the People are in charge, we get what we want: our problems solved. Government was invented, all those millennia ago, to solve the problems of We the People. Unfortunately, governments forgot who it is they work for and what they are supposed to do. The U.S. Constitution’s Preamble is the reminder.

  We the People are now taking back the space industry. Government has difficulty competing with a free population, but that free population can solve both its own problems and government’s problems. This is what SpaceX did. This is what Robert’s policy paper, Capitalism in Space, recommends.
• Jeff Wright

  July 3, 2023 at 6:41 pm

  Netherlands nitrogen panic?
  That’s a new one on me.
• Robert Pratt

  July 4, 2023 at 6:45 pm

  Jeff, the Dutch are forcibly closing farms, among the most productive soul anywhere, because the EU says they nyto meet environment goals. It’s among the most absurd happenings in the West.
• wayne

  July 4, 2023 at 9:42 pm

  Jeff–
  Adam Curry & John Dvorak [“No Agenda”] have been covering this for some time.
  ->Listen to the July 2nd show, starting about the 25 minute mark.

  https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1569

  These fools want to ban nitrogen fertilizer.
• Edward

  July 5, 2023 at 5:43 pm

  TheSpaceBucket noted that Euclid was launched on a Falcon 9 only 5 months after the contract was signed.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcrlEvOxCbY (8 minutes)

  Among the things that were not noted about the unusual nature of this rapid timing are that a payload’s design depends heavily on the launch vehicle chosen and the back up or two that are available. Also, one of the reasons it takes years to prepare for a launch is that with expendable rockets, one has to be built for each launch. Popular rockets may have a backlog of launches and difficulty building one for every payload that inquires about availability. With the reusability of the Falcons, a rocket is available very quickly for a newly contracted launch. For the Falcons, availability is no longer one of the poles that holds up the show.

  Euclid ran into a long-pole problem when the Ariane 6 failed to become available in a timely manner, and the Ariane 5 line was shut down without possibility of extension. Arianespace had too much confidence in its ability to get the next version operational.

  I remain in amazement that the availability aspect of reusability seems to have been lost on several launch providers, who are not moving quickly to reusable versions of their rockets. The concept has been proved. The economics has been proved. The advantage has been proved. The reusability of just the booster, with the smaller, cheaper, easier-to-make upper stage as expendable has shown itself to be far more advantageous than the expendables, and every launch provider above small should already be moving in that direction. Rocket Lab may soon show that reusable small launchers are also more advantageous.