Surprisingly good result on a surprisingly low budget. I totally didn't expect a European company to make it. If it phoned home after reentry it means the hard part is done.
The primary purpose of the traditional European launch industry is to provide an independent launch capability for government payloads. Cost is irrelevant because the French government in particular wants to be able to launch payloads into orbit without depending on anyone else to do so.
I agree with your overall point, but I think the person you replied to has a point as well. The cost of developing F9 is ridiculously low (considering the industry), so it should have been possible to do by any country / group of countries if the cost was the only problem...
> "According to NASA's own independently verified numbers, SpaceX's development costs of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets were estimated at approximately $390 million in total."
It's failing at that too, in the same sense that maintaining a sailing ship fleet would have failed to provide independent seafaring capability in the latter half of the 19th century.
SpaceX has greatly raised the bar on what can be considered an "independent launch capability." Europe under the current system is greatly limited on what they can imagine doing in space. The equivalent of Starlink is not feasible, for example.
Underlying all this was a failure of vision, an assumption that use of space would be static and change only slowly, if at all, and that launch cost could not be significantly reduced.
Wouldn't it be nice if buying a space launch vehicle were like purchasing a car, instead of (a military) aircraft?
For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much; to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle. Though with cars we do have a fairly standardized control scheme, at least for the most important parts. Steering wheel, go and stop foot levers.
> For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much ...
Consolidation was an inevitable result of the end of the Cold War and massive cuts to defense spending. The defense industry was _encouraged_ to consolidate because the alternative would have been bankruptcy. Obviously, time has shown that this consolidation was bad for the industry and the government, but a lot has happened in the last 35 years that would not have been foreseen then.
> to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle
The type rating structure really has quite little to do with aerospace industry consolidation (if anything, the industry is too fractured to allow for more generic type ratings). Aircraft, their systems, and their flight dynamics are different enough that trying to create a more general type rating would really be impossible. What you do see are families of aircraft which either completely share a type rating or require very limited additional training to maintain a rating for multiple family types (e.g. all 737s, 757/767, 777/787, A32x/A33x/A35x).
Single piston GA aircraft are really the exception, not because they all share the same behavior (there is a truly wild range of flight dynamics and avionics), but because the GA community (particularly in the US) is so large and established that requiring more training/experience is politically impossible. So long as GA accidents don't kill too many bystanders, this will remain the case.
And? So does everyone else, because Transporter rideshares are cheap and incubating your own rocket programme isn't.
SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors. Does the fact SpaceX can't be adequately served by domestic capacity and their in-house semiconductor programme is just getting started mean they don't execute?! Or is it just a little thing called trade that Americans used to believe in?
Surprisingly good result on a surprisingly low budget. I totally didn't expect a European company to make it. If it phoned home after reentry it means the hard part is done.
The Exploration Company know what they're doing and execute fast. Contrary to popular belief on here this is possible from Europe...
Of course, they rely on SpaceX because Europe doesn't have enough launch capacity to support their launch rate (1/year at best)
Europe decided that the priority purpose of their launch industry was to provide jobs, not competitive launches.
The primary purpose of the traditional European launch industry is to provide an independent launch capability for government payloads. Cost is irrelevant because the French government in particular wants to be able to launch payloads into orbit without depending on anyone else to do so.
> Cost is irrelevant
I agree with your overall point, but I think the person you replied to has a point as well. The cost of developing F9 is ridiculously low (considering the industry), so it should have been possible to do by any country / group of countries if the cost was the only problem...
> "According to NASA's own independently verified numbers, SpaceX's development costs of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets were estimated at approximately $390 million in total."
It's failing at that too, in the same sense that maintaining a sailing ship fleet would have failed to provide independent seafaring capability in the latter half of the 19th century.
SpaceX has greatly raised the bar on what can be considered an "independent launch capability." Europe under the current system is greatly limited on what they can imagine doing in space. The equivalent of Starlink is not feasible, for example.
Underlying all this was a failure of vision, an assumption that use of space would be static and change only slowly, if at all, and that launch cost could not be significantly reduced.
Wouldn't it be nice if buying a space launch vehicle were like purchasing a car, instead of (a military) aircraft?
For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much; to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle. Though with cars we do have a fairly standardized control scheme, at least for the most important parts. Steering wheel, go and stop foot levers.
> For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in America. The market really should not have been allowed to consolidate that much ...
Consolidation was an inevitable result of the end of the Cold War and massive cuts to defense spending. The defense industry was _encouraged_ to consolidate because the alternative would have been bankruptcy. Obviously, time has shown that this consolidation was bad for the industry and the government, but a lot has happened in the last 35 years that would not have been foreseen then.
> to the point where incentives aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation vehicle
The type rating structure really has quite little to do with aerospace industry consolidation (if anything, the industry is too fractured to allow for more generic type ratings). Aircraft, their systems, and their flight dynamics are different enough that trying to create a more general type rating would really be impossible. What you do see are families of aircraft which either completely share a type rating or require very limited additional training to maintain a rating for multiple family types (e.g. all 737s, 757/767, 777/787, A32x/A33x/A35x).
Single piston GA aircraft are really the exception, not because they all share the same behavior (there is a truly wild range of flight dynamics and avionics), but because the GA community (particularly in the US) is so large and established that requiring more training/experience is politically impossible. So long as GA accidents don't kill too many bystanders, this will remain the case.
heres a gaggle og MIGS, but name your flavor
https://www.barnstormers.com/cat_search.php?headline=MIG&bod...
And? So does everyone else, because Transporter rideshares are cheap and incubating your own rocket programme isn't.
SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors. Does the fact SpaceX can't be adequately served by domestic capacity and their in-house semiconductor programme is just getting started mean they don't execute?! Or is it just a little thing called trade that Americans used to believe in?
European spacecraft......launched in the US by SpaceX.
Hilarious.