News WSJ: Europe Ends Independent Pursuit of Manned Space Travel

[Victor_D]

LE BOURGET, France—Europe appears to have abandoned all hope of independently pursuing human space exploration, even as the region's politicians and aerospace industry leaders complain about shrinking U.S. commitment to various space ventures.

After years of sitting on the fence regarding a separate, pan-European manned space program, comments by senior government and industry officials at the Paris Air Show here underscore that budget pressures and other shifting priorities have effectively killed that longtime dream.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the European Space Agency, stressed that Europe won't design its own rockets or new spacecraft for manned missions, but may contribute to international efforts.

"We don't need any European autonomy in manned flights," Mr. Dordain told a press conference earlier this week.

The agency's chief also said that by failing in the past to set up robust international space-transportation partnerships, Europe and the U.S. "made a collective mistake." As a result, Mr. Dordain said, "we now face the not very comfortable situation" of being totally dependent, at least for the next few years, on Russian technology to reach the international space station.

Such concerns coincide with next month's planned retirement of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's final space shuttle. That will leave Russian Soyuz rockets as essentially the only way to get cargo or astronauts from any nation into low earth orbit—until the U.S develops and deploys shuttle replacements in the second half of the decade.

NASA chief Charles Bolden also made an appearance at the show partly to stress trans-Atlantic cooperation, including a possible unmanned voyage to Mars. But European officials generally remain skeptical that NASA will be able to come up with its full share of funding for the project.

Under President George W. Bush, NASA explicitly said it didn't want European involvement in critical manned systems. Now, the agency is singing the praises of international cooperation as the only way to cover the huge costs of manned exploration of deep space. But budget constraints and political squabbling may put many of those plans on hold.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, chief executive of launch-services provider Arianespace, agreed in an interview that an all-European manned space effort is off the table. "It's a dream," according to Mr. Le Gall, "but it's not realistic."

Mr. Le Gall also said that when it comes to U.S. launcher development, "there is a lot of talk, but not a lot of achievements."

Both NASA and ESA, its European counterpart, face severe spending constraints and political uncertainty over their future. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are plans to build powerful new rockets with enhanced capabilities, including heavy-lift versions to explore deeper into space.

But their problems also are similar. There are debates in Europe and the U.S. about safeguarding the existing industrial base tied to solid rocket motors. At the same time, experts in both cases are advocating new liquid-fueled rocket engines as less costly and easier to operate.

For Arianespace, the next few months will mark an important milestone. Supplementing its core Ariane 5 rocket, the company is slated to have the first launch of a Soyuz rocket from a pad it built at its complex in Korou, French Guiana. The new capability will provide Arianespace, which already is the leading launcher of commercial satellites, added flexibility to launch scientific and government satellites.

Source

Good.

As much as I'd like an independent European manned spaceflight capability, there is currently no reason to waste billions of Euros on developing another uncreative tin can capsule to be launched on a super-expensive rocket that will become obsolete years before it makes it first flight. Let the Americans and Russians do that, we should focus on more futuristic projects (and continue doing great science, as always). In the meantime, it's not that that expensive to buy seats on the Soyuz, or use the commercial suppliers if they come through.

 

[Urwumpe]

*Warning, rant ahead*

I think the attitude is pretty stupid since we are just about 3 billion Euro away from a proper manned capsule. That is a lot less than what we spend on the ISS.

The lack of commitment also has to be blamed on the Europeans there, especially the French and Germans - my current government is just a club of liars, that promised to go to the moon without making it an ESA project during the election period, and finally settled on going to dinner.

Also we have spend now 220 billion on "Rescuing Greece", without even asking if Greece wants to be saved at all. It would already be cheaper to just let it collapse and see the Greek opposition explain why they can't pay the bill for all their socialist promises to the same people that currently call Germany Nazis again for requesting that the money should not be used for building swimming pools.

(Correction: The Greek GDP is 237 billion Euro every year - we can only afford to let it crash every second year)

If the will would be there, we could be flying circles around NASA and Russians. We have the economic power in the EU, that both lack. All look at the PIIGS states that fail to meet the extremely tough set limits that Germany enforced on the Eurozone economies (since we didn't want to give up the Mark for a Euro that is soft), but not even the WSJ seems to notice that the economic indicators of USA, Russia and China are much worse than that. The USA couldn't even join the Eurozone currently, even if they would like to.

And now you, Dordain, tell me that Europe is better off flying as passengers on other countries that are even less capable of paying the show? Would you dine at the cardboard home of a beggar or would you rather invent the beggar to dine at your place? The lack of ambition here is just mind-blowing. Really. Even the Iranians will overtake us if some people here just don't stop wasting money for conferences, meetings, workshops and bureaucracy. The most expensive ESA project until now was Herschel - with mere 1 billion Euro costs. And this was that expensive because bloody politicians delayed the project for over ten years.

Shifting priorities...yeah... now doing nothing at all is prime priority. Looking good at fairs with multimedia presentations and cheap spacecraft mock-ups, instead of building stuff that really flies.

I really hate it.

 

[N_Molson]

I can't bear the massive financial fraud that is bleeding Europe since several years anymore. We are getting to the point it will probably collapse, or at least the Euro. The people behind that should be sent to eastern Siberia. Period.

I bet (and hope) that won't last forever. People are fed up, more and more. I can't believe Greeks are accepting what is happening. That's near slavery.

Mr Le Gall is another CEO which only mission is to bring fresh money in the french treasury, and another good friend of the political that are currently making their Swiss accounts overflow. :dry: The same for Jean-Jacques Dordain. Typical 19th century-inherited industrial oligarchy.

This is extremely sad, because the Ariane 5 is a capable, reliable launcher., while the ATV has everything to become a nice crew transportation vehicle :facepalm:

I hope (and think) that things will evolve in the next few years.

 

[Ae7flux]

Time for an ISA (International Space Agency). It's that or hitching a ride with the Chinese.

 

[Victor_D]

Shifting priorities...yeah... now doing nothing at all is prime priority. Looking good at fairs with multimedia presentations and cheap spacecraft mock-ups, instead of building stuff that really flies.

I really hate it.

It was never about money, not directly. Europe (ESA, the EU, whatever) could easily afford manned spaceflight, if there was a strong political backing behind it.

But it isn't - that's the reality.

Personally, I see no point in that either. It was different a few years ago, when turning ATV into some sort of a manned capsule looked like it could make sense, because the US programme was going down and there were no alternatives. Now it doesn't - it looks like that barring some major screw up SpaceX will be able to supply both the launch vehicle and a human-rated capsule for a fraction of the cost of developing and (much more importantly) operating a European alternative.

I mean, seriously, how much does one Ariane-5 launch cost, hm? Oh, it's classified, of course, but I see number like $120 million floating around, and that probably doesn't even include all the hidden subsidies. Add to that the cost of the spacecraft itself - ATV costs how much, I can't even find a solid figure, only estimates ranging from $70 million to $300 million per unit. Manned spacecraft would probably be even more expensive.

This could easily end up being a NIGHTMARE to sustain for ESA, and for what benefit? To be able to walk out the airlock and wave the EU flag? To fly people to the ISS twice a year? We can't even have more than one or two Europeans on the ISS during the whole rotation anyway and knowing how long it takes to do anything in Europe, we'd be lucky if by the time our capsule flew the ISS was still up there.

If ESA's partners are able to provide cheaper tickets, let's buy from them. If the (American) commercial suppliers are able to offer even better prices, let's buy from them. Heck, if we start talking to the Chinese, we can even buy the service from them. We can only blame ourselves that there is no European "SpaceX" that could offer more competitive, all-European solution.

As I see it, there is no point in independent human spaceflight unless ESA's budget is at least doubled. As this is not going to happen, I suggest we abandon plans on doing another ridiculously expensive space capsule programme (as if the world hadn't enough of them already :facepalm: ) until something better appears. Something like... hm, Skylon? Why not put the €3 billion into it to kick start its development and boost the other investor's confidence in the project? It sure promises 100 times better results than any ATV-Evolution programme ever could, and it would only take about a decade.

 

[Urwumpe]

Oh yeah. SpaceX is a free US company that dreams of picking deep into the pockets of the US tax payer, so the Europeans should also let them have a monopoly? I see their business model rather as the classic "The first one is free".

In terms of manned spacecraft, I don't see any sense behind "one spacecraft to rule them all" - the more spacecraft are around, the less dependent we are that it works properly. The Space Shuttle had been a good example there how bad such dependency can make your work.

Also about nightmare to sustain - can you even imagine how cheap spaceflight actually is in relation to the rest of the financial activities of Europe? That we have our own farmers here despite the rest of the world being much cheaper, is a nightmare to sustain - still we do it. We spend more per year for keeping Nuclear reactors running and be competitive to coal power, as for spaceflight at all.

 

[Victor_D]

Oh yeah. SpaceX is a free US company that dreams of picking deep into the pockets of the US tax payer, so the Europeans should also let them have a monopoly? I see their business model rather as the classic "The first one is free".

Yes, that's exactly what I said /sarcasm

IF they can deliver a competitive product (and that's a big if, I fully agree with that sentiment), then let's buy from them. If not, there are always the Russians.

In terms of manned spacecraft, I don't see any sense behind "one spacecraft to rule them all" - the more spacecraft are around, the less dependent we are that it works properly. The Space Shuttle had been a good example there how bad such dependency can make your work.

Nah. Unless we're flying often enough, it makes no sense to have too many different spacecraft competing for the same minuscule market. It would be like having four cars to drive to your cabin in the woods twice a year.

Currently, from Europe's point of view, we need only about two flights a year to rotate our astronauts on the ISS. Starting a multi-billion spacecraft programme for this single purpose would be insane.

Also about nightmare to sustain - can you even imagine how cheap spaceflight actually is in relation to the rest of the financial activities of Europe?

There is no need to tell me this, I used the exact same argument in countless other debates with dozens of other people. I get it. For the money we (well, you, my country probably didn't pay that much since we're not using Euro yet) poured into the Greek financial black hole or otherwise wasted saving the bankers and other people who so deserve being saved from the consequences of their reckless greed (more sarcasm), we could have had an all-European mission to Mars.

But as I said in my previous post - this is the reality. ESA's budget is very limited. It can't sustain a manned spaceflight programme that would cost so much.

This view is quite common in ESA, from what I heard. Why waste billions in a programme we DON'T NEED, when we have better things to do? That's a perfectly legitimate question and the answer is it doesn't make sense. I'd much rather have a robust robotic Mars programme than this.

Plus, even if this programme was started, it would probably fall apart due to politics. In Europe it is even more difficult than in the US to sustain a massively expensive programme. 5 years and 5 billion Euros later, a major country (Germany, France or Italy) would pull out of the programme because its cherished 'national champions' weren't getting a big enough share of the orders, and we'd end up where we are now, only poorer and more disillusioned.

That we have our own farmers here despite the rest of the world being much cheaper, is a nightmare to sustain - still we do it.

For all it's worth, I say we shouldn't.

We spend more per year for keeping Nuclear reactors running and be competitive to coal power,

For all it's worth, I say we should.

---

Seriously, screw it. Save what money we have, pour it into Skylon if this year's pre-cooler test on the Viper engine succeeds, get EADS involved so that France doesn't grumble too much, and help develop it as a partner. If it succeeds, we can buy a few Skylons, build a runway in French Guyana and do whatever the heck we want in space for a fraction of the money it would cost us if we used Ariane-5/ATV-derived capsule.

 

[Urwumpe]

(Just as thought experiment)

Well, who says that we would need just two flights to the ISS... lets begin there.

We need about 100 flights in a relative short time to get manned spaceflight half-way economic (Explanation: all spacecraft or launch vehicles are estimated in their program costs for about 100 flights, everything more is bonus. The longer you need for 100 flights, the more money is consumed by time alone). Lets aim for 50 flights per year. Including mission control costs, this is about maximal 350 million per flight, if we use a small ATV based capsule. That means just 17 billion every year - peanuts compared to the bailouts, and if you really believe in supply side economics, such programs would mean a pretty good way to distribute money from public to private sector. Now lets go one step further - lets assume that most of the costs are actually fixed (flight controllers also need to be paid if no mission is flown), and only the hardware costs and launch pad maintenance (maybe additional launch pads) has to be paid more per flight... then we would quickly end at about 100 million per launch. If mass producing launchers would mean that the production costs could also drop...

The key is really just flight rate. If you just say you need only that many flights, you harm yourself, because you are likely better off not flying at all. It is like becoming just a tiny bit pregnant. Either you want to fly into space, or you don't. If you want to fly into space, you should also plan to do serious business there. Not just twice per year, but at least twice per week.

A ship that visits a polar outpost twice per year can also hardly be called economic, it just provides a basic service and that is manned spaceflight currently here - a basic service.

 

[N_Molson]

If we had to build 50 Ariane5/ATV-CTV per year, that would create a lot of well-paid hi-tech jobs all across Europe ; factories would have to be built, which means work for construction societies, transporters, metallurgy, chemicals etc etc... A virtuous circle, that would boost the economy. :yes:

That's a pretty dream...

 

[Urwumpe]

well, it isn't also alone about ESA missions or manned missions - if you would have also unmanned missions and have a few manned missions paid by private investors (space tourists, but also R&D service providers could be possible), you would get the needed flight rate faster.

 

[Ark]

But budget constraints and political squabbling

Same story everywhere. Never enough breathing room in the budget for space, but always another few hundred billion for bailouts and corporate welfare.

 

[Urwumpe]

Same story everywhere. Never enough breathing room in the budget for space, but always another few hundred billion for bailouts and corporate welfare.

Exactly. If I wouldn't be deeply suspicious of Marx teachings, I would smell class struggles.

 

[Cras]

The ISS is essentially a dead program. One of the main reasons NASA has ditched the Space Shutle. NASA is no longer interested in being in the buisness of LEO janitor work, puts up payloads in orbit, fixing things in orbit, or building a space statoin. As far as NASA is concerned, the ISS is complete, and now they want to go beyond LEO. For anyone to develop a vehicle designed for LEO and ISS flights is obsolete before the ink even dries on the first blue prints. Space X is in the lead to take over in the commercial sector because they promise a launch cost that nobody can come even close to matching. But once the ISS is done, so will that vehicle.

It seems finally, LEO is becoming old news in the eye of NASA.

 

[Urwumpe]

There is just one tiny problem of reality: LEO is half-way along the road to the other planets. Also the "janitor work" there, is still often too challenging for NASA.

Short: It is doubtful NASA will get anywhere without doing their LEO homework.

 

[Victor_D]

(Just as thought experiment)
(...)

Even though it's just a thought experiment, I don't like the results. It's what I'd call a brute force approach to space development, and as in most cases where it is applied, it would fail (and probably also break the thing you're trying to fix).

Not to mention the glaring unrealism. 17 billion Euros isn't much compared to the bailouts, but it's still about 4 times the current ESA budget. Provided that you don't want to scrap ESA sciences programmes, you'd have to make the overall budget at least 5 times bigger. That's not going to happen.

Especially not if the goal is to just send people up in their tin can capsules to... do... uhm, what is it exactly they're going to do up there anyway?

The only reason ESA is interested in human spaceflight at all is the ISS. It has spent a lot of money on it and it sure wants to utilize it to its maximum potential. However, you don't need 50 manned flights a year for that purpose. Two are actually just fine, unless the Russians and Americans suddenly realize they're not interested in spaceflight after all and kindly hand over the ISS to us for our exclusive occupation

Flight rate is not the key, not by a long shot. Unless the price of kg-to-LEO can be reduced to or below $1000/kg through the use of innovative technologies, trying to do massive space development using the brute force approach will end in an economic, political, moral and technological failure.

If we had to build 50 Ariane5/ATV-CTV per year, that would create a lot of well-paid hi-tech jobs all across Europe ; factories would have to be built, which means work for construction societies, transporters, metallurgy, chemicals etc etc... A virtuous circle, that would boost the economy. :yes:

That's a pretty dream...

Or rather, it would subsidize a whole army of people who would rapidly become addicted to the existing programme. Any change to that programme would be resisted, innovation would stall and when the programme finally collapsed, we'd be right where we started, only (much) poorer.

Don't take this wrong - I like Ariane, it is a fine launch vehicle, the best in its class. But it cannot and should not support our future manned spaceflight capability. The same goes to the ATV.

The reason is simple. Even if we could somehow make Ariane-5 twice as cheap, it would still cost us about €50 million per launch. Add to that the cost of the capsule - Russian Soyuz costs what, $50 million a piece? - and you still end up with the final price of about €20 million per astronaut per flight. That's not going to cut it. (Oh, and also if only 1 per 100 blew up or otherwise failed, we'd have a potential loss-of-crew situation on our hands every 2 years supposing we stuck to the 50-flights-per-year programme.)

Worse still, such a programme would lack the kind of innovation we want to stimulate. We'd be using existing hardware. Yes, we'd need some initial R&D to produce the manned capsule, but that's been done so many times before that there is nothing really new about it.


Sticking to Urwumpe's thought experiment, we'd have a programme costing us €17 billion a year (one Greek bailout every six years) to produce and fly an inherently obsolete spacecraft for no other purpose than to subsidize our aerospace sector. Great. Judging from the 'progress' of our heavily subsidized farmers, it wouldn't even spur innovation, on the contrary - it would establish a vested interest among these companies to stick to this programme at all costs and resist cheaper, more efficient alternatives. When you flood someone with money, they're not likely to learn the virtues of frugality and improvisation, as history shows us over and over again.

But why do I have to explain that? Just look at the history of the US space programme in the past 30 years - that's exactly what happened. They had the money, they had the know-how, they had the brilliant scientists and engineers, but instead of pushing the limits they've got stuck with a go-nowhere, ultra-expensive Shuttle programme. Too many vested interest in the status quo and today, when Shuttle is about to stop flying, they're in a state of near civil war over what to do next. I don't want that in Europe, no. Sure I'd like it if ESA budget was increased, I'd kill for it, but not if it was to be squandered on something like this.


What I want is to take what money we have and throw it into projects that can potentially revolutionize space travel. And until we can reap the benefits, let's do what we do best - science.

 

[N_Molson]

I would'nt say that the ISS is a "dead program". A lot of unspectacular but real science is done up there. And as the name of the station implies, NASA is not the only partner there. Roskosmos is greatly involved in the program. After 2020, it's probably possible to replace & expand the station further module by module, and fit it to the needs...

Edit : think what you want, I strongly believe that Tsiolkovsky was right and that an SSTO is a very unefficient way to reach orbit...

 

[Victor_D]

The ISS is essentially a dead program. One of the main reasons NASA has ditched the Space Shutle. NASA is no longer interested in being in the buisness of LEO janitor work, puts up payloads in orbit, fixing things in orbit, or building a space statoin. As far as NASA is concerned, the ISS is complete, and now they want to go beyond LEO. For anyone to develop a vehicle designed for LEO and ISS flights is obsolete before the ink even dries on the first blue prints. Space X is in the lead to take over in the commercial sector because they promise a launch cost that nobody can come even close to matching. But once the ISS is done, so will that vehicle.

It seems finally, LEO is becoming old news in the eye of NASA.

This is funny. As I see it, NASA doesn't know what to do, because NASA has no real leadership. The various factions within it keep fighting about what is it that the agency should do, and I don't see any consensus arising there.

Even if there was one, the politicians would pull it apart because their goals have nothing to do with what's good for NASA or the human future in space. They care about:

a) being re-elected, which means keeping space-related jobs alive in their states and constituencies, even if the things that are produced are no longer needed
b) being well-funded, which means keeping their big aerospace benefactors happy by awarding them expensive contracts protecting them from competition
c) being popular, which means being seen as supporters of deficit reduction, as a result of which they want to cut budgets in all the wrong places. Also, in the US being popular means being patriotic, USA#1 and this kind of bullcrap, so they're opposed to greater international cooperation too.

Points b) and c) are technically variations of a).

Obama doesn't give a damn about space exploration - he's neither opposed to it or hugely in favour of it - and his priorities lie elsewhere in any case. Worse, he doesn't really understand it, his science advisers don't either, even his NASA administrator doesn't seem to understand it, and collectively they keep failing to provide the sort of strong leadership NASA so desperately needs in times like these.

You'd better hope that your space entrepreneurs can deliver, or the US space programme will decline rapidly.

 

[Urwumpe]

I set the flight rate also high so the 100 flights needed for a vehicle in standard project planning are reached already after just two years, instead of 30.

I am no fan of spending taxes for something because we have always been paying taxes for it. But for pushing the limits of technology and letting private entrepreneurs operate in calm waters behind it, taxes are pretty well invested.

My idea was to make the rocket and spacecraft designs available to companies in the EU by license contracts for doing their business after a short service in government. And the two years are a good time for that. The R&D effort of the companies should be limited to simple short-term problems, while the government/ESA does the long-term and highly experimental stuff - but still both should do this with very short project cycles. Not decades anymore, years or months.

Currently, SpaceX would just be NASAs good student. NASA rewards them with taxes, for every bit of own initiative to earn such taxes. So the only difference between Boeing and SpaceX really is, that SpaceX is young, new, cute and has the better PR department.

 

[Victor_D]

I set the flight rate also high so the 100 flights needed for a vehicle in standard project planning are reached already after just two years, instead of 30.

Yeah, the "only" thing missing is a destination for these flights

I am no fan of spending taxes for something because we have always been paying taxes for it. But for pushing the limits of technology and letting private entrepreneurs operate in calm waters behind it, taxes are pretty well invested.

This is not the way to do it. Mass producing ATV/Ariane-5 derivatives in not what comes to mind when I hear "pushing the limits of technology". Your proposal is akin to your government telling BMW "ok, he's the deal - we'll subsidize the production of your EXISTING models forever. If you can't sell all these cars, we'll buy them from you." Under such a deal, what incentive would BMW have to invest into new models, say hybrid or electric cars? None, actually.

My idea was to make the rocket and spacecraft designs available to companies in the EU by license contracts for doing their business after a short service in government. And the two years are a good time for that. The R&D effort of the companies should be limited to simple short-term problems, while the government/ESA does the long-term and highly experimental stuff - but still both should do this with very short project cycles. Not decades anymore, years or months.

Hm, I think this would accomplish the opposite. Companies would focus on making cheap euros out of government subsidies, so they'd focus on projects that require as little innovation as possible and can thus go into production quickly. More revolutionary designs need work and it takes time, so why bother.

A better way to motivate companies is the prize system that's sometimes being used in the US. Why don't we say: "the first company to demonstrate XYZ capability will receive €1 billion." Not a measly million dollars, much more - enough to motivate even the established aerospace giants like EADS to take part (and invest their own money in the process). Even better, let's split the XYZ capability into steps X, Y, and Z and give money to whoever makes them first. The final billion euros would be the cherry on a cake.

So, do we want a SSTO? Ok, let's offer €1 billion to the company or consortium which first successfully flies it. That's about 1/10th of the projected Skylon development cost. Also, to ensure more funding along the way, let's reward them after each important step in the development process. Did they solve the problem of re-entry heat shielding? Nice, here's €50 million. Did they make a successful test of their air-breathing engine? Well done, here's another €50 million. Did they fly a sub-scale model? Great, here's more money. And so on, and so forth.

This would help combat the major problems that plague projects like this - the uncertainty, the lack of investor confidence, and very long development periods.

Currently, SpaceX would just be NASAs good student. NASA rewards them with taxes, for every bit of own initiative to earn such taxes. So the only difference between Boeing and SpaceX really is, that SpaceX is young, new, cute and has the better PR department.

You're partially correct. The main difference as I understand it is that SpaceX has a much greater freedom in developing their products. Under normal contracts, there are NASA people and politicians all over the place, telling the company not only what should be done, but also how (and which sub-contractors should be involved). SpaceX is being subsidized for demonstrating capability, but there is no such stifling oversight.

We'll see how it turns out, so far it seems to be going rather well.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

The ISS is essentially a dead program. One of the main reasons NASA has ditched the Space Shutle. NASA is no longer interested in being in the buisness of LEO janitor work, puts up payloads in orbit, fixing things in orbit, or building a space statoin. As far as NASA is concerned, the ISS is complete, and now they want to go beyond LEO. For anyone to develop a vehicle designed for LEO and ISS flights is obsolete before the ink even dries on the first blue prints. Space X is in the lead to take over in the commercial sector because they promise a launch cost that nobody can come even close to matching. But once the ISS is done, so will that vehicle.

It seems finally, LEO is becoming old news in the eye of NASA.

That's just completely incorrect.

The ISS is complete, but it's far from a "dead program". Over the next 10 years there is going to be an extensive program of utilisation from international partners and private/commercial entities.

And, while it's also true that NASA's new focus is BEO exploration, ISS will greatly aid NASA in that respect, since NASA will be using the ISS to develop the much-needed technologies that will allow them to go beyond LEO.