Isar is very far behind development schedule and most dishonest - the only European launcher company that still did not revise the nonsense launch date 2023. Maia is in the most early stage of all and at highest risk to come too late. And Orbex still did not show anything but mock-up hardware, recently firing their founder CEO.
Of all mentioned companies, ABL and RFA look most promising to me. Both SaxaVord customers. And doing only one launch from there would not make sense economically. More likely ABL / Lockheed are eyeing some market share in Europe. Advantage for European customers would be not having to export their payloads.
Quote from: c4fusion on 09/01/2023 10:09 pmQuote from: trimeta on 09/01/2023 08:43 pmQuote from: PM3 on 09/01/2023 08:36 pmAdvantage for European customers would be not having to export their payloads.Elsewhere I've questioned the relative expense/difficulty of "export our payload" vs. "export our rocket," and I haven't really received a satisfying answer. Yes, the customer bears the expense of "export our payload" directly, while "export our rocket" is covered by the launch provider, but surely the launch provider is going to pass those expenses onto the customer anyway, right? Perhaps if the launch provider exports rockets frequently, they can create a division dedicated to sending rockets to foreign nations (which would help expedite and reduce the cost of the process), but couldn't they also create a division to help their customers with exporting payloads (gaining the same exact economies of scale)?A rocket is a standardized shape and size and probably contains far less super delicate stuff - so it does make sense to ship the rocket.I'm not sure I buy that a rocket (which necessarily includes multiple rocket engines) is less delicate than the payload it's meant to carry -- after all, said payload has to handle the loads of launch same as the rest of the rocket, so it can't exactly be a delicate flower itself. And while the rocket's shape and size is more standard, it's also much, much larger than the payload, and that alone would seem to make the payload easier to pack into places. For example, you could certainly fit the payload inside a dedicated 20-foot cargo container, and if that seems wasteful and inefficient (since you're shipping something much smaller than a full cargo container), that's an implicit acknowledgement that you think something smaller would be easier to ship (even if it's not as standard as the 20-foot cargo container).
Quote from: trimeta on 09/01/2023 08:43 pmQuote from: PM3 on 09/01/2023 08:36 pmAdvantage for European customers would be not having to export their payloads.Elsewhere I've questioned the relative expense/difficulty of "export our payload" vs. "export our rocket," and I haven't really received a satisfying answer. Yes, the customer bears the expense of "export our payload" directly, while "export our rocket" is covered by the launch provider, but surely the launch provider is going to pass those expenses onto the customer anyway, right? Perhaps if the launch provider exports rockets frequently, they can create a division dedicated to sending rockets to foreign nations (which would help expedite and reduce the cost of the process), but couldn't they also create a division to help their customers with exporting payloads (gaining the same exact economies of scale)?A rocket is a standardized shape and size and probably contains far less super delicate stuff - so it does make sense to ship the rocket.
Quote from: PM3 on 09/01/2023 08:36 pmAdvantage for European customers would be not having to export their payloads.Elsewhere I've questioned the relative expense/difficulty of "export our payload" vs. "export our rocket," and I haven't really received a satisfying answer. Yes, the customer bears the expense of "export our payload" directly, while "export our rocket" is covered by the launch provider, but surely the launch provider is going to pass those expenses onto the customer anyway, right? Perhaps if the launch provider exports rockets frequently, they can create a division dedicated to sending rockets to foreign nations (which would help expedite and reduce the cost of the process), but couldn't they also create a division to help their customers with exporting payloads (gaining the same exact economies of scale)?
Advantage for European customers would be not having to export their payloads.
Quote from: PM3 on 09/01/2023 08:36 pmIsar is very far behind development schedule and most dishonest - the only European launcher company that still did not revise the nonsense launch date 2023. Maia is in the most early stage of all and at highest risk to come too late. And Orbex still did not show anything but mock-up hardware, recently firing their founder CEO.Isar Aerospace has raised several hundreds of millions, more than all the other Europeans combined. Being years late is standard operating procedure in this domain, it's almost not worth tracking the dates...Maiaspace is building on Themis, and while young as an independent company, it is basically a 100% owned ArianeGroup company building on the money that went into Themis already under Arianeworks. Quote Of all mentioned companies, ABL and RFA look most promising to me. Both SaxaVord customers. And doing only one launch from there would not make sense economically. More likely ABL / Lockheed are eyeing some market share in Europe. Advantage for European customers would be not having to export their payloads.ABL's major contracts are with the DoD /USAF and Lockheed Martin, all of which are for US launches - 58 of them for LM.European customers will still need lots of US paperwork to launch on imported launch vehicles. They will need an FAA payload review to launch on a US-owned vehicle, at minimum. For the launcher firms it's twice the paperwork: Virgin Orbit needed both FAA and CAA licences for the Cornwall launch (public record, look at the FAA launch licensing website). It will certainly be the same for ABL. So the paperwork is possibly more complex than a "local" launch. Mahia, by the way, is actually US territory, like a US embassy in New Zealand - look it up, it's a special US-NZ treaty.RFA are still years away. They have not raised enough money to launch anything capable of delivering circa 1 ton of payload to orbit anytime soon. Just look at the amounts spent for similar vehicles by Firefly, ABL, Isar, Relativity - hundreds of millions - if not billions - each. RFA have barely raised $70m, and around $30m of that is from the very, very recent - and still not definitive, by the way - KKR deal for OHB, so it has not yet been deployed.
Mahia, by the way, is actually US territory, like a US embassy in New Zealand - look it up, it's a special US-NZ treaty.
Incorrect. The small LV market has almost completely collapsed. There was a brief tick up with small sat experiments and demos, but those quickly moved over to heavy launch vehicles as ride-shares at lower cost. There will be room for 1 or 2 micro launchers, but no more.
Looks like more nails into the small sat launcher dream, this time from Tory Burno:https://www.twitter.com/torybruno/status/1698121784003015116QuoteIncorrect. The small LV market has almost completely collapsed. There was a brief tick up with small sat experiments and demos, but those quickly moved over to heavy launch vehicles as ride-shares at lower cost. There will be room for 1 or 2 micro launchers, but no more.
Good luck getting to space on a ULA LV. Hope satellite operator survives from lack of revenue caused by satellite sitting on ground waiting for ride.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 09/06/2023 03:30 pmGood luck getting to space on a ULA LV. Hope satellite operator survives from lack of revenue caused by satellite sitting on ground waiting for ride.There are no satellites sitting on the ground waiting for a ride from ULA. Just the opposite. There are a lot of ULA rockets sitting on the ground waiting for their payloads.
Quote from: mkent on 09/07/2023 05:24 amQuote from: TrevorMonty on 09/06/2023 03:30 pmGood luck getting to space on a ULA LV. Hope satellite operator survives from lack of revenue caused by satellite sitting on ground waiting for ride.There are no satellites sitting on the ground waiting for a ride from ULA. Just the opposite. There are a lot of ULA rockets sitting on the ground waiting for their payloads.Astrobotic and Amazon would disagree with your statement.
Quote from: imprezive on 09/07/2023 02:25 pmQuote from: mkent on 09/07/2023 05:24 amQuote from: TrevorMonty on 09/06/2023 03:30 pmGood luck getting to space on a ULA LV. Hope satellite operator survives from lack of revenue caused by satellite sitting on ground waiting for ride.There are no satellites sitting on the ground waiting for a ride from ULA. Just the opposite. There are a lot of ULA rockets sitting on the ground waiting for their payloads.Astrobotic and Amazon would disagree with your statement.See Tory's tweets.This debate is about smallsat rideshare killing small LV industry. Not about primary payloads. ULA hasn't delivered rideshare to orbit in over a year. Electron and its competitors has nothing to fear from ULA any time soon. SpaceX on the other hand is flying a lot of rideshare payloads that could've flown on small LV.
They are only a primary because they are stuck on the ground otherwise.
Quote from: imprezive on 09/08/2023 05:31 amThey are only a primary because they are stuck on the ground otherwise.Which does rather highlight one of the reasons dedicated small launch has continued to stick around despite several years of SpaceX rideshares being available. Even the 'cost' of burning an entire Atlas V (far more than a dedicated small launcher) was less than the cost of not launching in a timely manner.
How about the following?Jielong-3, 2.5 t SSO, 2022-SSLV , 0.5 t LEO, 2022-Lijian-1, 2.0 t SSO, 2022-Qaem-100, 2022-Terran-1, 1.48 t LEO, 2023-2023, SFSLV, 2023- - Ed Kyle
SFSLV, 2023-
