- April 4, 2024
- Posted by: admin
- Category: Emilio Cozzi
The reduction in launch system costs concerns all space powers. Because the market, especially for small satellites, could become saturated. An opportunity not to be missed, both in the East and in the West.
BY EMILIO COZZI
The rules of the game are these: mass production – for frequent launches – reuse, and reliability. These are three elements that support each other; without one of them, the entire castle collapses. And it’s understood why SpaceX’s surge still has no rivals: it’s the only space company capable of doing all this with its own rockets.
However, it’s evident, even for strategic reasons, SpaceX cannot be the solution to everything.
Because the progressive reduction of space access costs is a multifaceted polyhedron. Reflecting a consistent trend.
Launch, launch, launch
As attempted to highlight in the second part of this overview, the demand for an increasing number of launches was met (and in some ways stimulated) initially by Elon Musk’s company, with civil contracts for NASA – for which SpaceX remains the sole provider of astronaut transport services to orbit – and military, for Defense. These are two pillars on which SpaceX has based its commercial strategy in the global market. The numbers, in this sense, are ruthless: in 2023, out of 223 launches globally – an absolute record, the third in a row – 98 were carried out by SpaceX. Excluding the two Starship test launches and the five (successful) Falcon Heavy flights, there remain 91 launches with a Falcon 9. It is the most used launcher by far, the only one whose first stage returns to Earth to then relaunch. This fact speaks volumes about the economies of scale realized by Musk’s company.
The second launcher in this special ranking is the Long March 2D, Chinese, of medium power. Almost all Long March rockets from Beijing have taken to space (plus some commercial companies, in a landscape with increasingly interesting destinies), which recalls how launchers are developed as a family, with common technologies and modular designs capable of lowering costs. As always, the “heavier” rockets have a lower cost per kilogram. According to available figures, the Long March 5 competes with the Falcon 9 ($3,000 per kilogram). The 2D, less powerful, has costs that, in scale, increase to about $10,000 per kilogram.
This is a story that began almost twenty years ago: already in 2008, Space Systems/Loral asked the United States government to “prevent a competitor – Thales Alenia Space – from offering the Chinese Long March rocket in commercial competitions, because the low-cost Chinese launch vehicles give the Franco-Italian company a competitive advantage”. Competition from China in this sector, which cannot be excluded as constituting a further variable in the increasingly complex equation of the global launch market, then had to contend with a significant “political veto”: that of the United States, which de facto prevented, initially by availing itself of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the use of American components in satellites launched by Chinese carriers. Launch systems that, not surprisingly, now predominantly transport government payloads or payloads from the domestic market.
The intensive use and integration of technologies represent a predominant factor in the ability to reduce costs. These are combined, even for less exploited launchers, with design and construction, phases that have led to revisions and profound changes in order to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive context. Just a few years ago, a NASA report authored by Harry W. Jones, a system engineer at the Ames Research Center, listed factors for cost reduction. In summary: simplify the vehicle configuration; increase production and launch rates; use industrial design and production methods (cultural change); optimize minimum cost; reduce the number of parts; increase design simplicity and margins; reduce instrumentation. In other words: simplify, simplify as much as possible.
Jones cited the example of the United Launch Alliance (ULA), the joint venture established in December 2006 by Lockheed Martin and Boeing: ULA’s substantial monopoly regime in the United States had prevented cost reduction. According to Jones, the reason lay in a “pachydermic system of ‘hundreds of subcontractors and dozens of facilities scattered throughout the country, a political necessity for a government-funded work program”. It is no coincidence, then, that ULA lost large market shares to Russia (Soyuz) and Europe (Ariane 5), which launched at competitive prices even without being protagonists of a revolution like the one that would come with SpaceX.
One thinks of a phrase by Musk: “I bet a thousand to one that if you buy a Honda Civic, it won’t break down in the first year of operation. You can have an inexpensive but reliable car, and the same goes for rockets.” In short, you don’t need an armored SUV to go to work, at least not for everyone. But if you are the president of the United States (translated, a very important, vital satellite), the story changes: it all depends, always, on how strategic the payload is, so as to choose the most suitable launcher with the highest probability of success. It could be a valuable space telescope (as happened with the European Euclid, or the James Webb Space Telescope, both launched atop a rocket used exclusively for that mission), or a very expensive telecommunications satellite to be positioned 36,000 kilometers above Earth, in both cases investments different from a university student’s experiment or a small low-cost prototype, which can hitch a ride on a “bus” in rideshare, sharing the ride on the same rocket with dozens of micro or nanosatellites.
Building in series
One of the mass production strategies implemented by SpaceX concerns, for example, the engines: the Falcon 9 is propelled into the sky by nine Merlins for the first stage and, for the second, by another Merlin adapted for vacuum propulsion. The Falcon Heavy uses the three first stages of a Falcon 9, that is, 27 Merlins, and another for vacuum in the second stage. A scale production, albeit to a lesser extent, is what ArianeGroup and Avio have implemented, with the joint use of new solid fuel boosters, the P120C. One of these constitutes the first stage of the new Vega C and the two or four (depending on the configuration) boosters for Ariane 6, the new European heavy launcher, ready to debut next summer.
According to statements by managers, Vega C, mostly built in Italy, has a cost almost unchanged compared to its predecessor, Vega, but with greater power and a reduction in cost per kilogram “by 50 percent”. For Ariane 6, on the other hand, ArianeGroup has somewhat revolutionized the production system in French facilities, with a horizontal assembly line, ready to guarantee greater efficiency and fluidity in the realization of individual elements, and assembly at the spaceport of Kourou, in French Guiana. The investment for development exceeds four billion euros (doubled compared to initial estimates) and the accumulated delays have raised many eyebrows. The launch cost is around 90 million euros, according to Mike Healy, head of scientific projects at the European Space Agency: 25 million to fly aboard an Ariane 62, that is, about 25 million (dollars) more than a Falcon 9. And at least 115 million in configuration 64, the one with four boosters. With some rough calculations, this ranges from 8,600 to 5,000 euros per kilogram, against SpaceX’s commercial offer of 2,700 euros per kilogram, which, in the case of choosing a Falcon Heavy, would drop below 1,500 euros per kilogram. Still, a significant step forward compared to the reliable Ariane 5, which allows staying on the market. At least until the competition becomes truly ruthless. Ariane 6 will not be reusable and, in terms of commercial expectations, it is expected to make about ten launches per year. An order of magnitude less than the Falcon 9, which aims to exceed 100 launches in 2024.
Meanwhile, in French facilities, prototypes of new, lower-cost launchers are taking shape. Already adopted by numerous startups, the underlying spirit is that of “less is more.” The fewer components there are, the fewer can break. Prometheus is an example, an engine mostly 3D printed and currently in development at ArianeGroup facilities for the European Space Agency, for a reusable rocket prototype, Themis. Additive manufacturing aims to reduce the parts that make up the thruster and speed up production at a significant fraction of the cost.
The Eastern Elephant
India is emerging in this landscape, having recently opened the space market to foreign investment and possessing three launchers with which, in 2023, it conducted seven missions, all successful. One of these was Chandraayan-3, New Delhi’s historic (robotic) landing on the Moon. In an interview, Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, the head of the Indian Space Agency (ISRO), spoke of costs to be reduced from $20,000 to $5,000 per kilogram for payloads in orbit, and of the fact that reusable launchers could be developed in the future. Meanwhile, ISRO has launched the new light launcher, SSLV, for loads of a few hundred kilograms. And it has begun to acquire important contracts, such as those for the OneWeb constellation. Unlike Europe and like China – which nonetheless remains a step ahead – India can rely on the support of a very determined central government to sit among the space giants.
However, there is a variable that is little talked about and that instead remains there, like an (Indian) elephant in the room: only on the basis of its economic power, India could sit at the G7 table (which would become G8). Its GDP is the fifth largest in the world, behind that of the United States, China, Germany, and Japan; the population of the Continent Nation has recently surpassed that of China, in numbers, becoming the most populous state on the planet; and it has a rapidly growing economy, also in the space sector. Domestic demand will not be lacking. Chinese isolation, as seen, did not stop or slow down Beijing in its ascent beyond the atmosphere. It will be impossible, in the coming years, not to take into account Eastern competition.