
France’s Prometheus reusable engine becomes ESA project, gets funding boost - nolok
http://spacenews.com/frances-prometheus-reusable-engine-becomes-esa-project-gets-funding-boost/
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nickik
What cycle is this? So far as I know ESA never developed staged cycle but I
can't find any information. A methane engine that is open-cycle will have hard
time being the bases of a reusable booster.

SpaceX is of course building a full-flow stage cycle, while BlueOrigin is
building a ox-rich stage cycle.

BlueOrigin will have the biggest, but SpaceX is building the most advanced
engine.

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dnautics
it's pretty crazy to think that the ESA is so far behind SpaceX that they are
starting research on a 'me-too' reusable engine while SpaceX has tested,
deployed, and proven theirs for over a year. SpaceX was working on this engine
10 years ago; in the time that it may take ESA to deploy the engine (let's
give them 5 years opportunistically assuming they can learn from SpaceX, and
cut through bureaucracy) SpaceX will have done 1000 launches of the same class
of engine.

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pmezard
Or maybe having been working on rockets for decades they have good insights
about what is valuable or not. And reusable stages still has to prove to be
worth it and not just a gimmick. As you like to say, market will solve it all.

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dnautics
To address the argument from authority, the presumption there is that the
existing expertise has been self selected by a rational and efficient market,
which in the government contracting sphere is very much not necessarily
rational, and I think you'd have a hard time finding an efficient market
anywhere.

It's pretty clear that from first principles, reusable rockets are a win[0].
The question of actualizing those principles can only be assessed by actually
_doing it_ , and is likely to be highly empirical. Unless there have been
secret launches we don't know about, the ESA cannot possibly have good insight
about whether or not it's valuable.

[0] then why haven't they done it yet? As a constrained market, none of the
contractors who normally build rockets have _had_ to yet. Moreover, I presume
a lot of the computational engineering would not have been so easy 10-20 years
ago, much less in a large contracting company with established folkways.

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namelost
I agree with what you're saying and I'd also like to add that SpaceX _could_
have failed. Based on the evidence available in 2002 there was no reason to
think that reusable rockets were necessarily going to work.

Musk is a gambler, and this time he won, but other times he has failed. The
reason he can gamble is because SpaceX is funded by private money.

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frabert
> The Prometheus program is making extensive use of new technologies and
> production methods, including 3-D printing [...]

Mmmh... Since when is 3D printing a production method instead of a prototyping
one? I'm kind of annoyed that people feel the need that something is MADE WITH
3D PRINTERS!!! in everything nowadays. I can't see how cheap ABS / PLA plastic
would fit in a rocket engine.

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mikeash
Industrial 3D metal printing is a real thing. SpaceX is using it for parts of
their Super Draco engines.

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frankharv
What's really a shame is SpaceX is going to have to compete with these massive
government programs while SpaceX created their own program from scratch with
private investors.

How is this fair? Sure DOD and NASA are customers but SpaceX financed their
advancements and had to convince the US government to use their platform with
successful launches.

This sounds similar to Airbus's support. Why is this allowed. US intelligence
should be sabotaging these free market cheaters. Europe is acting like China,
where the government is financially supporting major industries competing with
the US. I will call it what it is. Economic Warfare. Maybe more aptly Economic
Welfare Warfare.

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anacoluthe
SpaceX was awarded $1.6 billion for 12 cargo missions 10 years ago. Given
their current pricing, that sounds a lot like public investment...

The model is simply different in Europe where public money funds most of the
development costs: market size is smaller in Europe (compared to US
institutional market for example), geographic return makes things more
complicated and it is of course all about independent space access.

Finally, all US institutional satellites must be launched on American
launchers ("Buy American Act"), which is not the case in Europe. Free market,
were you saying?

