The ever-competitive launch services market has once again been thrown into the spotlight, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk promoting the low cost of his vehicles, claiming Arianespace\u2019s Ariane 5 has \u201cno chance\u201d of competing with his Falcon rockets on price. However, another big player in the market \u2013 the United Launch Alliance (ULA) \u2013 believe customers are more interested in reliability.\n<\/p>\n
Who To Launch With:<\/p>\n
Customers wishing to launch their payloads into orbit have several options to choose from, with companies based around the world, sometimes with several launch vehicle options available to cater for their spacecraft.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Z411.jpg\" "\\"Z4\\"")
Arianespace currently have three vehicles on their books, with the Vega the latest rocket to enter the market, enabling small spacecraft to be launched from their base at the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Arianespace also added the Soyuz launch vehicle to their roster, becoming the stable mate of their flagship Ariane 5 rocket.<\/p>\n
The company currently rely on their Ariane 5 ECA (Cryogenic Evolution type A), the most powerful version in the Ariane 5 range, which successfully lofted its dual payload of the Star One C3 and Eutelsat21B\/W6A telecommunication satellites \u2013 weighing in at a combined 9.6 tonnes \u2013 into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) this month.<\/p>\n
The launch represented the 210th mission of an Ariane family launcher since the maiden liftoff of an Ariane 1 version in 1979. The launch was also the 66th Ariane 5 liftoff, the 51st success in a row, as Arianespace hold claim to being the top launch services company on the planet, with an order book full to the brim.<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, the Ariane 5 ME (Mid-life Evolution) is currently classed as in development for flight in 2016-2017, sporting a new Upper Stage with an increased propellant volume, powered by the Vinci expander cycle engine that \u2013 unlike the ECA\u2019s HM7B engine \u2013 can restart up to five times, allowing for direct GEO insertion.<\/p>\n
However, Arianespace may opt to push forward with the Ariane 6 \u2013 more suited to larger satellites and cheaper production costs \u2013 to cater for their target market in the years to come.<\/p>\n
Rocket launch schedules (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n This subject is on the agenda for ministers from the European Space Agency\u2019s 20 member states at their meeting in Naples this month.<\/p>\n The main question is whether to advance straight to the Ariane 6, or continue on the path of upgrading to the Ariane 5 ME. ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain has previously mentioned the need for Ariane 6 by directly referencing competitors in India, China \u2013 and in the US, namely SpaceX.<\/p>\n \u201cAriane 5 has no chance. I don\u2019t say that with a sense of bravado but there\u2019s really no way for that vehicle to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy,\u201d noted Mr Musk, who was in London to speak at the Royal Aeronautical Society where he was being honored for his role in commercial space.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were in the position of Ariane, I would really push for an Ariane 6.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the keys to Mr Musk\u2019s comment is the pricing of the services provided, with SpaceX entering \u2013 and claiming to being able to sustain \u2013 a much cheaper cost to the customer than all of its main competitors, both domestic and overseas, such as Arianespace.<\/p>\n However, low costs aren\u2019t everything, as pointed out by Dr George Sowers, ULA VP for Human Launch Services, who was speaking prior to Mr Musk\u2019s interview, when asked about how ULA compete on price.<\/p>\n \u201cThe short and direct answer is that ULA has, and will continue, to compete on total value to include price. We have gone head to head with SpaceX on several occasions and have won the majority,\u201d Dr Sowers said to NASASpaceFlight.com in August.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the launch business, price is never the sole consideration for the buyer. That\u2019s because launch price is a small percentage of the total program value (which can exceed replacement cost when there\u2019s no money to replace, like the Glory spacecraft).\u201d<\/p>\n Falcon 9 has only launched four times, with some dicey moments during its short history, most notably with the CRS-1 Dragon launch last month \u2013 although all four launches have resulted in primary mission success.<\/p>\n The Atlas V is currently used by NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD) for critical space missions to launch highly expensive payloads into orbit \u2013 as seen with the successes with the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and NASA\u2019s Juno probe.<\/p>\n Notably, SpaceX and ULA have a \u201ccompetitive\u201d history in the national security payload arena, namely the contracts associated with the US Government-sponsored Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program.<\/p>\n \u201cIn ULA\u2019s market of national security payloads and unique science probes, capability, schedule assurance and reliability often overwhelm any other consideration. As a citizen and taxpayer, I think that\u2019s appropriate,\u201d added Dr Sowers.<\/p>\n \u201cNot to minimize SpaceX\u2019s impressive achievements, but ULA\u2019s customers want to see a track record of success, repeatably delivering complex payloads to orbit, safely and on time.\u201d<\/p>\n SpaceX are hoping their Falcon 9 will launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) via a crew-capable version of their Dragon spacecraft, while ULA\u2019s Atlas V has both the Boeing CST-100 and SNC\u2019s Dream Chaser under its wing.<\/p>\n (Images: ULA, SpaceX, Arianespace, BBC, SNC and L2).<\/p>\n (Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can support NSF and access the best space flight content on the entire internet).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ever-competitive launch services market has once again been thrown into the spotlight, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk promoting the low cost of his vehicles, claiming Arianespace\u2019s Ariane 5 has \u201cno chance\u201d of competing with his Falcon rockets on price. However, another big player in the market \u2013 the United Launch Alliance (ULA) \u2013 believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1540,498,7758,9127,479,316,363],"class_list":["post-39971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ariane-5","tag-arianespace","tag-atlas-v","tag-falcom-heavy","tag-falcon-9","tag-spacex","tag-ula"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Z59.jpg\" "\\"Z5\\"")
It is possible Mr Dordian\u2019s naming of SpaceX as a direct competitor caused Mr Musk to comment on Arianespace\u2019s current flagship, Ariane 5 \u2013 during an interview with the BBC\u2019s Jonathan Amos \u2013 noting that a failure to evolve the European workhorse would only lead to his Falcon rockets dominating over the Ariane.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/A441.jpg\" "\\"A44\\"")
Mr Musk is understandably buoyant about his company\u2019s future in the market, with an order book that is filling up at an extraordinary pace for such a relatively young company, in addition to the upcoming debut of Falcon 9\u2019s big brother, the Falcon Heavy \u2013 which will be the most powerful launch vehicle on the planet when it makes its first ride uphill.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/A711.jpg\" "\\"A71\\"")
\u201cNot only can we sustain the prices, but the next version of Falcon 9 is actually able to go to a lower price,\u201d added Mr Musk during the BBC interview. \u201cSo if Ariane can\u2019t compete with the current Falcon 9, it sure as hell can\u2019t compete with the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Z68.jpg\" "\\"Z6\\"")
ULA operate the Delta IV and the Atlas V \u2013 the latter sporting what the company proclaims to be a 100 percent track record since its 2002 debut.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Z93.jpg\" "\\"MWO\\"")
Atlas V \u2013 like Falcon 9 \u2013 is now walking down the path of proving it can be entrusted with launching humans into orbit, with both vehicles facing off in NASA\u2019s commercial crew development program competition. The two launch vehicles are the last rockets standing, as the process moved into the Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCAP) stage.<\/p>\n