from Hacker News

When Europe needed it most, the Ariane 6 rocket delivered

by _mitterpach on 3/7/25, 12:48 PM with 13 comments

• by perihelions on 3/7/25, 2:46 PM

  As a side curiosity, this was the first Arianespace flight that made a controlled de-orbit of a cryogenic* upper stage for safe disposal[0,1].

  Ariane 5 didn't have this capability, because its hydrogen-oxygen engines weren't designed to be re-ignited in space.

  The first Ariane 6 deorbit attempt (2024) did not succeed[2]—that upper stage is now space junk that will reenter in an uncontrolled manner. Not that that's particularly wrong: all rocket stages used to do that, up until very recently. (There's even dead nuclear reactors orbiting the Earth that will reenter with their spent fuel, at some random location—though that won't happen for a few centuries).

  *(Their hypergolic stages used have to this capability, but they retired those 15+ years ago for performance)

  [0] https://bsky.app/profile/planet4589.bsky.social/post/3ljqmxl... ("Ariane 6002 deorbit trajectory, southward over the Indian Ocean with entry around 1910 UTC")

  [1] https://bsky.app/profile/planet4589.bsky.social/post/3ljqfpg... ("Thanks to those who confirmed (1) Ariane 6 did its deorbit burn and (2) deorbit location was over the Indian Ocean around 90E 35S")

  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_VA262#Mission ("The failure left the upper stage stranded in a 580-kilometre (360 mi) circular orbit. At this altitude, their natural orbital decay due to atmospheric drag is expected to take decades.")

• by Isamu on 3/7/25, 2:33 PM

  >"For this sovereignty, we must yield to the temptation of preferring SpaceX or another competitor that may seem trendier, more reliable, or cheaper," Baptiste said.

  must NOT yield

• by niemandhier on 3/10/25, 5:52 PM

  Ariane was a nice thing to have in the recent past, something you keep around to not get completely dependent, but it was always clear commercial stuff would be cheaper.

  Things have changed, it’s very unlikely anything of strategic importance will be given to us companies now, cost does not matter when it comes to defence anymore.

• by cwizou on 3/7/25, 3:13 PM

  > But at what cost? Arianespace hasn't publicly disclosed the cost for an Ariane 6 launch, although it's likely somewhere in the range of 80 million to 100 million euros, about 40 percent lower than the cost of an Ariane 5. This is about 50 percent more than SpaceX's list price for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch.

  I'm slightly surprised it's only 50% more expensive than a dedicated F9 launch. I would have thought it to be much worse. Non reusable means low cadence : there are only five Ariane 6 flights scheduled for 2025. Commercially, it's not great, but the article goes on explaining the importance of having a pure EU solution.

  But it's certainly a bit of a cope out to for Arianespace, while sovereignty is definitely becoming an issue, reading the article, it's pretty clear that they are pushing that PR angle a bit too hard. That allows them to shove aside the many many fumblings around reusability that happened in the previous years. They do have a new CEO since January, though.

  It looks like they finally started assembly a few months ago for a "hopper" test vehicle for basically what would be a F9 class launcher (expected to be operational in the 2030s) : <https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Fu...>

  ESA is also pushing for studying a heavier reusable launcher : https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Fu...

• by sq_ on 3/7/25, 2:41 PM

  It’ll be interesting to see if Ariane 6 can ever reach competitiveness with SpaceX on price for commercial launches, but I’m sure Europe will be happy to have their own workhorse rocket for the next decade or two, whatever the cost may be.