{"id":109349,"date":"2020-06-30T09:02:49","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T16:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/spacexs-reusable-falcon-rockets-have-europe-thinking-two-steps-ahead"},"modified":"2020-07-04T20:28:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T03:28:31","slug":"spacexs-reusable-falcon-rockets-have-europe-thinking-two-steps-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/spacexs-reusable-falcon-rockets-have-europe-thinking-two-steps-ahead","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s reusable Falcon rockets have Europe thinking two steps ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Rr1Dgy3m3dA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a rare instance of some connection to reality, a European Union commissioner overseeing the space industry has acknowledged the elephant in the room, admitting that SpaceX has changed the game for commercial rockets and that the upcoming Ariane 6 rocket may already be outdated.<\/p>\n<p>While slight, European Commissioner Thierry Breton expressed <em>some<\/em> level of urgency, stating that \u201cSpaceX has redefined the standards for launchers.\u201d \u201cAriane 6 is a necessary step, but not the ultimate aim: we must start thinking now about Ariane 7.\u201d Ariane 6 is a new European Space Agency (ESA) rocket designed to replace the existing Ariane 5 workhorse and do some while cutting costs. However, the vehicle\u2019s design and the strategy behind it were fixed in place <em>before<\/em> SpaceX began to routinely demonstrate Falcon 9 reusability, effectively creating a rocket optimized for a market that ceased to exist soon after.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the economically infeasible design decision to build a hybrid first stage with a liquid core and add-on solid rocket boosters (SRBs), as well as the structurally inefficient use of hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant for the booster, Ariane 6 is designed to compete with the likes of the United Launch Alliance\u2019s (ULA) Delta IV, Atlas V, and upcoming Vulcan rockets. Despite several years of halfhearted, half-baked attempts to even <em>consider<\/em> making parts of Ariane 6 reusable, the rocket will be 100% expendable come its first (and likely last) launches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a rare instance of some connection to reality, a European Union commissioner overseeing the space industry has acknowledged the elephant in the room, admitting that SpaceX has changed the game for commercial rockets and that the upcoming Ariane 6 rocket may already be outdated. While slight, European Commissioner Thierry Breton expressed some level of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109512,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109349\/revisions\/109512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}