Ariane-6 Next Generation Launcher

[Salo]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1203/22legall/index2.html

Question: When would you like to see an Ariane 5 replacement?

Le Gall: I think that whatever the European governments decide, either to upgrade the Ariane 5 or to develop fr om scratch a new launch vehicle, it will seven to eight years. That means about 2020.

Question: That is assuming there is a decision this year.

Le Gall: Right, at the end of this year there is a ministerial meeting of the ESA Council. If there is a decision, it will be for a first flight in 2020, 2018, or 2019.

Question: Would it be a specific replacement or a supplement to Ariane 5?

Le Gall: In both cases, it will be the same.

Question: Would you be looking for something that has the same performance as Ariane 5?

Le Gall: No, in fact, if there is an upgrade of Ariane 5, it will be with extra capacity, probably with 1.5 or 2 extra tonnes. If it is an Ariane 6, people speak about a launcher which will be around 6 tonnes. I think we still have to wait a few months because there are different points to be considered before choosing this new launch vehicle, and that is the discussion in Europe.

Question: What kind of cost would you estimate is needed to develop a new rocket, and what specific performance metrics would you want to improve?

Le Gall: I've heard a cost of about a few billion euros. As for the performance, it's about 6-to-6.5 tonnes.

Question: Compared to what for a single launch?

Le Gall: Ariane 5 today does not perform single launch, just dual-launch. If there is an option to upgrade Ariane 5, it will be by a few tonnes. If there is an option to develop a new launch vehicle, it will be a launch vehicle in the range of 6 tonnes.

Question: For single or dual launches?

Le Gall: For single launches.

Question: Would you replace the Ariane 5 or would you continue to use that?

Le Gall: I don't know. It's too long-term.

Question: Could you share your thoughts on some of the more recent entrants to the launch vehicle family, particularly with the new Angara comes online or when the new Long March family comes out, or the Indian launchers?

Le Gall: You see, all these people have many projects. But in this business, projects are existing when you start to launch. Let us wait for the first launch. When I arrived in this business 10 years ago, we already spoke about the first flight of Angara. That was 10 years ago. We didn't see any flights. And the next Long March? We'll see. But today, the Long March is mostly out of the market due to the ITAR regulations.

Question: Will that change anytime soon?

Le Gall: It doesn't seem to be that will be a trend.

Question: If the ESA Council decides on the development of a new launcher, which would preclude you from doing dual-launches in the distant future, what would that do to your competitiveness?

Le Gall: I'm not comfortable speaking about Ariane 6 too much yet. It is not yet the business of Arianespace. It is now the business of the European Space Agency, and there are changes every week because we are in a process wh ere people think and try to adapt. We will rendezvous at the end of the year at the ministerial conference, and a decision should be taken then. Today, we see the two options, and upgrade of Ariane 5 or a new launch vehicle. Once you decide on those, you can say much more.

[instml]

SES Chief Prefers Modular Ariane 6 for Launch Flexibility

PARIS — The world's second-largest commercial satellite fleet operator has advised the European Space Agency (ESA) that the future commercial launch market would prefer a next-generation rocket that is modular in design and capable of orbiting telecommunications satellites of varying sizes one at a time.

Luxembourg-based SES is ready to consider ordering all-electric-propulsion satellites for its future fleet requirements, a development that likely would have an effect on the kind of launch vehicles it buys, SES Chief Executive Romain Bausch said.

"We see the market splitting into two groups of satellites — one between 3,000 and 3,500 kilograms, the other at 6,000 to 6,500 kilograms," Bausch said in remarks to journalists March 12 that were supplemented March 28 in response to Space News inquiries.

"ESA has asked us our thoughts about the market and we have told them what we thought,"he said. "It is certainly along the lines of what has been called Ariane 6, a modular vehicle capable of launching one satellite at a time covering the two weight classes into GTO," or geostationary transfer orbit, the rocket drop-off point for most telecommunications satellites.

The 19-nation ESA is canvassing European commercial and government satellite owners to determine what kind of vehicle to propose to the agency's member governments when they meet in November. One vehicle would provide more power to the current Ariane 5, while another option would develop the modular vehicle.

Like most of the world's established fleet operators, SES is not known for being on the cutting edge of new technology. But with its satellite fleet at about 50 spacecraft and counting, the company is able to experiment with innovations that would be more difficult for startup operators.

SES notably has said in the past year or two that all-electric satellites, which can save hundreds of kilograms over conventional chemical propulsion, are a near-term possibility.

The news that two relatively small fleet operators, Asia Broadcast Satellite of Hong Kong and Satmex of Mexico, had together purchased four all-electric satellites from Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems of El Segundo, Calif., has only encouraged SES to move forward.

"You can save 20 [million], 30 [million] or 40 million euros [$26 million to $52 million] if you can reduce by 10-20 percent the weight of your satellite," Bausch said. "That's not bad. If you have a large fleet, you can afford to wait the three to six months it needs to get to geostationary orbit with electric propulsion."

Bausch said SES is planning to issue bids in the coming weeks for a large satellite over Asia that will carry conventional propulsion. But after that procurement, he said, "we will consider bids for electric-propulsion satellites."

Bausch said SES, which already has a presence in Asia, is not interested in bidding for Malaysian satellite operator Measat should that company be put up for sale, a development that industry officials said is likely. Eutelsat of Paris and Arabsat of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, have both signaled interest in Measat, industry officials said.

SES remains interested in purchasing Greek operator HellasSat if its owner, Greece's OTE telecommunications operator, moves forward on the sale.

"OTE has not yet begun the process," Bausch said. "We provided their ground stations and operated their satellite during the first year after launch and we will certainly be one of the candidates if they come on the market. It's only a one-satellite company, however."

SES and Eutelsat jointly invested in Solaris Mobile of Dublin, which launched a satellite with a large S-band antenna for mobile communications links in Europe that could be part of a terrestrial wireless network using signal boosters in populated areas.

In part because of the defect on the S-band antenna and in part because of the same difficulty in proving the business case that has stalled similar initiatives in Europe and the United States, Solaris has struggled.

Bausch said SES is not ready to invest in a new satellite but is willing to consider joining forces with Inmarsat of London, whose own EuropaSat S-band mobile broadband project has never left the drawing boards because of a lack of co-investors.

"For Solaris there are two possible avenues," Bausch said. "One is broadband, with the required ground components. The second is broadcast. What is sure is that we will not invest in a second satellite until we have customers who also want to invest in the ground component.

"We have two times 15 megahertz of bandwidth. If we were to combine with Inmarsat, the two entities would have a combined two times 30 megahertz. This is a huge amount of bandwidth. I can see a kind of condosat [satellite sharing] arrangement between Solaris and Inmarsat."

http://www.spacenews.com/satellite_telecom/120330-ses-chief-prefers-modular-ariane6.html

[instml]

Affordability, Not Geographic Return, Key Criteria for Europe's Next Rocket

BERLIN — The European Space Agency (ESA) will select two competing proposals by late June to design a next-generation rocket that, if accepted by European governments in November, could succeed the current Ariane 5 heavy-lift vehicle within 15 years, ESA officials said.

The 19-nation agency is taking a new approach to launcher design by asking industry from the start to design a cost-effective rocket that would appeal to owners of satellites, both commercial and governmental, without regard for where the vehicle's contractors are located.

ESA earlier this year canvassed European satellite operators, asking them to describe the kind of vehicle they would be most likely to use. The result: a launcher that would be available without overly long delays and that would be capable of launching satellites weighing 3,000 to 6,500 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, one at a time.

Perhaps the most surprising element to the ESA solicitation, which was issued in early April and calls for responses by the week of May 21, is that it frees industry from the obligation to follow ESA's geographic-return principle.

ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain said May 3 that the proposals could be for a rocket made almost entirely in India or China. Such a vehicle, he acknowledged, likely would never be financed by any ESA member state.

But a vehicle made principally in, say, France, Germany and Italy, with major components from the United States — with no concern for having to find contractors in other European nations to secure these nations' support — could be feasible if it results in cost savings.

"Industry has been telling us for years that they cannot reduce the costs of the Ariane 5 rocket because of the constraints of our geographic-return principle," Dordain said here during a meeting of the partners of the international space station. "So now we're telling them: 'Forget those constraints and show us what you can do.'" ESA Launcher Director Antonio Fabrizi, in a May 4 interview, said the agency expects to receive sufficient response to its bid request to select two teams to design the vehicle, each receiving one-year contracts valued at around 2 million euros ($2.6 million).

The teams will be selected in June and will be asked to submit initial proposals by the end of September, in time for ESA delegations to digest the results before a meeting of ESA government ministers in late November.

At that meeting, ESA governments will be asked to fund an upgrade to the current Ariane 5 rocket. They will also be asked to consider whether ESA should start work right now on an Ariane 5 successor vehicle.

France, which has long led most launcher-related work in Europe, has invested more than 200 million euros in proceeds from a special government bond into a next-generation vehicle, which in France is called Ariane 6.

As currently envisioned, Ariane 6 bears a strong resemblance to the rocket that resulted from ESA's consultations with European satellite owners. The initial Ariane 6 work is for a modular vehicle capable of lifting satellites weighing between 3,000 and 8,000 kilograms into geostationary orbit, the destination of most telecommunications satellites.

Built to these specifications, the vehicle would replace both the current Ariane 5 and the medium-lift Russian Soyuz rocket that began operations in 2011 from Europe's Guiana Space Center in South America.

Fabrizi said the survey of satellite owners found that rocket availability was high on the owners' list of priorities. Because of the wait times inherent in a vehicle like Ariane 5 that launches two satellites at a time, the studies are focusing on a rocket that carries only one customer per launch.

A key requirement, Fabrizi said, is that, once built and demonstrated with ESA monies, the rocket will be able to be operated without the support payments that have helped Ariane 5 maintain financial equilibrium for nearly a decade.

"The design specifications clearly say the vehicle should be able to operate with non EGAS-like support payments," Fabrizi said, referring to the European Guaranteed Access to Space program that is currently buttressing the accounts of the Arianespace launch consortium in the amount of more than 100 million euros per year.

Fabrizi agreed that the ESA survey returned results, in most areas, resemble the Ariane 6 designs.

French government and industry officials say the early Ariane 6 work has focused on operating and maintenance costs more than the performance goals that have dominated past launch-vehicle designs.

In pure performance terms, Ariane 6 would represent a step backward from Ariane 5, which is capable of lifting two satellites weighing some 9,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit.

The Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution project, featuring a new, re-startable upper stage, would further increase that performance to some 11,000 kilograms.

In Dordain's thinking, the vehicle designs, which Fabrizi said are part of a program called the New European Launch Service, would create the optimal rocket first, without worrying who will pay for it. Once the design has been found, ESA and industry would seek the support of those governments whose industry is included among the proposed contractors.

"This is a bottom-up approach, which is a complete turnaround from our past practice," Fabrizi said. "Of course, if the proposal includes a large amount of Indian or American or other non-European content, ESA would not be paying for that."

http://www.spacenews.com/launch/120504-affordability-not-geographic-return.html

[instml]

Российские фирмы могут поучаствовать

[frigate]

Из майского выпуска журнала Aviation Week & Space Technology (N.19) 28 May 2012 (стр 60-62)

[instml]

Похоже модульная Ариан-6 в пролете.

DLR Chief Says French-German Study Favors Ariane 5 Upgrade over Ariane 6

PARIS — A six-month joint French-German government study of future launch vehicle and space station investment options has reinforced the German space agency's preference for an upgraded Ariane 5 rocket instead of a new-generation Ariane 6, and cooperation with the United States on a U.S.-led crew vehicle instead of a European-led alternative, the agency's chief said Aug. 21.

Johann-Dietrich Woerner, chairman of the German Aerospace Center, DLR, insisted in an interview that he was speaking only for himself, and not for the German government.

The government's formal position on both subjects will be crafted in the coming weeks as Germany and the 18 other members of the European Space Agency (ESA) prepare for a late-November conference to set Europe's space policy and budget priorities.

As a prelude to this conference, Woerner said, the French and German ministers responsible for space policy will meet Sept. 22 in Zurich along with their counterparts from Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The goal of this meeting is to iron out remaining differences, particularly between France and Germany — which together account for about 50 percent of ESA's annual member-state contributions — in advance of the November meeting in Caserta, Italy.

In an attempt to head off a confrontation at the conference between Europe's two biggest space powers, the French and German governments in February appointed a committee to investigate the two most controversial items likely to be raised at the meeting.

The French-German committee, including representatives from DLR and the French space agency, CNES, submitted its report to the two government ministries in late July. The report has not been made public.

The first of the two contentious issues assessed in the report is whether to complete development of the Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution (ME) rocket, giving the vehicle a 20 percent boost in payload-carrying power and a reignitable upper stage.

Opposing that idea was a French view that Europe should bypass Ariane 5 ME and begin immediate investment in a next-generation rocket with a modular design. Unlike its more powerful predecessor, built to carry two satellites at a time to geostationary transfer orbit, the new vehicle would be designed to profitably carry single satellites weighing 2,500 to 6,500 kilograms, with a possible increase to 8,000 kilograms.

Backers of the new rocket, tentatively called Ariane 6, say the commercial market is developing in such a way as to make the current Ariane 5 too costly to remain competitive in the coming years. Without a dominant share of the commercial market, these officials say, Europe's Arianespace consortium cannot make ends meet and will be even more dependent than it is today on annual government support payments.

Evry, France-based Arianespace, which operates the Ariane 5, needs about 120 million euros ($150 million) in annual government payments to break even, despite the fact that the rocket has captured about 50 percent of the competitive global market and has posted 50 consecutive launch successes.

Ariane 5 ME backers say debt-laden ESA governments cannot afford to begin full-scale development of the Ariane 6 now, and should finish the work on Ariane 5 ME that started in 2008, when ESA members agreed to spend 357 million euros on the effort, mainly on the Vinci restartable engine.

ESA now assumes it will cost about 1.4 billion euros to complete Ariane 5 ME, including an inaugural flight by 2018.

To sweeten the appeal of Ariane 5 ME, Ariane 5 contractor Astrium Space Transportation in early August wrote ESA to guarantee that, under certain conditions, the upgraded rocket will enable Arianespace to operate with no annual support payments once it is operational in 2018.

The conditions, according to Woerner, include industrial work-share concessions that will give Astrium Space Transportation a de facto monopoly, a scenario he said may be acceptable after further discussion.

"If we are going to accept these conditions, we have to be sure that the guarantee is very, very clear," Woerner said.

Woerner said that while different cost estimates have been assigned to the Ariane 6 option, the price tag is likely to be around 4.5 billion euros over 10 years. During that time, he said, the current version of Ariane 5 will require 120 million euros per year in support payments, which brings the total cost to ESA governments to 5.7 billion euros over 10 years.

Woerner said pursuing Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6 development simultaneously might be no more expensive than proceeding directly to Ariane 6 because of synergies in the two vehicles' designs that would shave total costs by 15-20 percent or so.

But the Ariane 5 ME option is still the most cost-effective alternative now and leaves ESA governments with sufficient additional financing to back other ESA programs in Earth observation and relating to the space station.

The French-German study also examined whether Europe should join the United States in developing the Orion deep-space crew transport vehicle by investing the 450 million euros Europe owes NASA for space station charges to 2020.

A French alternative, which had found support in Italy, proposed a Europe-led vehicle that would operate in low Earth orbit and perform a variety of missions, including possible removal of orbital debris.

Woerner said the alternative vehicle would cost far more than the 450 million euros ESA has to spend to repay NASA for station use, and that Europe's current financial condition will render that option unfeasible for now.

Whether France will be willing to invest in the Orion vehicle remains unclear. A CNES official said Aug. 22 that the agency will reserve comment about the report until the French government has reviewed it.

http://www.spacenews.com/launch/120821-study-backs-ariane5-upgrade.html

[Salo]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20464639

23 November 2012 Last updated at 12:59 GMT
Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent

Ariane rocket ready to do battle


Ariane 5ME and 6 Ministers approved a dual track that encompasses Ariane 5ME (left) and Ariane 6 (right)

Europe's Ariane 5 rocket has established itself as the dominant force in the satellite launch market.

The big European vehicle throws up everything fr om three-tonne TV satellites to the 20-tonne ATV space truck used to resupply astronauts on the ISS.

Half of the major telecommunications platforms lofted every year ride the European battlehorse.

But as good as it is, Ariane is under pressure. Competitors are circling and changes are needed if the vehicle is to retain its benchmark status.

We got a glimpse this week of where the rocket is heading after research ministers approved a 600m euros programme of developments at their European Space Agency council meeting in Naples.

Work will continue to give Ariane 5 a major upgrade, to provide it with a more powerful upper-stage engine that will also have a stop-start capability.

These modifications will enable the vehicle to better optimize its payload capacity for heavier, more lucrative satellite customers - and also to offer a broader range of orbits to those clients.

This Mid-Life Evolution (ME), as it is known, is now scheduled to fly in 2017/18.

But ministers have not stopped there. At the same time, they want to see detailed studies to define the next generation rocket - an Ariane 6.

Early thinking is that this will be a smaller rocket than Ariane 5 with a modular design capable of lifting one satellite at a time weighing from three to 6.5 tonnes.

A final pronouncement on whether to proceed with the project is likely in 2014. A maiden flight could occur in 2021/22.

The Esa ministerial council outcome was warmly welcomed by Jean-Yves Le Gall, the man who heads up Arianespace, the commercial operator of Europe's big rocket.

"It was a great success," he told me. "Now we have a shining future. The most important consequence of the ministerial decisions is that our vision is now much further forward than it was before. Before we had just to launch Ariane 5. Now we have a reason which is launching Ariane 6 in 10 years' time, and I can tell you we have a lot of young people here who are very excited."
Ministerial meeting The research ministers of Europe will meet again in 2014 to review progress

There's been a lot of fuss recently about the impact that aggressive competitors will have on Ariane's market share.

You may have seen my interview last week with SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk wh ere he said Ariane 5 had "no chance" in the face of his new Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. The European vehicle could get nowhere near his prices, the entrepreneur contended.
"Start Quote

 If you really want to exist in this business you must be very humble because it's a difficult business"

Jean-Yves Le Gall Arianespace

Certainly, there've been plenty of people queuing up to echo the voice of doom on Ariane. French politicians, for example, who visited the SpaceX factory in California came away wanting a direct move to Ariane 6. The successor vehicle is expected to incorporate much cheaper components and fabrication methods than the current rocket, or indeed Ariane 5ME.

But Le Gall calls for cooler heads. Ariane 5 is not about to fall away. The rocket has a proven track record of reliability, and in the launch business that is everything.

"Some of our competitors, for instance Proton, are suffering almost one failure every year, which is huge. And I want to remind people that behind us we have 52 successes in a row.

"And there are other competitors, such as SpaceX, who speak a lot but have not yet launched a lot, and I think if you really want to exist in this business you must be very humble because it's a difficult business, and in my opinion you can only really speak when you have an excellent track record."

Le Gall accepts that Ariane 5 is pricey, but says he has fulfilled his commitment to constrain price by reducing the cost of operating the vehicle's spaceport in French Guiana by 20%.

But there is no magic formula that will reduce the industrial cost of producing the existing Ariane 5.
Ariane launch It's now 52 successful flights in a row

Unlike the SpaceX Falcons which are made in one place (more than 70% of a vehicle by value is made in the single factory), Arianes by definition are made across Europe. A dozen countries are involved in the Ariane 5ME project. This community approach must change long-term, and it is likely that the Ariane 6, when it arrives, will have an industrial base pretty much confined to France and Germany.

That may well offend some Esa member states but it's a fact of life that research ministers will have to grapple with when they gather again in 2014 to pronounce on the next phase of Ariane 6 development.

They should also have a clearer idea then of what this rocket should look like. It seems obvious, but Esa director general Jean-Jacques Dordain has been asking satellite operators precisely what they want.

"I've asked them, 'what is the launcher that you dream of?'; and they've given me their dreams," he told reporters in Naples.

"What I wish to do now is tell the launcher industry in Europe, 'OK, can you now fulfil the dreams of the customers?'.

"The customers want, obviously, the most reliable vehicle in the world - and at least on that, Ariane 5 is much more reliable than a lot of other vehicles. They want a launcher that is available, and that will launch between 3-3.5 tonnes and 6-6.5t. And, number four, they want a rocket that is cheaper than Proton and Falcon 9. This is the cahier des charges (specification base)."

[Космос-3794]

Три семерки для Ariane 6 - семь лет разработки (начиная с середины 2014), семь тонн на ГПО и 70 млн. евро за запуск ($91 million).
Стоимость проекта 4-5 млрд. евро.

PARIS — The French space agency, CNES, team designing the future Ariane 6 rocket has set what it calls a "triple-seven" goal for the vehicle expected to replace the current heavy-lift Ariane 5 early in the next decade: seven years of development, seven metric tons of satellite payload to geostationary transfer orbit, and a price of 70 million euros ($91 million) for satellite launch customers.
The seven-year development goal starts in mid-2014, when European Space Agency (ESA) governments are expected to vote on full-scale production work. By that measure, Ariane 6 would be ready for its first demonstration flight in 2021.
The rocket would be able to carry a telecommunications satellite weighing up to 7,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, the destination of most commercial telecommunications satellites.
The target price tag of 70 million euros per launch for commercial customers was set to keep Ariane 6 competitive with what its backers assume will be increased competition from Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of the United States, and from Chinese and Indian rockets in addition to Ariane's historic competitor, the Russian Proton vehicle and its successors.

CNES Launcher Director Michel Eymard, in a presentation here Dec. 19 to French Research Minister Genevieve Fioraso, said CNES and industry have begun what is likely to be a two-year period of negotiations on how much it will cost to design Ariane 6 to the inaugural flight.
"Industry is saying 5 billion euros now, but we hope to get this down to 4 billion euros," Eymard said. "For awhile, industry did not want to engage us on Ariane 6. That has recently changed, and we are now working together."
Eymard's presentation was delivered hours before the final Ariane 5 launch of 2012, a year in which the Arianespace commercial launch consortium flew the Ariane 5 seven times.
The rocket has now gone a decade — 53 launches — without a failure. Its dominance of the commercial market is occasionally masked by the fact that it typically carries two communications satellites into orbit at the same time. Its competitors usually carry one satellite per launch. On the surface, at least, Ariane 5's current market status does not call for a vehicle overhaul.
But after months of hard selling that saw them pitted against much of France's industry, CNES officials earlier this year persuaded Fioraso that Ariane 6 — less expensive and less powerful than Ariane 5, and carrying just one satellite at a time to orbit — is the way of the future.
The design of the rocket — two solid-fueled lower stages and a cryogenic upper stage, plus solid-fueled strap-on boosters — was frozen Nov. 21 during a meeting of ESA government ministers.ESA Launcher Director Antonio Fabrizi said this design, and no other, is what ministers approved.
An initial budget was set that looks to create synergies between the completion of work on the Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution (ME) rocket — basically the current Ariane 5 ECA with a new, restartable cryogenic upper stage — and the Ariane 6.

The German government, whose industry is heavily involved with Ariane 5 ME, had aligned itself with much of Europe's rocket industry to resist CNES efforts to scrap Ariane 5 ME in favor of a direct push toward Ariane 6.
Germany appears to have won that piece of the argument. Ariane 5 ME received sufficient funding commitments at theNovember ministerial conference to move toward a first flight in 2017 or 2018. The vehicle will be able to lift satellites with a combined weight of 11,500-12,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit.
CNES and ESA officials hope Ariane 5 ME's greater payload capacity may sufficiently improve the economics of building and operating Ariane 5 to reduce the annual support payments that ESA governments pay to Europe's launch vehicle operator, Arianespace of Evry, France.
Ariane 6 has been conceived from the start as a "next-generation" rocket that in many ways looks like a throwback — more of a less-expensive Lockheed Martin Atlas 5, or a Proton launched from the equator. Ariane 5 can do more things for more customers.
But if it meets its design goal, Ariane 6 will reach a financial equilibrium that has eluded Ariane 5. CNES officials say economic criteria account for 43 percent of the design decisions made for the rocket, with technical criteria accounting for just 30 percent.
The remaining 27 percent of the design choices are being made on the basis of Europe's existing industrial capacity.
French industry is responsible for around 50 percent of the construction of Ariane 5. Eymard said the agency assumes France will carry about the same load for Ariane 6.

Beyond the French contribution, all bets are off. CNES has penciled in Germany at 25 percent, and Italy at 10-15 percent. The Italian share should be relatively easy to secure because Italy already is heavily involved in production, with Snecma of France, of the solid-fueled strap-on boosters used on the Ariane 5 rocket. Italy is also the lead investor in the new Vega small-satellite launcher, which made its inaugural flight in early 2012.
Because of the all-but-guaranteed work share of Italian industry in the Ariane 6 solid-fueled stages, the Italian government is not likely to resist taking its 10-15 percent stake despite its public-debt crisis.
Ensuring German industry sufficient work will not be as straightforward, European government and industry officials said.
The difficulty is highlighted by the German government's contributions to the Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 programs during the November ministerial conference.
The work was divided into three segments: One is dedicated to Ariane 5 ME, another to Ariane 6 and a third is devoted to finding synergies between the Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6 upper stages — both using the Snecma-built Vinci engine, now completing development.
ESA governments agreed to spend 208.4 million euros through 2014 on work dedicated to Ariane 5 ME. France is paying 42 percent of this sum, with Germany at 37 percent.
Work specifically dedicated to Ariane 6 received 188.9 million euros for the same two-year period. Here France is paying 61 percent of the total, with Germany at 5 percent and Italy, 10 percent.
The biggest chunk of work, 274.3 million euros, is dedicated to building as much overlap as possible into the Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6 upper stages. Germany agreed to finance 39 percent of this work, with France at 35 percent.

http://www.spacenews.com/article/cnes-sets-%E2%80%9Ctriple-seven%E2%80%9D-goal-for-ariane-6-rocket#.UOS7yG83bQI

[SpaceR]

Я бы скорее поверил в третью семёрку в позиции "миллиардов евро на разработку". Они инфляцию, видимо, не учитывали?

[Дмитрий В.]

SpaceR пишет:
Я бы скорее поверил в третью семёрку в позиции "миллиардов евро на разработку". Они инфляцию, видимо, не учитывали?

Да даже и озвученная стоимость разработки (сопоставимая с затратами на разработку 11К25) впечатляет.

[fagot]

Главное - ввязаться в драку, а бюджетная пила всегда наготове.  

[Космос-3794]

Предполагаемая конфигурация Ариан-6 (от CNES):





http://www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-en/10705-gp-europe-sets-its-sights-on-ariane-6.php

[Salo]

Левый вариант только у меня вызывает ассоциации с продукцией сексшопа?

[Apollo13]

Salo пишет:
Левый вариант только у меня вызывает ассоциации с продукцией сексшопа?

"Ракета доктора Зло"!

[Дмитрий В.]

Salo пишет:
Левый вариант только у меня вызывает ассоциации с продукцией сексшопа?

Да, уж  Редкостная порнуха. Надеюсь, что это всего лишь 1-апрельская шутка (неудачая).

[SFN]

Двустволка с короткими стволами

[Apollo13]

SFN пишет:
Двустволка с короткими стволами

Обрез!

[SFN]

Из моторов Р135 они сделают вторую ступень и 2е первые. УПМ - Универсальные «Poudre» Модули

[Вал]

Ну а че? Слегка раздвинуть "ножки" и.... и вот уже на нормальную ракету похожа. Евро-Ангара, тксзть. УРМы-то в наличии!

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Похоже, что создатели Ариан-6 решили вступить в конкуренцию по степени удолбищности с создателями Ангары.  При этом ангариные проиграют, если европейская ракета будет такой как на рисунке В принципе мне приятно, что не только на Святой Руси такие попильщики и извращенцы.