Even in the highly volatile IT market big corporations move like dinosaurs. Upper management changes usually do not affect the actual business being done, except for management-related things. I don’t think aerospace corporations are any different.
According to the Themis plans there will be a flight envelope test next year (reusable first stage).
CALLISTO was delayed to sometime in 2025 to 2026 (it’s a testing and evaluation platform so not an actually usable product but something that could lead to usable products in the future, it is also not entirely European).
There might also be Ariane Next replacing Ariane 6 sometime in the 2030s but will only be partially reusable.
All of those are in planning/development since 2020 (which is coincidentally the year in wich Falcon 9 became commercially available).
I wouldn’t have imagined that nearly a decade later, Falcon 9/Heavy would still be the only reusable orbital launch vehicle. The entire launch industry is playing catch up.
2020 (which is coincidentally the year in wich Falcon 9 became commercially available
Falcon 9 has been flying commercial missions since 2013, no? I think CASSIOPE was the first…
Falcon 9 has been flying commercial missions since 2013, no?
At least not with humans, according to this Article from 2020:
Space history has been made. On 30 May, SpaceX and NASA launched two astronauts to space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the first time a private company has flown humans into orbit, and the first crewed launch from the US since the end of the space shuttle programme in 2011.
“This is the first time that SpaceX has ever launched astronauts, and it’s also the first time that a government has trusted a commercial company to launch astronauts to orbit,” says space consultant Laura Forczyk. “It is a big deal.”
Ah, I didn’t realize you were referring exclusively to crewed missions. Yes, you are correct, the first crewed Falcon 9 launch was in 2020. The flew plenty of uncrewed commercial missions prior to that, though.
It seems like crewed European launch vehicles have a similarly slow timeline to reusable European launch vehicles.
Analysis shows that one temperature measurement exceeded a pre-defined limit and that the flight software correctly triggered a shut down
Sounds like the fix is changing the start up procedure such that it doesn’t reach the temperature limit. It would be nice to know why it went outside what they deemed safe but I guess it is rocket science.
Yes, not really the complete picture of what happened.
Would have there been actual damage to the system or even destruction if the software did not shut down? Or was the temperature threshold set too conservative? Did the thermal simulations not match the observed temperatures and if so why?
What’s the solution to this problem now for the next flight?
If it reenables European sovereign and independent access to space it’s a success. Fingers crossed that it’s also as reliably as A5. Commercially I agree.
It’s been too long since we had an operational European launcher. I hope Vega C and A6 are available and reliable by the end of the year. There is quite a queue of new missions, several of them already had to be launched with SpaceX.
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