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Eleven years ago, a panel discussion took place at a space conference in Singapore that has since become legendary in certain corners of the space industry for what it reveals about European attitudes towards the upstart SpaceX.
The panel included representatives from a handful of launch companies, including Europe-based Arianespace and US launch company SpaceX. At one point during the discussion, the host asked Arianespace representative Richard Bowles, its Southeast Asia sales chief, how the institutional European company would respond to SpaceX’s promise of lower launch costs and reuse with the Falcon 9 rocket.
“What I’m finding in the marketplace is that SpaceX seems to be selling a dream more than anything, and that’s good. We should all be dreaming,” Bowles responded. “I think a $5 million launch or a $15 million launch is a bit of a dream. Personally, I think reusability is a dream. How am I going to respond to a dream? My answer to respond to a dream is: First of all, you don’t wake people up.”
To be fair to Bowles, at the time of his comments, SpaceX had only launched the Falcon 9 five times in mid-2013. But his condescension was something to behold nonetheless.
Later in the discussion, Bowles added that he didn’t believe launching 100 times a year, something SpaceX had started talking about, was “realistic.” Then, in a moment of great paternalism, he turned to the SpaceX official on the panel and said, “You shouldn’t present things that aren’t realistic.”
In response, Barry Matsumori, a senior vice president at SpaceX, calmly said he would let his company’s response come through his actions.
Actions speak louder than words
Eleven years later, of course, SpaceX is launched more than 100 times a year. The company’s internal price for a Falcon 9 launch is significantly less than $20 million. And all this is possible by reusing the rocket’s first stage and fairings, each of which has now completed twenty or more flights.
You might think that European launch officials would have learned their lesson in the decade since. Last year, the continent had to resort to launching its precious Euclid space telescope on a Falcon 9 rocket. With Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket still not ready after numerous delays, several Galileo satellites have been launched this year, which will be launched on the Falcon 9 rocket.
Some officials have taken note. In a candid commentary last year, Josef Aschbacher, head of the European Space Agency, acknowledged that the continent was facing an “acute” launch crisis amid the Ariane 6 delays and the emergence of SpaceX as a launch competitor. “SpaceX has undeniably changed the launch market paradigm as we know it,” Aschbacher wrote. “With the dependable reliability of Falcon 9 and the exciting prospects of Starship, SpaceX continues to completely redefine the world’s access to space, pushing the boundaries of possibility along the way.”
But not everyone got the message, it seems.
The Ariane 6 rocket should finally make its debut next month. It will probably be successful. Europe has excellent technical capabilities regarding launch. But from day one, the Ariane 6 launch vehicle will cost significantly more than the Falcon 9 rocket, which has similar capabilities and no reuse capabilities. It will certainly meet Europe’s institutional needs. But it’s unlikely to shake up the market or realistically compete with a fully reusable Falcon 9.
Who really needs to wake up?
And what about Starship? If and when SpaceX can bring it to market, the next-generation rocket will offer a fully reusable booster with five times the lift capacity of the Ariane 6 rocket, for half the price or less. How can Europe hope to compete with that? European Space Agency space director Toni Tolker-Nielsen – who works for Aschbacher, it should be noted – said he was not concerned.
“Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor,” he said in an interview with Space News. “This huge launch vehicle is designed to fly people to the moon and Mars. Ariane 6 is perfect for the job if you have to launch a four- or five-ton satellite. A spaceship won’t wipe out Ariane 6 at all.”
In a sense, Tolker-Nielsen is right. Starship will not change the way Europe gets its small and medium-sized satellites into space. The Ariane 6 rocket, made and launched in Europe, will be a workhorse for the continent. Some European officials are even going so far as to push for legislation requiring European satellites to launch European missiles.
But to say that Starship won’t be a game-changer represents the same head-in-the-sand attitude that Bowles displayed a decade ago with his jokes about not waking up the misguided dreamers. In retrospect, it’s clear that the dreamers weren’t SpaceX or its customers. Instead, it was European officials who had lulled themselves into thinking that their commercial launch dominance would continue without innovation.
While they slumbered, these officials ignored the rise of reusability. They decided that the Ariane 6 rocket should look like its expendable predecessors, with solid rocket boosters. Meanwhile, after the rise of the Falcon 9, almost all new rocket projects have incorporated a significant reusability component. It’s no longer just SpaceX founder Elon Musk who says companies must strive for reuse or they will go under. Almost everyone is.
Maybe someone should wake up Tolker-Nielsen.