{"id":3833,"date":"2019-02-21T12:45:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=3833"},"modified":"2019-02-21T12:45:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:45:19","slug":"ariane-6-rocket-seeks-first-commercial-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=3833","title":{"rendered":"Ariane 6 Rocket Seeks First Commercial Deals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BREMEN,\n Germany (Reuters) – Ariane 6, Europe’s next-generation space rocket, is\n expected to win its first two commercial launch orders in coming weeks,\n company officials said, a key milestone as the European launcher vies \nfor orders against Elon Musk’s U.S. competitor SpaceX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Operator\n Arianespace faces increased competition from SpaceX and Blue Origin, \nowned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Japan and India also pose a growing \nchallenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ariane\n 6 has three institutional orders in hand from the European Commission \nand France and is close to signing deals with two commercial customers, \nsaid Mathias Spude, spokesman for ArianeGroup, a joint venture of Airbus\n and Safran, that is the majority stakeholder in Arianespace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ArianeGroup\n has invested 400 million euros (\u00a3347 million) of its own funds in the \n3.4-billion-euro development of Ariane 6 – a project key to ensuring \nEurope’s independent access to space and a market valued at over $1 \ntrillion by 2040.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manufacturers\n say the rocket will be more versatile than Ariane 5, able to carry out \nmissions from placing as many as 90 small satellites in low-earth orbit \nto taking classic spy satellites to far higher perches in geostationary \norbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\n the business case depends on drumming up enough commercial business to \naugment the 5-6 institutional launches expected in Europe annually in \ncoming years, about a quarter of those planned in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

European governments also face industry pressure to use Ariane 6 even if they could get cheaper rides using SpaceX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Europe\n continues to need its own access to space – the market of the future,” \nsaid Matthias Wachter with the BDI German Federation of Industry. “It \ndoesn’t make sense to use European tax money to develop our own rocket \nbut then launch satellites with competitors from the United States or \nAsia.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ariane\n 6, due for a first launch in 2020, was designed to save significant \ncosts compared to Ariane 5, but industry experts say it will still cost \naround 70 million euros per launch – well above the rate offered by \nSpaceX, which uses reusable rocket technology and can count on larger \nU.S. orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ariane\n 6’s designers insist innovative production techniques will favour the \nEuropean launcher when the commercial market recovers from a recent \nslump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When\n it wakes up … we will be on the market with a rocket that is 40 \npercent cheaper, and will continue to reduce costs after that,” Spude \ntold Reuters at the Ariane 6 production site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still,\n experts say SpaceX is widely credited with jolting the overall market \nwith a keen focus on cutting costs, forcing Europe to shake up its \nlaunch industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Editing by Tim Hepher)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ariane 6, Europe’s next-generation space rocket, is expected to win its first two commercial launch orders in coming weeks, company officials said, a key milestone as the European launcher vies for orders against Elon Musk’s U.S. competitor SpaceX.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,2203,1397,868],"tags":[1029,3514,47,200,3512,3517,3513,2809,2489,3519,1024,1563,3516,447,707,1767,1180,3518,207,1182,888,571,805,1681,3515,808,2807,708,412,1181,995,2810,1288,1154,712,937,155],"class_list":["post-3833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation-news","category-finance-news","category-stock-news","category-transportation-news","tag-1029","tag-3514","tag-airbus","tag-amazon","tag-ariane","tag-arianegroup","tag-arianespace","tag-bezos","tag-blue","tag-bremen","tag-ceo","tag-commercial","tag-commission","tag-deal","tag-elon","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-federation","tag-france","tag-generation","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-india","tag-industry","tag-institutional","tag-japan","tag-jeff","tag-musk","tag-news","tag-next","tag-order","tag-origin","tag-reuters","tag-rocket","tag-safran","tag-space","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3835,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833\/revisions\/3835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}