Europe cancels planned upgrades for Ariane 6 rocket

欧洲取消阿丽亚娜 6 号火箭的升级计划

In the two years since it made a largely successful debut, Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket has launched eight missions, all of which reached orbit safely. The large, expendable rocket has a capacity of more than 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. And to the credit of European rocket scientists and planners, the Ariane 6 has had a substantially smoother rollout than comparable vehicles in the United States—Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rockets—both of which have had significant growing pains. However, even though the Ariane 6 rocket has had a successful debut, its future is clouded by high costs.

在欧洲阿丽亚娜 6 号（Ariane 6）火箭首飞成功后的两年里，它已经执行了八次任务，且全部安全进入轨道。这种大型一次性运载火箭向近地轨道的运载能力超过 20 公吨。值得称赞的是，与美国同类运载火箭（如蓝色起源的 New Glenn 和联合发射联盟的 Vulcan 火箭）相比，阿丽亚娜 6 号的投入使用过程要顺利得多，而后两者在初期都经历了严重的成长阵痛。然而，尽管阿丽亚娜 6 号首秀成功，但高昂的成本为其未来蒙上了阴影。

Block 3 put on ice

“Block 3” 升级计划被搁置

On Thursday, European Spaceflight reported that “Block 3” upgrades for the Ariane 6 rocket have been shelved by the European Space Agency. A key element of the “Block 3” evolution of Ariane 6 was the lightweight ICARUS upper stage, which would have used carbon-composite structures. The cancellation of this upgrade has implications for some of the European Space Agency’s science missions, including a probe to Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Perhaps the bigger question is what the cancellation of future versions of the Ariane 6 rocket tells us about the program’s future.

周四，《欧洲航天飞行》（European Spaceflight）报道称，欧洲航天局（ESA）已搁置了阿丽亚娜 6 号的“Block 3”升级计划。该升级计划的核心要素是采用碳复合材料结构的轻型 ICARUS 上级火箭。此次升级的取消对欧洲航天局的一些科学任务产生了影响，其中包括前往土星冰卫星土卫二（Enceladus）的探测任务。或许更值得深思的问题是，取消阿丽亚娜 6 号的未来版本意味着该项目的前景如何。

In some ways, the vehicle has been a tremendous success. It has provided the continent reliable access to orbit for its most important satellites when the war in Ukraine pushed Europe to end its use of Russian rockets and ended Europe’s need to launch on SpaceX rockets owned by Elon Musk. However, the fact that the European ministers who provide funding for Ariane 6 balked at these upgrades may indicate growing impatience with the rocket’s cost. Arianespace hasn’t publicly disclosed the cost of an Ariane 6 launch, but it is likely somewhere in the range of 80 million to 100 million euros. The rocket has a number of European customers but also a major US corporation, Amazon, which contracted for 18 launches to get its Amazon Leo constellation into space. Three Amazon flights have occurred so far, all this year.

从某些方面来看，该运载工具取得了巨大成功。当乌克兰战争迫使欧洲停止使用俄罗斯火箭，并结束了对埃隆·马斯克旗下 SpaceX 火箭的依赖时，阿丽亚娜 6 号为欧洲最重要的卫星提供了可靠的入轨途径。然而，为阿丽亚娜 6 号提供资金的欧洲部长们对此次升级表现出的迟疑，可能表明他们对该火箭的高昂成本日益失去耐心。阿丽亚娜航天公司（Arianespace）尚未公开阿丽亚娜 6 号的发射成本，但估计在 8000 万至 1 亿欧元之间。该火箭拥有许多欧洲客户，同时也包括美国大公司亚马逊，后者已签约 18 次发射任务，旨在将其“柯伊伯”卫星星座送入太空。目前亚马逊已完成三次发射，均在今年进行。

Major subsidies

高额补贴

That may sound like a commercial success, but Europe is likely losing money on each of those private missions. Europe invested about 3.6 billion euros in the development of the Ariane 6 rocket and its launch site in French Guiana, but that’s not the end of it. The European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, has publicly confirmed that, based on nine flights a year, the European governments involved with the space agency will still need to subsidize each launch with between 32 million and 38 million euros per flight. If we amortize the development costs with the ongoing subsidy, European taxpayers have put more than 100 million euros into each launch before the customer pays the rocket’s operator, Arianespace, anything. Europe’s current goal is to fly the Ariane 6 rocket nine or 10 times a year, but given the growing global demand for launch and lack of capacity, there is some discussion about increasing the number of Ariane 6 rockets available.

这听起来可能是一个商业上的成功，但欧洲在这些私人任务中很可能处于亏损状态。欧洲在阿丽亚娜 6 号火箭及其位于法属圭亚那的发射场开发上投入了约 36 亿欧元，但这还不是全部。欧洲航天局局长约瑟夫·阿施巴赫（Josef Aschbacher）公开证实，按每年 9 次发射计算，参与该航天局的欧洲各国政府仍需为每次发射提供 3200 万至 3800 万欧元的补贴。如果将开发成本与持续的补贴分摊计算，在客户向运营商阿丽亚娜航天公司支付任何费用之前，欧洲纳税人已为每次发射投入了超过 1 亿欧元。欧洲目前的目标是每年发射 9 到 10 次阿丽亚娜 6 号，但鉴于全球对发射需求的增长和运力不足，目前已有关于增加阿丽亚娜 6 号火箭供应量的讨论。

Will ministers increase cadence?

部长们会提高发射频率吗？

In June, Aschbacher said Europe is on track to have the capability to launch Ariane 6 a total of 10 times next year, meeting the target set for Arianespace. However, he added that the agency is looking at various scenarios to increase that capacity to 12, 15, or even 20 launches a year. Because the Ariane 6 rocket is expendable, Europe must increase production of all of the vehicle’s elements, from its solid-rocket motors to first-stage engines, in addition to upper stages and payload fairings. Aschbacher said he hopes to have “clarity” from European ministers by the end of this year as to plans, if any, for scaling up production of the Ariane 6 rocket.

今年 6 月，阿施巴赫表示，欧洲有望在明年具备总共 10 次发射阿丽亚娜 6 号的能力，从而达到为阿丽亚娜航天公司设定的目标。然而，他补充说，该机构正在研究各种方案，以将运力提高到每年 12 次、15 次甚至 20 次。由于阿丽亚娜 6 号是一次性火箭，欧洲必须增加该运载工具所有部件的产量，从固体火箭发动机到一级发动机，以及上级火箭和有效载荷整流罩。阿施巴赫表示，他希望在今年年底前从欧洲部长们那里得到关于扩大阿丽亚娜 6 号火箭生产计划（如果有的话）的“明确意见”。

The question for ministers may not be easy, however, because they will have to make investments in factories and other logistics to increase rocket production. And would it be worth doing that to meet growing commercial demand if the only way to attract that demand is to heavily subsidize the price of its launch vehicle? Ministers may decide that these funds would be better invested in the next generation of Ariane rocket that would incorporate at least partial reuse and better compete with a growing number of reusable vehicles in the United States and China. The decision by ministers later this year on whether to scale up capacity should reveal a lot about how they’re thinking about the long-term future of Ariane 6.

然而，对于部长们来说，这个问题可能并不容易，因为他们必须在工厂和其他物流设施上进行投资以提高火箭产量。如果吸引商业需求的唯一途径是为运载火箭的价格提供巨额补贴，那么这样做是否值得？部长们可能会认为，将这些资金投入到下一代阿丽亚娜火箭上会更好，因为新一代火箭至少可以实现部分重复使用，从而能更好地与美国和中国日益增多的可重复使用运载火箭竞争。部长们今年晚些时候关于是否扩大产能的决定，将很大程度上揭示他们对阿丽亚娜 6 号长期未来的考量。