A low cost, all European, manned launcher.

The intent may have been to throw a bone and some... "busy work" to their propulsion design and test infrastructure, which is a perishable capability. Plus lots of intercene ESA politics we probalby aren't keen to.

Interesting that the new push is to for greater payloads and to transfer orbits.

The ESA needs to release to the European public the payload capability of the twin-Vulcain solution for the Ariane 6. The image above gives only it's payload to GTO, not to LEO, in the configuration without solid rocket boosters. The configuration without the solids is the appropriate one since there still is a distrust in the industry for manned flights using solids. Note it would also be less costly to man-rate without the solid rocket boosters.
Looking at some other launchers however, we may be able to estimate the payload to LEO. You see for the Ariane 5, Atlas V, and Delta IV, the payload to LEO is about twice that to GTO, more or less. Twice the 2,200 kg payload to GTO for the liquid-fueled sans solids version of the Ariane 6 would be 4,400 kg. Then we may estimate the payload to LEO to be in the 4,000 kg to 5,000 kg range.
Note this would be well sufficient to launch a small size capsule about half-size to the SpaceX Dragon. The Dragon is at a dry mass of about 4,000 kg, half size is about 2,000 kg, but we also want to reserve mass for the launch escape system (LAS). A 4,000 kg to 5,000 kg payload capability should be sufficient even including a LAS.
In regards to cost, note the Dragon cost $300 million in development as privately developed. As privately developed this half size capsule should be even less, perhaps even half that to $150 million.
There is also the question of man-rating this liquid-fuel Ariane 6 launcher. We might make a comparison to the man-rating of the Atlas V. It only cost a few million dollars.

Bob Clark

Just saw this:

CNES Design Team Sets ‘Triple-seven’ Goal for Ariane 6.
By Peter B. de Selding | Jan. 2, 2013
http://www.spacenews.com/article/cnes-design-team-sets-%E2%80%98triple-seven%E2%80%99-goal-for-ariane-6

You'll need to do free registration for temporary access to read the article.

From the article:



and:



This article shows the difficulty the ESA will have in developing innovative launch solutions. The biggest factor in deciding which launcher to develop is how much work it can provide to the ESA, member countries. This supersedes even lowered costs.

The ESA could develop a low cost launcher that would be comparable in cost to the SpaceX Falcon 9, AND moreover would give Europe an independent manned launch capability simply by adding a second Vulcain to the Ariane 5 core. Ironically though, this option is not chosen because it would be TOO low cost: it would be simple, quick - and not provide enough work to the ESA member countries.

The only way Europe is going to get low cost space access it now appears is if it is privately developed. As proven by SpaceX this can cut 90% (!) off the development costs. And in fact it should be even easier and cheaper than the SpaceX case since the components already exist in the Ariane 5 core, built in France, and Vulcain II engines, built in Germany. Even the capsule for the manned launchers is largely already designed in the Orbital Sciences, Cygnus capsule, which is actually built in Italy. You would just need to supply life support to the capsule already designed to be pressurized.

Bob Clark

Why not have a international body that is all about cheap space exploration?
is there already such a organisation?

Because the International Body is not interested in cheap space exploration. It is quite happy with the status quo of maintaining the barriers to entry and their near monopoly on space access.

Lets start out own? public money not government? like launchpad for space ?

It would be cool, the issue is how do you convince from 100 thousand to a million people to put money together for this.

Also how do you avoid ending up like all these organisations we dont like the operation of?

have it run by a forum people with a track record of doing good things, do good things....

think open source space

I design, you comment, he tests, they build, we win

I don't know if you have checked them out but MACH30 is trying do an open source space program. Of course because they are lacking money and involvement of people they can't do much.

But still it seems there is an increasing amount of interest, and they are still plotting along trying to tackle issues like ITAR, or making a platform for open source design projects.

The issue is we would have to generate world wide interest similar or probably bigger than Kickstarter or Kiva to run something resembling a proper space program with launches and science and engineering done.

Kiva has moved since 2005 around 300 million dollars, and since 2009 Kickstarter managed to move 380 million dollars or so.

The supporters need to be on the scale of hundreds of thousands to 1 million people and it needs to be a stable support for labs or organisations taking us seriously enough to think about accepting our support. /don't forget that it is a risk taking on their part as well, because if the funding falls short, they also waste precious time and resources they could have spent better if the funding came from somewhere more stable/certain/

The costs of running the thing would have to be extremely minimised or we would probably need even more people than a couple of million to make this work. To be honest I have no clue how much this thing would cost to run /just administration and such/

Anyway the only thing that seems to generate such scale voluntary involvement where people don't expect monetary returns is entertainment /see mmos like WOW or EVE online/ and charities.

The issue with entertainment is that itself needs a constant investment and I doubt there is any game publishing company out there that could afford 300 million dollars a year to spend on something they wont get any return on on the short term if ever.

Charities have the good characteristic that people don't expect return for themselves, they expect the charity to achieve it's goal. However there is the issue of convincing people to give up a portion of their income for the cause. It's not easy to do either.

Though of course the real issue isn't that it's hard to convince people to give up their hard earned money, it still can be done. The issue is that for that to happen, some people still need to get together, design and construct a "seed" for this organisation from which this thing could grow out of.

There are several such possible "seeds" out there right now, like Copenhagen Suborbitals have a good headstart, and it seems Planetary Resources are trying to pull in the general public and put it to good use.

I personally am thinking along the lines of an interactive entertaining charity, or a charitable interactive entertainment. Something that tries to combine the two system into something that draws in people who just want to have some fun, and also people who wish to do something useful with their spare time/money/expertise.

But as you can see it's really hard to find such people mostly because we are all quite busy with our normal lives, and it's hard to find time for a project like this that seems so extremely impossible, probably to most even redundant and uneccessary.

Also long boring posts don't realy help getting a proper conversation started in this topic either.

Anyway, can I have a look at your game btw? I am interested in what you have, and what you were thinking of, the concept if there is any. I am hunting for ideas all over the place. Need inspiration...