Daily news

OHB - A column by Marco Fuchs: Thoughts on time and space

I strongly believe in the Rocket Factory. A withdrawal is out of the question

WITHOUT ROCKETS THERE IS NO SPACE TRAVEL. WHY NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE MICROLAUNCHER.

Without rockets, there can be no space travel. At first glance, this seems to be a banal realization, after all, every child who would like to become an astronaut knows that he has to get into a rocket to leave the earth in the direction of space. Nevertheless, we in Europe have been dealing for some time with the question of how we want to do space travel in the future, and sometimes seem to be conducting an academic debate that cannot disguise the harsh reality: if we do not have access to space, then we cannot do space travel. From the perspective of the satellite manufacturer, I see the problems we currently have with limited European access to space in the form of unlaunched Galileo satellites on the farm every day.

As of March 2023, Europe still has two Ariane 5 launchers. One will launch the European Jupiter mission Juice in April, the last Ariane 5 will take off in June, carrying the German Telekom mission Heinrich Hertz and the French satellite Syracuse 4B. Ariane 5 has been Europe's reliable workhorse for almost 30 years and has also been successful in the commercial international market due to its reliability and high payload capacity; With MT Aerospace AG, we have the largest German supplier in the OHB Group and I have therefore been able to experience the success story of the Ariane 5 up close. In addition, a second European development for smaller payloads was established with the Vega. Complemented by the Europeanized Soyuz missile, Europe had a comfortable missile portfolio in relation to actual institutional needs. Clearly, it was also a political signal that independent European access to space was ensured at all times, but cooperations such as the one with the Soyuz or the launch of NASA's James Webb telescope were lived and desired practice.

Of these golden times, we are left with many spectacular launches and, of course, successful satellite missions, because that's what it's all about: the rocket is the means of transport for the satellite or the probe or, in the supreme discipline, the people, the launcher is not an end in itself, but must first and foremost meet the needs of its passengers. Of course, the price always plays a role, and here SpaceX has a decisive advantage over the other launchers, as the market price is unbeatably low due to the lean industrial approach and the reusability of the Falcon 9. The now expected first orbital flight of the fully reusable super-heavy-lift rocket Starship will increase this price pressure immensely.

The Ariane 6 as the successor model to the Ariane 5 is in crisis, until the first launch will pass in my estimation at least another year. The fact that the development of new launchers and demanding space missions cannot be squeezed into tight schedules is not a European realization, everywhere in the world these developments take longer and are becoming more expensive (incidentally, quite decisively due to the increased expenditure of time). Space travel is a technologically challenging and very risky discipline, not least where the attraction and fascination of the whole thing lies. Ariane 6 will serve as Europe's cargo rocket for large missions, and I have no doubt about that. The fact that the smaller Vega and the Vega-C are currently only available in small numbers due to essential components of their upper stages, which the manufacturer Avio obtains from the Ukraine, is currently papered over by the last false launches of the Vega rocket - as a result, however, the smaller European rocket is also on the ground.

Is now the time for the microlauncher? Yes, I am convinced of it, and with the successful tests that the Rocket Factory Augsburg has completed in the last six months, we are really well on the way to the first test flight in the next few months with the RFA ONE. In parallel with the technical advances, the institutional market is also preparing for the microlaunchers, as was clearly demonstrated by the joint declaration of the governments of France, Germany and Italy at the last ESA Ministerial Council Conference in November 2022. There it was agreed that European microlaunchers should be approved for the launch of ESA satellites, a really important step to make the privately financed rockets with institutional anchor customer orders attractive for commercial customers and above all investors. The founding of the Rocket Factory Augsburg in 2018 was the right decision at the right time, and already five years ago it was the declared goal that the rocket from Augsburg should make a competitive offer for access to space.

In order to achieve this, the customer base must be as large and broad as possible, and the missile must be cheap in addition to high reliability and scalability of payload capabilities. In the end, Rocket Factory Augsburg must be an independent and self-sustaining company in the European market environment. This was the declared goal right from the start, otherwise we would have been able to establish it directly as a subsidiary of the OHB Group. I am firmly convinced that the start-up approach is the right way to get a new and innovative perspective on the development and production of the rocket. This approach also includes the financing instruments that are successfully applied to tech start-ups around the world. Of course, investors and partners who do not come from space travel must also invest in the company, which becomes quite clear when you look at the other microlauncher companies and above all the clientele that the small launchers want to address. I firmly believe in XRF and together with OHB we will definitely accompany the development of the rocket on its way to success. Of course, we will not withdraw from the Rocket Factory, but will consistently continue along the path of opening up to further investors, a withdrawal is out of the question. The original idea, namely the expertise of the satellite manufacturer and the experience of rocket parts production, which OHB contributes to RFA as a strategic core investor, has not changed, and the development of the market and the changed political conditions in Europe reinforce this strategy.