Europe's new rocket, Vega, launches in a few minutes; live stream

No, neither. I'm saying that compared to my recollections of rocketry history as well as news about recent activity in the commercial space, a timespan of 14 years until the first validation launch seems long considering the challenges the deliverable would seem to pose. I can of course readily speculate about many reasons about why this is so:

- They may be doing higher-quality work or proceeding more cautiously than other projects with similar goals.

- The rocket may have unique traits or capabilities that justify the development time despite the payload capacity being nothing eyebrow-raising.

- The definition of "start of development" used by the author of the Wikipedia statement may not match my expectation, i.e. there may have been a long market analysis and conception stage before engineers actually got to work.

- The project may not have enjoyed a steady level of activity for all of those 14 years.

- Funding may have been lower than for comparable projects.

- There could have been political, legal or financial problems ailing the project.

- I may simply be wrong and 14 years is not a long time at all for this kind of project.

And so on.

Basically, I'm hoping for someone who knows the actual answer to share their insight.

antr2• 14 years ago

Unlike other "standard" space projects, the payload (consisting of two satellites, and seven picosatellites) was 100% designed and developed by students at various European universities. So even if the project began in 1998, do consider that both capital and technical resources are in no way comparable to those at NASA, ESA or JAXA; hence the timeframe of the project.

maaku• 14 years ago

He's talking about the rocket, not the payload.

Xixi• 14 years ago

As always with European things, it's quite complicated. I'm not even sure I fully understand myself.

Arianespace operates expendable launch systems, but doesn't manufacture them (anymore). So though Vega and Ariane 5 are both operated by Arianespace, they are actually designed and built by different companies.

- Ariane 5 is manufactured by EADS Astrium (French, German, British and Spanish).

- Vega is manufactured by Avio (Italian).

You can't really look at Astrium, and wonder why Avio took such a long time to develop the launcher. On the other hand there was definitely some cooperation going on, as for instance the first stage of Vega is derived from Ariane 5, and the improvements will most certainly make it back to Ariane...

wtfdog• 14 years ago

Does anybody know what S in the onscreen graphics is, and what "dog" is an abbreviation of?

arethuza• 14 years ago

Note that Arianespace have recently also have had their first couple of launches using Soyuz rockets from Kourou:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/10/arianespace-soyuz-st-...

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/soyuz-st-launch-six-s...

Arianespace now have a fairly nice family of launchers - Ariane 5, Soyuz and now Vega.

snippyhollow• 14 years ago

Thanks! I found more information here: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/publications/europe-... (Particularly on "why such launchers?" Who takes part in which, and the re-entry vehicle.)

bwarp• 14 years ago

Thanks for posting this. I'd completely forgotten about it.

Good luck to all involved. It's nice to see a proper engineering project being tested, hopefully not to destruction!

venti• 14 years ago

Amsat has a list of the cube-sats launched with Vega and their frequencies in the amateur radio bands: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/ (scroll down to the end of the page).

iamichi• 14 years ago

Here is the video of the launch, for those that missed it. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Vega/SEMJ8LYXHYG_0.html

wolf550e• 14 years ago

So, is it cheaper per kilogram to LEO than SpaceX Falcon 1e?

kiloaper• 14 years ago

Is the Falcon 1e in commerical operation yet?

dasmoth• 14 years ago

Falcon 1e seems to be pretty-much on hold at the moment. The Falcon 1 launch site on Kwajalein has been dismantled. As far as I can tell, SpaceX are focussing on deploying smallsats as secondary payloads on Falcon 9, rather than flying them as independent launches.

Europe's new rocket, Vega, launches in a few minutes; live stream

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