title: Comanagement in Canada

text:
Co-management, also known as community-based management, community-based resource management, cooperative management, joint management, and collaborative management, in the broadest terms refers to the administration of a particular place or resource being shared between multiple local and state management systems.  Although co-management encompasses a spectrum of power-sharing arrangements, in the Canadian context it typically refers to agreements between government agencies and representatives of Indigenous peoples in Canada to jointly make land use and resource management decisions about a tract of government-controlled land (e.g. protected areas) or resource (e.g.fishery.).

Co-management arrangements in Canada between Crown governments and Indigenous groups have historically arisen out of comprehensive land claims settlements (modern treaties), crisis resolution processes (ie. over resource disputes), and more recently out of growing legal recognition of Indigenous right through supreme court jurisprudence, such as the 1999 Sparrow ruling. Where Crown governments enter into co-management agreements to minimize management costs or uphold human rights commitments, such Canada's endorsement of the United Nation's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous groups leverage co-management strategically as a tool to advance their self-determination as distinct cultures and to reclaim political agency. Historically, co-management has been a subject of debate. From one stance, co-management is viewed as a paternalistic administrative arrangement levied by the state that reifies colonial relationships by co-opting Indigenous peoples, excludes Indigenous forms of law and governance, and/or displaces Indigenous assertions of sovereignty. In nearly all co-management agreements, the Minister maintains unfettered veto rights, which is a source of contention among critics of co-management. Proponents of co-management highlight its utility as an adaptive platform by which Indigenous peoples can assert their sovereignty and jurisdiction, and engage in power-sharing arrangements with the state. Indigenous perspectives on co-management have been under represented in studies on co-management and critiques against co-management erroneously reduce Indigenous peoples to subjects without agency or the capacity to politically organize.

Land claims based fish and wildlife co-management arrangements
There are 26 land claim settlements in Canada to date and each modern treaty has provisions for fish and wildlife co-management. Co-management arrangements created from these legally negotiated agreements may be referred to as land claims based co-management. An example of one such arrangement is the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board (NWMB). These agreements offer some advantages because they are constitutionally protected in Canada and outline clear roles and responsibilities for parties to the agreements.

Co-management of Protected Areas in Canada
Canada's earliest national parks, intended for tourism and resource protection, notoriously excluded and displaced Indigenous peoples from their boundaries. Over the 20th century, there were several events and transformations in Canadian politics and within Parks Canada Agency that have led to improved engagement and relations with Indigenous peoples across their system. One of the most significant advancements for Indigenous-state relationships was the 1975 Comprehensive Land Claim Policy out of which many national parks were established, as described below. Soon thereafter, Justice Berger's 1977 Mackenzie Valley pipeline inquiry led Parks Canada in 1979 to recognize "the potential for joint management [of parks] with Aboriginal peoples" and to sustain the local Indigenous community's ability to continue traditional activities on the land. In the 1990s, Parks Canada Agency finally restructured many of its internal policies to allow for Indigenous peoples to continue some traditional activities and then introduced National Park Reserves (national parks "to-be" pending land claim settlements) into the Canada National Parks Act.

Parks Canada co-manages many of its protected areas with local Indigenous peoples as the direct result of comprehensive land claims agreements. The first of these, Ivvavik National Park, in the Yukon and Inuvialuit Settlement Region, is under co-management as a result of provisions included in the 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement. Likewise, the Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement established a cooperative management board that would administer the Torngat Mountains National Park in Labrador, created in 2005. In certain cases, such as in the Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories and Łutsël K’é Dene territory, other types of protected areas (e.g. Territorial Protected Areas) have been established in conjunction with national parks. These collaborative projects are often initiated by Indigenous partners. In contrast to the Northern context, Southern Canada, where socio-political complexities relating to treaty context and jurisdictional overlap abound, agreement-making between Indigenous groups and Parks Canada Agency and Indigenous engagement in general is less consistent. Many of these Southern Parks are witnessing changes in the way the state engages with its Indigenous partners as a result of the Parks Canada Agency's policy development.

Provincial and territorial protected areas also utilize co-management arrangements for their administration. Similar to the federal context, these are frequently a result of provincial land claim settlements, mostly notably in Western and Northern Canada. For example, the establishment of Thunderbird's Nest (T’iitsk’in Paawats) Protected Area in 2011, cooperatively managed between Uchucklesaht Tribe Government and PC Parks, was a stated provision within the Maa-nulth First Nations Final Agreement. A separate but related phenomenon is the joint management of parks by two governments without an Indigenous partner.  For example, the federal government and a province can jointly manage a park such as the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park in Quebec, as can two provinces such as Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Co-management of Resources in Canada
The West Coast of Vancouver Island Aquatic Management Board is an example of co-management in fisheries.  It consists of two members appointed by each of the Government of Canada, Province of British Columbia, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, the regional districts, as well as eight non-government members jointly appointed by the levels of government from the wider community.

In addition to park establishment, modern land claim agreements mandate the creation of co-management agreements or management entities that concern resource management, such as the Wildlife Management Advisory Council (North Slope) in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. Comprehensive land claims of Yukon First Nations include the creation of local resource management bodies called Renewable Resource Councils, some of which serve as management entities on co-management boards themselves.

Resource crises have also spawned the creation of co-management boards. A well-studied example is the defunct Ruby Range Sheep Steering Committee established in 1995 to assess Dall Sheep population dynamics in Southwest Yukon. The committee was composed of representatives from local Indigenous communities, territorial and federal governments, local outfitters, and environmental organizations and was responsible for advising the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board on decisions relating to the sheep herd.

References

Indigenous self-government in Canada
Land use
Governance
Decentralization
Political geography
Community
Natural resource management
Indigenous peoples and the environment


title: Space launch market competition

text:
Space launch market competition is the manifestation of market forces in the launch service provider business. In particular it is the trend of competitive dynamics among payload transport capabilities at diverse prices having a greater influence on launch purchasing than the traditional political considerations of country of manufacture or the national entity using, regulating or licensing the launch service.

Following the advent of spaceflight technology in the late 1950s, space launch services came into being, exclusively by national programs. Later in the 20th century commercial operators became important customers of launch providers. International competition for the communications satellite payload subset of the launch market was increasingly influenced by commercial considerations. However, even during this period, for both commercial- and government-entity-launched commsats, the launch service providers for these payloads used launch vehicles built to government specifications, and with state-provided development funding exclusively.

In the early 2010s, five decades after humans first developed spaceflight technology, privately-developed launch vehicle systems and space launch service offerings emerged. Companies now faced economic incentives rather than the principally political incentives of the earlier decades. The space launch business experienced a dramatic lowering of per-unit prices along with the addition of entirely new capabilities, bringing about a new phase of competition in the space launch market.

History
In the early decades of the Space Age—1950s–2000s—the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and the United States pioneered space technology. This was augmented by collaboration with affiliated design bureaus in the USSR and contracts with commercial companies in the US. All rocket designs were built explicitly for government purposes. The European Space Agency (ESA) was formed in 1975, largely following the same model of space technology development. Other national space agencies—such as China's CNSA
and India's ISRO—also financed the indigenous development of their own national designs.

Communications satellites were the principal non-government market after the 1970s. Although launch competition in the early years after 2010 occurred only in and among global commercial launch providers, the US market for military launches began to experience multi-provider competition in 2015, as the US government began to move away from their previous monopoly arrangement with United Launch Alliance (ULA) for military launches. By 2018, the ULA monopoly on US national security space launch had evaporated.

By mid-2017, the results of this multi-year competitive pressure on commercially bid launch prices was being observed in the actual number of launches achieved. With frequent recovery of first-stage boosters by SpaceX, expendable missions had become a rare occurrence for them. But the new landscape did not come without a cost.  Many space launch providers are expending capital to develop new lower-cost reusable spaceflight technologies.  SpaceX alone had expended about  by 2017 in order to develop the capability to reuse orbital class boosters on a subsequent flight.

By 2021, the monopoly previously held by nation states to be the only entities to fund, train, and send astronauts for human space exploration was ending as the first mission with exclusively private citizens—Inspiration4—was launched in September 2021.  The rocket and capsule for the flight, the training, and the funding are all provided by private entities outside of the traditional NASA process that had held the US monopoly since the early 1960s.

1970s and 1980s: Commercial satellites emerge
Non-military commercial satellites began to be launched in volume in the 1970s and 1980s. Launch services were supplied exclusively with launch vehicles developed originally for various Cold War military programs, with their attendant cost structures.

SpaceNews journalist Peter B. De Selding has asserted that French government leadership, and the Arianespace consortium "all but invented the commercial launch business in the 1980s" principally "by ignoring U.S. government assurances that the reusable U.S. space shuttle would make expendable launch vehicles like Ariane obsolete."

2000-2010
Little market competition emerged inside any national market before approximately the late 2000s. Some global commercial competition arose between the national providers of various nation states for international commercial satellite launches. Within the US, as late as 2006, the high cost structures built in to government contractors'—Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V—launch vehicles left little commercial opportunity for US launch service providers but considerable opportunity for low-cost Russian boosters based on leftover Cold War military missile technology.

DARPA's Simon P. Worden and the USAF's Jess Sponable analyzed the situation in 2006 and offered that, "One bright point is the emerging private sector, which [was then] pursuing suborbital or small lift capabilities."  They concluded, "Although such vehicles support very limited US Department of Defense or National Aeronautics and Space Administration spaceflight needs, they do offer potential technology demonstration stepping stones to more capable systems needed in the future."; demonstrating capabilities that would grow in the next five years while supporting published list prices substantially below the rates on offer by the national providers.

2010-2020s: Competition and pricing pressure

Since the early 2010s, new private options for obtaining spaceflight services emerged, bringing substantial price pressure into the existing market.

Before 2013,  Europe's Arianespace, which flies the Ariane 5, and International Launch Services (ILS), which marketed Russia's Proton vehicle dominated the communications satellite launch market. In November 2013, Arianespace announced new pricing flexibility for the "lighter satellites" it carries to orbits aboard its Ariane 5 in response to SpaceX's growing presence in the worldwide launch market.

In early December 2013, SpaceX flew its first launch to a geostationary transfer orbit providing additional credibility to its low prices which had been published since at least 2009. The low launch prices offered by the company, especially for communication satellites flying to geostationary (GTO) orbit, resulted in market pressure on its competitors to lower their prices.

By late 2013, with a published price of  per launch to low Earth orbit, "Falcon 9 rockets [were] already the cheapest in the industry. Reusable Falcon 9s [were project to potentially decrease] the price by an order of magnitude, sparking more space-based enterprise, which in turn would drop the cost of access to space still further through economies of scale."

Falcon 9 GTO mission pricing in 2014 was approximately  less than a launch on a Chinese Long March 3B.
Despite SpaceX prices being somewhat lower than Long March prices, the Chinese Government and the Great Wall Industry company—which markets the Long March for commsat missions—made a policy decision to maintain commsat launch prices at approximately .

In early 2014, the ESA asked European governments for additional subsidies to face the competition from SpaceX. Continuing to face "stiff competition on price", in April seven European satellite operator companies—including the four largest in the world by annual revenue—asked that the ESA "find immediate ways to reduce Ariane 5 rocket launch costs and, in the longer term, make the next-generation Ariane 6 vehicle more attractive for smaller telecommunications satellites. ... [C]onsiderable efforts to restore competitiveness in price of the existing European launcher need to be undertaken if Europe is [to] maintain its market situation.  In the short term, a more favorable pricing policy for the small satellites currently being targeted by SpaceX seems indispensable to keeping the Ariane launch manifest strong and well-populated."

In competitive bids during 2013 and early 2014, SpaceX was winning many launch customers that formerly "would have been all-but-certain clients of Europe's Arianespace launch consortium, with prices that are $60 million or less." Facing direct market competition from SpaceX, the large US launch provider United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced strategic changes in 2014 to restructure its launch business—replacing two launch vehicle families (Atlas V and Delta IV) with the new Vulcan architecture—while implementing an iterative and incremental development program to build a partially reusable and much lower-cost launch system over the next decade.

In June 2014, Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël announced that European efforts to remain competitive in response to SpaceX's recent success had begun in earnest. This included the creation of a new joint venture company from Arianespace's two largest shareholders: the launch-vehicle producer Airbus and engine-producer Safran. No additional details of the efforts to become more competitive were released at the time.

In August 2014, Eutelsat, the third-largest fixed satellite services operator worldwide by revenue, indicated that it planned to spend approximately  less each year in the next three years, due to lower prices for launch services and by transitioning their commsats to electric propulsion. They indicated they are using the lower prices they can get from SpaceX against Arianespace in negotiations for launch contracts.

By December 2014, Arianespace had selected a design and commenced development of the Ariane 6, its new entrant into the commercial launch market aiming for more competitively priced launch service offerings, with operational flights planned to begin in 2020.

In October 2014, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes and workforce with the stated objective to decrease launch costs by half. One of the reasons given for the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was competition from SpaceX. ULA had less "success landing contracts to launch private, commercial communications and earth observation satellites" than it had with launch US military payloads, but CEO Tory Bruno stated that the new lower-cost ULA launcher could be competitive and succeed in the commercial satellite sector. In 2014, the US GAO calculated the average cost of each ULA rocket launch for the US government had risen to approximately .

By November 2014, SpaceX had "already begun to take market share" from Arianespace. Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen said, in reference to ESA's program to develop the Ariane 6, "Each year that passes will see SpaceX advance, gain market share and further reduce its costs through economies of scale."
European government research ministers approved the development of the new European rocket—Ariane 6—in December 2014, projecting the rocket would be "cheaper to construct and to operate" and that "more modern methods of production and a streamlined assembly to try to reduce unit costs" plus "the rocket's modular design can be tailored to a wide range of satellite and mission types [so it] should gain further economies from frequent use."

In 2015, the ESA was attempting to reorganize to reduce bureaucracy and decrease inefficiencies in launcher and satellite spending which had been tied historically to the amount of tax funds that each country has provided to it.

In May 2015, ULA stated it would go out of business unless it won commercial and civil satellite launch orders to offset an expected slump in U.S. military and spy launches. , SpaceX remained "the low-cost supplier in the industry." However, in the market for launches of US military payloads, ULA faced no competition for nearly a decade, since the formation of the ULA joint venture from Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 2006. However, SpaceX was also upsetting the traditional military space launch arrangement in the US, which in 2014 was called a monopoly by space analyst Marco Caceres and criticized by some in the US Congress. By May 2015, the SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 was certified by the USAF to compete to launch many of the expensive satellites which are considered essential to US national security. And by 2019, ULA, with their next-generation, lower-cost Vulcan/Centaur launch vehicle, was one of four launch companies competing for the US military's multi-year block-buy contract for 2022–2026 against SpaceX (Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy), Northrop Grumman (Omega), and Blue Origin (New Glenn), where only the SpaceX vehicles are currently flying and the other three are all slated to make their initial launch in 2021.

University of Southampton researcher Clemens Rumpf argued in 2015 that the global launch industry was developed in an "old world where space funding was provided by governments, resulting in a stable foundation for [global] space activities. The money for the space industry [had been] secure and did not encourage risk-taking in the development of new space technologies. ... the space landscape [had not changed much since the mid-1980s]."  As a result, the emergence of SpaceX was a surprise to other launch providers "because the need to evolve launcher technology by a giant leap was not apparent to them. SpaceX show[ed] that technology has advanced sufficiently in the last 30 years to enable new, game changing approaches to space access." The Washington Post said that the changes occasioned from multiple competing service providers resulted in a revolution in innovation.

By mid-2015, Arianespace was speaking publicly about job reductions as part of an attempt to remain competitive in the "European industry [which is being] restructured, consolidated, rationalized and streamlined" to respond to SpaceX price competition. Still, "Arianespace remained confident it could maintain its 50% share of the space launch market despite SpaceX's slashing prices by building reliable rockets that are smaller and cheaper."

Following the first successful landing and recovery of a SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage in December 2015, equity analysts at investment bank Jefferies estimated that launch costs to satellite operators using Falcon 9 launch vehicles may decline by about 40% of SpaceX' typical  per launch,
although SpaceX had only forecast an approximately 30 percent launch price reduction from the use of a reused first stage by early 2016. In early 2016, Arianespace was projecting a launch price of , about one-half of the 2015 Ariane 5 per launch price.

In March 2017, SpaceX reused an orbital booster stage that had been previously launched, landed and recovered, stating the cost to the company of doing so "was substantially less than half the cost" of a new first stage. COO Gwynne Shotwell said the cost savings "came even though SpaceX did extensive work to examine and refurbish the stage. We did way more on this one than [is planned for future recovered stages]."

A 2017 industry-wide view by SpaceNews reported:  By 5 July 2017, SpaceX had launched 10 payloads during a bit over six months—"outperform[ing] its cadence from earlier years"—and "is well on track to hit the target it set last year of 18 launches in a single year." There were indeed 18 successful Falcon 9 launches in 2017. By comparison, France-based Arianespace, SpaceX’s chief competitor for commercial telecommunications satellite launches, is launching 11 to 12 times a year using its fleet of three rockets—the heavy-lift Ariane 5, medium-lift Soyuz and light-lift Vega. Russia has the ability to launch a dozen or more times with Proton doing both government and commercial missions, but has operated at a slower cadence the past few years due to launch failures and [the] discovery of an incorrect material used in some rocket engines. United Launch Alliance, SpaceX’s chief competitor for defense missions, regularly conducts around a dozen or more launches per year, but the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture has only performed four missions through mid-year 2017.

By 2018, the monopoly ULA had held on US national security space launch was over.
ULA responded to the Falcon 9 by beginning development in 2014 on the Vulcan rocket, a partly reusable vehicle powered by Blue Origin BE-4 engines, intended to replace its ageing expendable Atlas V and Delta IV rockets.
In early 2018, SpaceNews reported that "[t]he rise of SpaceX has disrupted the launch industry at large." By mid-2018, with Proton flying as few as two launches in an entire year, the Russian state corporation Roscosmos announced they would retire the Proton launch vehicle, in part due to competition from lower-cost launch alternatives.

In 2018 SpaceX launched a record 21 times, exceeding the 18 launches in 2017; ULA had flown just 8 flights in 2018. That record was again beaten in 2020 with 26 Falcon 9 launches and 2021 with 31 launches.

In early 2019, the French "Court of Audit criticized Arianespace for what it "perceived as an unsustainable and overly cautious response to the swift rise of SpaceX’s affordable and reusable Falcon 9 rocket."  The Ariane 6 was found to be uncompetitive with SpaceX launch service provider options, and further found that "the most probable outcome for Ariane 6 is one in which the very existence of the rocket will be predicated upon continual annual subsidies from the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to make up for the rocket’s inability to sustain commercial orders beyond a handful of discounted shoo-in contracts."

Raising private capital
Private capital invested in the space launch industry prior to 2015 was modest. From 2000 through the end of 2015, a total of  of investment finance had been invested in the space sector.  of that was venture capital financing, of which $1.8 billion was invested in 2015 alone.

For the space launch sector, this began to change with the January 2015 Google and Fidelity Investments investment of  in SpaceX. While private satellite manufacturing companies had previously raised large capital rounds, that has been the largest investment to date in a launch service provider.

SpaceX developed the Falcon Heavy (first flight in February 2018), and are developing the Starship launch vehicle with private capital. No government financing is being provided for either rocket.

After decades of reliance on government funding to develop the Atlas and Delta families of launch vehicles, in October 2014 the successor company—ULA—began development of a rocket, initially with  private funds, as one part of a solution for its problem of "skyrocketing launch costs".  However, by March 2016 it had become clear that the new Vulcan launch vehicle would be developed with funding via a public–private partnership with the US government. By early 2016, the US Air Force had committed  of funding for Vulcan development. ULA has not "put a firm price tag on [the total cost of Vulcan development but ULA CEO Tory Bruno has] said new rockets typically cost $2 billion, including $1 billion for the main engine". ULA had asked the US government in 2016 to provide a minimum of  by 2020 to assist it in developing the new US launch vehicle.  It was unclear how the change in development funding mechanisms might change ULA plans for pricing market-driven launch services.
Since Vulcan development began in October 2014, the privately generated funding for Vulcan development has been approved only on a short term basis.  The ULA board of directors—composed entirely of executives from Boeing and Lockheed Martin—is approving development funding on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

Other launch service providers are developing new space launch systems with substantial government capital investment. For the new ESA launch vehicle—Ariane 6, aiming for flight in the 2020s— of development capital was requested to be "industry's share", ostensibly private capital.  was slated to be provided by various European government sources at the time the early finance structure was made public in April 2015. In the event, France's Airbus Safran Launchers—the company building the Ariane 6—did agree to provide  of development funding in June 2015, with expectation of formalizing the development contract in July 2015.

, the Japanese legislature was considering legislation to provide a legal framework for private company spaceflight initiatives in Japan. It was unclear whether the legislation would become law and, if so, whether significant private capital would subsequently enter the Japanese space launch industry as a result.In the event, the legislation appears not to have become law, and little change in the funding mechanism for Japanese space vehicles are anticipated.

The economics of space launch are driven, in part, by business demand in the space economy.  Morgan Stanley projected in 2017 that "revenue from the global industry will increase to at least  by 2040, more than triple the figure in 2016. This does not include "the more aspirational possibilities presented by space tourism or mining, nor by [NASA] megaprojects."

2014 and beyond

A number of market responses to the increase of lower-cost competition in the space launch market began in the 2010s. As rocket engine and rocket technologies have fairly long development cycles, most of the results of these moves would not be seen until the late-2010s and early 2020s.

ULA entered into a partnership with Blue Origin in September 2014 to develop the BE-4 LOX/methane engine to replace the RD-180 on a new lower-cost first stage booster rocket. At the time, the engine was already in its third year of development by Blue Origin. ULA indicated then they expected the new stage and engine to start flying no earlier than 2019 on a successor to the Atlas V  A month later, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes and workforce to decrease launch costs by half. One of the reasons given for the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was competition from SpaceX. ULA intended to have preliminary design ideas in place for a blending of the Atlas V and Delta IV technology by the end of 2014, but in the event, the high-level design was announced in April 2015. By early 2018, ULA had  moved the first launch date for the Vulcan launch vehicle to no earlier than mid-2020, and by 2019, were aiming to launch in 2021.

Blue Origin is also planning to begin flying its own orbital launch vehicle—the New Glenn—in 2021, a rocket that will also use the Blue BE-4 engine on the first stage, the same as the ULA Vulcan. Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos initially said they did not plan to compete for the US military launch market, stating the market is "a relatively small number of flights. It's very hard to do well and ULA is already great at it. I'm not sure where we would add any value." Bezos sees competition as a good thing, particularly as competition leads to his ultimate goal of getting "millions and millions of people living and working in space." This decision was reversed in 2017, with Blue Origin saying it did intend to compete for US national security launches.  In 2019, Blue was not only competing to offer the New Glenn launch vehicle for the US military's multi-year block-buy contract for "all [US] national security launches from 2022 to 2026" against SpaceX, ULA (for which Blue is on contract to provide the BE-4 engines for the ULA Vulcan), and others, it had "said the Air Force competition was designed to unfairly benefit ULA."

In early 2015, the French space agency CNES began working with Germany and a few other governments to start a modest research effort with a hope to propose a LOX/methane reusable launch system, to supplement or replace the Ariane 6 that was only then beginning full development in Europe, by mid-2015, and subsequently renamed Ariane Next, with flight testing unlikely before approximately 2026. The stated design objective was to reduce both the cost and duration of reusable vehicle refurbishment and was partially motivated by the pressure of lower-cost competitive options with newer technological capabilities not found in the Ariane 6. Responding to competitive pressures, one stated objective of Ariane Next is to reduce Ariane launch cost by a factor of two beyond improvements brought by Ariane 6.
Ariane 6, the European launch vehicle design prior to Ariane Next has seen delays.  In 2014, operational flights of the expendable Ariane 6 were slated to begin in 2020, but by mid-2021 had slipped to 2022.

SpaceX stated in 2014 that if they were successful at developing the reusable technology, launch prices in the  range for the reusable Falcon 9 could be achieved in the longer term. In the event, SpaceX did not choose to develop the reusable second stage for the Falcon 9, but are doing so for their next-generation launch vehicle, the new fully reusable Starship. SpaceX indicated in 2017 that the single-launch marginal cost of the Starship would be approximately . In November 2019, Elon Musk reduced this figure to $2 million -- $900,000 for fuel and $1.1 million for launch support services.
After the mid-2010s, prices for smallsat and cubesat launch services began to decline significantly. Both the addition of new small launch vehicles to the market (Rocket Lab, Firefly, Vector, and several Chinese service providers) and the addition of new capacity of rideshare services are putting price pressure on existing providers. "Cubesats that used to cost  to launch are now  and going down."

According to an industry panel interviewed in October 2018, an industry shakeout is expected between 2019 and 2021 due to the excess supply compared to demand. Prices should reach stability once the new entrants have demonstrated their capabilities.

In the first quarter of 2020, SpaceX launched over  of payload mass to orbit while all Chinese, European, and Russian launchers placed approximately ,  and  in orbit, respectively, with all other launch providers launching approximately .

Competition for the American heavy-lift market

As early as August 2014, media sources noted that the US launch market may have two competitive super-heavy launch vehicles available in the 2020s to launch payloads of  or more to low-Earth orbit. The US government is developing the Space Launch System (SLS), capable of lifting very large payloads of  from Earth. On the commercial side, SpaceX has been privately developing their next-generation Starship launch system, featuring fully reusable boosters and spacecraft, and targeting  of payload. Development of the methalox Raptor engine began in 2012, first flight tests were done in 2019. By 2014, NASASpaceflight.com reported: "SpaceX [had] never openly portrayed its BFR plans in competition with NASA’s SLS. ... However, should SpaceX make solid progress on the development of its BFR over the coming years, it is almost unavoidable that America’s two HLVs will attract comparisons and a healthy debate, potentially at the political level."

The Starship is planned to replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, as well as the Dragon spacecraft, initially aiming at the Earth-orbit launch market, but explicitly adding substantial capability to support long-duration spaceflight in the cislunar and Mars mission environments. SpaceX intends this approach to bring significant cost savings that will help the company justify the development expense of designing and building the Starship system.

Following the successful maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy in February 2018, and with SpaceX advertising a  list price for transporting up to  to low-Earth orbit, U.S. President Donald Trump said: "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA."
Space journalist Eric Berger extrapolated: "Trump seems to be siding with commercial space advocates, who say that, while rockets like the Falcon Heavy may be slightly less capable than the SLS, they come at a drastically reduced price that will enable much quicker, broader exploration of the Solar System."

A consolidated Arianspace reported 15 total launches for the Ariane, Soyuz, and Vega rockets in 2021.

Launch contract competitive results

Before 2014
Before 2014, Arianespace had dominated the commercial launch market for many years. "In 2004, for example, they held over 50% of the world market."
 2010: 26 geostationary commercial satellites were ordered under long-term launch contracts.
 2011: Only 17 geostationary commercial satellites went under contract during 2011 as an "historically large capital spending surge by the biggest satellite fleet operators" began to tail off, something that had been anticipated to follow the various satellite fleets being substantially upgraded.
 2012: , the major launch providers globally were Arianespace (France), International Launch Services (United States) which markets the Russian Proton launch vehicle, and Sea Launch of Switzerland which markets the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit rocket. In late 2012, each of them had manifests that were "full or nearly so for both 2012 and 2013."
 23 geostationary orbit communications satellites were placed under firm contract during 2013.

2014
A total of 20 launches were booked in 2014 for commercial launch service providers. 19 were for flights to geostationary orbit (GEO), one was for a low Earth orbit (LEO) launch.

Arianespace and SpaceX each signed nine contracts for geostationary launches, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was awarded one. United Launch Alliance signed one commercial contract to launch an Orbital Sciences Corporation Cygnus spacecraft to the LEO-orbiting International Space Station following the destruction over the pad of an Orbital Antares vehicle in October 2014. This was the first year in some time that no commercial launches were booked on the Russian (Proton-M) and Russian-Ukrainian (Zenit) launch service providers.

For perspective, eight additional satellites in 2014 were booked "by national launch providers in deals for which no competitive bids were sought."

Overall in 2014 Arianespace took 60% of commercial launch market share.

2015

In 2015, Arianespace signed 14 commercial-order launch contracts for geosynchronous-orbit commsats, while SpaceX received only nine, with International Launch Services (Proton) and United Launch Alliance signing one contract each. In addition, Arianespace signed their largest launch contract ever—for 21 LEO launches for OneWeb using the Europeanized Russian Soyuz launch vehicle launching from the ESA spaceport—and two Vega smallsat launches.

The launch of the US Air Force's first GPS III satellite is expected no earlier than 2017 rather than 2016 as originally planned. ULA—after having held a government-sanctioned monopoly on US military launches for the previous decade—declined to even submit a bid, leaving the likely contract award winner to be SpaceX, the only other domestic US provider of launch services to be certified as usable by the US military.

Since 2016
SpaceX's market share increased rapidly. In 2016, SpaceX had 30% global market share for newly awarded commercial launch contracts, in 2017 the market share reached 45%, and 65% in 2018.

Five years after SpaceX began to recover Falcon 9 booster stages, and three years after they began reflying previously-flown boosters on commercial flights, the US military contracted in September 2020 for flying several US Space Force GPS satellite flights in 2021+ on previously-flown booster rockets in order to reduce launch costs by over  per flight.

By 2023, the overall demand for launch services remained high after growing substantially in the previous decade. The "combination of retirements of large launch vehicles like the Ariane 5, delays in the development of Ariane 6, New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur, and the withdrawal of Soyuz from the market has created a lack of capacity for commercial and government customers alike" even with SpaceX launching a record 61 launches in 2022 and over 50 launches in the first eight months of 2023.  Furthermore, despite many startups developing small and medium launch vehicles, only Rocket Lab has been consistently launching commercially for the smallsat market. For the other competitors, the "year has been filled with delays, failures and bankruptcies." The first launches of ABL Space Systems’ RS1 and Relativity Space’s Terran 1 both failed in 2023, while Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy.

Launch industry response - to lower prices - from 2014

In addition to price reductions for proffered launch service contracts, launch service providers are restructuring to meet increased competitive pressures within the industry.

In 2014, United Launch Alliance (ULA) began a multi-year major restructuring of processes and workforce to decrease launch costs by half. In May 2015, ULA announced it would decrease its executive ranks by 30 percent in December 2015, with the layoff of 12 executives. The management layoffs were the "beginning of a major reorganization and redesign" as ULA endeavors  to "slash costs and hunt out new customers to ensure continued growth despite the rise of [SpaceX]".

According to one Arianespace managing director in 2015, "'It's quite clear there's a very significant challenge coming from SpaceX,' he said. 'Therefore, things have to change - and the European industry is being restructured, consolidated, rationalised and streamlined.' "

Jean Botti, Chief technology officer for Airbus (which makes the Ariane 5) warned that "those who don't take Elon Musk seriously will have a lot to worry about."

Airbus announced in 2015 that they would open an R&D center and venture capital fund in Silicon Valley. Airbus CEO Fabrice Brégier stated: "What is the weakness of a big group like Airbus when we talk about innovation? We believe that we have better ideas than the rest of the world. We believe that we know because we control the technologies and platforms. The world has shown us in the car industry, the space industry and the hi-tech industry that this is not true. And we need to be open to others' ideas and others' innovations."
Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders said: "The only way to do it for big companies is really to create spaces outside of the main business where we allow and where we incentivize experimentation ... That is what we have started to do but there is no manual ... It is a little bit of trial and error. We all feel challenged by what the Internet companies are doing."

Following a SpaceX launch vehicle failure in June 2015—due to the lower prices, increased flexibility for partial-payload launches of the Ariane heavy lifter, and decreased cost of operations of the ESA Guiana Space Center spaceport—Arianespace regained the competitive lead in commercial launch contracts signed in 2015. SpaceX’s successful recovery of a first stage rocket in December 2015 did not change the Arianespace outlook.  Arianespace CEO Israel stated the next month that the "challenges of reusability ... have not disappeared. ... The stress on stage or engine structures of high-speed passage through the atmosphere, the performance penalty of reserving fuel for the return flight instead of maximizing rocket lift capacity, the need for many annual launches to make the economics work – all remain issues."

Despite ULA restructuring begun in 2014 to decrease launch costs by half, the cheapest ULA space launch in early 2018 remained the Atlas V 401 at a price of approximately , over  more than a SpaceX standard commercial launch, that the US military began to utilize for some US government missions that flew in 2018.
By early 2018, two European government space agencies—CNES and DLR—began concept development for a new reusable engine aimed to be manufactured at one-tenth the cost of the Ariane 5's first-stage engine, Prometheus. , the first flight test  for the rocket engine in a demonstration vehicle was expected in 2020. The goal was to "establish a base of knowledge for future launch vehicles that could, maybe, be reusable."

In the market for launches of small satellites—including both rideshare launch services on medium-lift and heavy-lift launch vehicles, and the developing capacity from small launch vehicles—prices were falling by early 2018 as more launch capacity entered the market. Cubesat launches that had previously cost  had declined by March 2018 to , and prices were continuing to decline. New capacity from Chinese Long March and Indian PSLV medium-lift vehicles and a number of new small launchers from Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, Firefly, and a number of new Chinese small launch vehicles are expected to put more downward pressure on prices, while also increasing the ability of entities launching smallsats to purchase custom launch dates and launch orbits, increasing overall responsiveness to launch purchasers.

As recently as 2013, nearly half of the world's commercial launch payloads were launched on Russian launch vehicles. By 2018 the Russian launch service market share was projected to shrink to about 10% of the world's commercial launch market. Russia launched only three commercial payloads in 2017.  Technical problems with the Proton rocket and intense competition with SpaceX have been the prime drivers of this decline.  SpaceX's share of the commercial market has grown from 0% in 2009 to a projected 50% for 2018.

By 2018, Russia had indicated it would reduce focus on the commercial launch market. In April 2018, Russia's chief spaceflight official, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview, "The share of launch vehicles is as small as four percent of the overall market of space services. The four percent stake isn’t worth the effort to try to elbow Musk and China aside. Payloads manufacturing is where good money can be made."

The global launch market revenue from the 33 commercial orbital launches in 2017 was estimated to be just over  while the global space economy is much larger at  (2016 data). The launch industry is becoming increasingly competitive; however, by 2018 there had not been a large increase of launch opportunities in response to decreasing prices. In 2018, Ars Technica reported that Russia may be the first launch provider to be a casualty of over supply of launch services.

By May 2018, as SpaceX prepared to launch the first Block 5 version of Falcon 9, Eric Berger reported in Ars Technica that, during the eight years since its maiden launch, Falcon 9 had become the dominant rocket globally, through SpaceX efforts to take risks and relentlessly innovate driving efficiency upwards. The first Block 5 booster flew successfully on 11 May 2018, and SpaceX then "lowered the standard price of a Falcon 9 launch from  to about . This move further strengthens SpaceX’s competitiveness in the commercial launch market."

In mid-2018, no fewer than three commercial launch vehicles—Ariane 6, Vulcan, and New Glenn—were being targeted for initial launch in 2020, two of them explicitly aimed at competitively responding to the offerings of SpaceX(although journalists and industry experts were expressing doubts that all these target dates would be met.)

In addition to building new launch vehicles and endeavoring to lower launch prices, competitive responses may include new product offerings, and now do include a more schedule-oriented launch cadence for dual-manifested payloads on offer from Blue Origin. Blue Origin announced in 2018 they intend to contract for launch services a bit differently than the contract options that have been traditionally offered in the commercial launch market. The company has stated they will support a regular launch cadence of up to eight launches per year. If one of the payload providers for a multi-payload launch is not ready on time, Blue Origin will hold to the launch timeframe, and fly the remaining payloads on time at no increase in price.
This is quite different from how dual-launch manifested contracts have been previously handled by Arianespace (Ariane V and Ariane 6) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (H-IIA and H3). SpaceX and International Launch Services offer only dedicated launch contracts.

In June 2019, the European Commission provided funding for a three-year project called RETALT to "[copy the] retro-propulsive engine firing technique used by SpaceX to land its Falcon 9 rocket first stages back on land and on autonomous drone ships." The RETALT project funding of  was provided to the German Space Agency and five European companies to fund a study to "tackle the shortcoming of know-how in reusable rockets in Europe."

In December 2021, the Government of France announced a plan to fund the "France-based rocket firm ArianeGroup to develop a new small-lift rocket called Maïa by the year 2026." The country is doing this separately from the normal intergovernmental projects of the European Space Agency, where France also plays a major role since the ESA founding.  The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire said France intends to "have our SpaceX, we will have our Falcon 9. We will make up for a bad strategic choice made 10 years ago."

Effect on related industries

Satellite design and manufacturing is beginning to take advantage of these lower-cost options for space launch services.

One such satellite system is the Boeing 702SP which can be launched as a pair on a lighter-weight dual-commsat stack—two satellites conjoined on a single launch—and which was specifically designed to take advantage of the lower-cost SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
The design was announced in 2012 and the first two commsats of this design were lofted in a paired launch in March 2015, for a record low launch price of approximately  per GSO commsat. Boeing CEO James McNerney has indicated that SpaceX's growing presence in the space industry is forcing Boeing "to be more competitive in some segments of the market."

Early information in 2015 on the Starlink constellation of 4000 satellites operated by SpaceX intended to provide global Internet services, along with a new factory dedicated to manufacturing low-cost smallsat satellites, indicate that the satellite manufacturing industry may "experience a supply shock similar to what the launcher industry is experiencing" in the 2010s.

Venture capital investor Steve Jurvetson has indicated that it is not merely the lower launch prices, but the fact that the known prices act as a signal in conveying information to other entrepreneurs who then use that information to bring on new related ventures.

Launch vehicle cost vs mass launch cost
While vehicle launch cost is a metric utilized when comparing vehicles, the cost per lb/kg launched is also an important factor that is not always directly correlated with the overall launch vehicle cost. The cost per lb/kg launched varies widely due to negotiations, prices, supply & demand, customer requirements, and the number of payloads manifested per launch. Pricing also differs depending on required orbit. Geosynchronous orbit launches historically taking advantage of economies of scales with larger launch vehicles and greater use of the maximum payload capacity of a vehicle vs LEO launches. These varying cost and requirements makes market analysis imprecise.

See also
 Commercialization of space
 Billionaire space race
 NewSpace
 Space industry

References

External links
 United Launch Alliance faces increased competition on space launches, Denver Post, 7 June 2015.
 Airbus unveils 'Adeline' re-usable rocket concept, BBC News, 5 June 2015.
 Small Satellite Launchers at NewSpace Index

Spaceflight economics
Transportation rivalries


title: Vladyslav Bobryshev

text:
Vladyslav Bobryshev (born September 10, 1997) is a Ukrainian male acrobatic gymnast. Along with his partner, Andrii Kobchyk, he finished 6th in the 2014 Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships.

References

1997 births
Living people
Ukrainian acrobatic gymnasts
Male acrobatic gymnasts


title: Andrii Kobchyk

text:
Andrii Kobchyk (born March 9, 1994) is a Ukrainian male acrobatic gymnast. Along with his partner, Vladyslav Bobryshev, he finished 6th in the 2014 Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships.

References

1994 births
Living people
Ukrainian acrobatic gymnasts
Male acrobatic gymnasts


title: Oorukku Oru Pillai

text:
Oorukku Oru Pillai () is a 1982 Indian Tamil-language film, directed by D. Yoganand  and produced by K. S. Kutralingam. The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, K. R. Vijaya, M. N. Nambiar and V. K. Ramasamy. It was released on 5 February 1982.

Plot
Sivaji and Vijaya are cousins. Vijaya is in love with Sivaji while Sivaji, a hotshot lawyer and junior of Major, is in love with Major's daughter played by Sripriya. On the day of engagement, Sripriya finds out that Vijaya is in love with Sivaji and would kill herself if she does not get to marry him. On the altar, she dumps Sivaji without giving any reason and he moves back to his native place giving up his practice.

Sivaji's father's dream was to open a school and put an end to the atrocities of Ramasamy, Nambiar and Srinivasan trio who take advantage of the uneducated masses of their village. They also commit murder and blame it on ghosts with authorities in their cohorts. Coincidentally, Sripriya gets married to Ramasamy's relative, dies due to alcoholism and leaves her with a child and at Ramasamy's mercy as Major died in shock. She seeks refuge with Sivaji and Vijaya who are now married and run a school standing up against Ramasamy.

Nambiar has designs on Sripriya but Sivaji actively thwarts his attempts which causes rumors of affair between the two. When a student of Sivaji gets raped and murdered by Nambiar who blames it on ghosts, Sivaji takes up his practice again and starts to expose Ramasamy. They kidnap Vijaya and Sripriya. After a long struggle, Sivaji saves them only after Sripriya has killed Nambiar in self-defense. Sivaji saves her from clutches of law, exposes all activities of the trio and brings justice to his village.

Cast
Sivaji Ganesan
K. R. Vijaya
M. N. Nambiar
V. K. Ramasamy
Thengai Srinivasan
Suruli Rajan
Sachu
Sripriya
Major Sundarrajan

Soundtrack
The music was composed by M. S. Viswanathan, with lyrics by Muthulingam.

Reception
Thiraignani of Kalki gave the film a mixed review.

References

External links

1980s Tamil-language films
1982 films
Films directed by D. Yoganand
Films scored by M. S. Viswanathan


title: Djúpivogur Airport

text:
Djúpivogur Airport  is an airport serving Djúpivogur, Iceland.

See also
Transport in Iceland
List of airports in Iceland

References

 Google Earth

External links
 OurAirports - Djúpivogur
 Djúpivogur Airport
 OpenStreetMap - Djúpivogur

Airports in Iceland


title: Maine State Route 219

text:
State Route 219 (abbreviated SR 219) is part of Maine's system of numbered state highways, located in the western central part of the state. It runs for  from the town center of Greenwood to an intersection with State Route 133 in Wayne.

SR 219 runs through parts of Oxford, Androscoggin and Kennebec counties.

Route description
SR 219 begins in the west at Greenwood Road in the town center of Greenwood.  From this intersection, SR 219 proceeds eastward and crosses into West Paris where it intersects with SR 26.  The two routes share a brief overlap before SR 219 continues northeast into Sumner.  The highway continues through the center of town and intersects with SR 140 just feet shy of the Nezinscot River.

SR 140 turns east along SR 219 and the two routes cross the river into Hartford.  After a  concurrency, SR 140 splits off to the north while SR 219 turns southeast and crosses into the northern part of Turner in Androscoggin County. SR 219 crosses SR 4 and intersects both the northern terminus of SR 117 and eastern terminus of SR 108 before crossing the Androscoggin River into Leeds. Continuing east, SR 219 intersects, and briefly overlaps with, SR 106 before crossing into Wayne and Kennebec County.  SR 219 meets its eastern terminus at SR 133 shortly thereafter, located near the northern tip of Androscoggin Lake.

History
Modern SR 219, as first designated in 1933, was approximately  in length and ran between SR 140 in Hartford and its current eastern terminus at SR 133 in Wayne.  A minor routing shift was made near Bear Pond in 1937–8; the highway, which once ran along the north side of the pond, now runs along the south side.  The old routing is still present as unnumbered local roadways.  By 1941, SR 219 had been extended westward along a concurrency with SR 140, then through entirely new routing through Sumner and West Paris to the current western terminus in Greenwood.

The first highway in Maine designated SR 219 ran between Rumford and South Arm north of Andover in 1928.   This is now the northernmost stretch of SR 5, although the route to South Arm was later truncated to what is now the intersection of SR 5 and SR 120 in Andover.

Major intersections

See also

References

219
Transportation in Oxford County, Maine
Transportation in Androscoggin County, Maine
Transportation in Kennebec County, Maine


title: Vaa Kanna Vaa

text:
Vaa Kanna Vaa () is a 1982 Indian Tamil-language film, directed by D. Yoganand and produced by Santhi Narayanasamy. The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, Sujatha, Major Sundarrajan and Jai Ganesh. It is a remake of the Telugu film Raa Kanna Raa. The film was released on 6 February 1982.

Plot

Young lovers Ramu and Seetha fight all the time while old couple Naidu and Papa are devoted to one another. The young couople eventually rent a room at Naidu and Papa's house after Ramu defies his wealthy father to wed Seetha. The older couple starts to think of Seetha as their adopted daughter and is consequently drawn into the lives of the younger couple.

However, once Seetha has a child, problems erupt between Seetha and Ramu. Naidu and Papa support Seetha unconditionally becoming very attached to her child. Subsequently, Ramu rejoins with his father who relents wanting to see his grandson. He comes to accept Seetha as his daughter-in-law thereby taking away the child with her. This leaves Naidu losing his sanity and Papa heartbroken. They both die with Naidu committing suicide while Papa dies in shock at Naidu's death.

Cast
Sivaji Ganesan as Naidu
Sujatha as Papa
Major Sundarrajan
Jai Ganesh as Ramu
Nagesh as Ezhumalai
Y. G. Mahendra as Krishnamoorthy
V. K. Ramasamy as Karnan
Vadivukkarasi as Seetha

Soundtrack
The music was composed by M. S. Viswanathan with lyrics by Vaali.

Reception
Kalki said the film was not to be analysed, but enjoyed.

References

External links

1980s Tamil-language films
1982 films
Films directed by D. Yoganand
Films scored by M. S. Viswanathan
Tamil remakes of Telugu films


title: Ellenberger

text:
Ellenberger is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

C. Leroy Ellenberger (born 1942), American academic
Gisela Ellenberger (born 1950), German runner
Irene Ellenberger (born 1946), German architect
Jake Ellenberger (born 1985), American mixed martial artist
Jules Ellenberger (1871–1973), Imperial civil servant
Henri Ellenberger (1905–1993), Canadian psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist
Norm Ellenberger (1932–2015), American basketball coach

See also
Ellenberger Cottage


title: Salvador Mejía

text:
Salvador Mejía Alejandre (born February 12, 1961 in Toluca, State of Mexico, Mexico) is a Mexican producer and director.

Personal life
He is married with also producer Nathalie Lartilleux, his former associate producer on his first telenovelas.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Premios TVyNovelas

References

External links

1961 births
Living people
Mexican telenovela producers
People from Toluca


title: Garuda Saukiyama

text:
Garuda Saukiyama () is a 1982 Indian Tamil-language crime film, directed by K. S. Prakash Rao and written by Vietnam Veedu Sundaram. The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, Sujatha, Mohan and Thiagarajan. It revolves around a petty criminal who eventually rises to become a feared don. The film was released on 25 February 1982, and became a box-office bomb.

Plot

Mary reared Deenadayalan as an orphan. He begins with little offences and progresses to more serious offences as he grows older. He eventually becomes a don and presents himself to the public as a philanthropic businessman.

Muthukrishnan is taken under Deenadayalan's wing. Despite this, he has a strong sense of justice and is regarded as a protector of the poor and oppressed. His wife Lakshmi and daughter Radha have no idea about his unlawful operations. However, as he experiences treachery from people close to him, his work begins to have an influence on his family.

Cast
Sivaji Ganesan as Deenadayalan
Sujatha as Lakshmi
Thiagarajan as Muthukrishnan
Pandari Bai as Mary
Ambika as Radha
Mohan as Mohan
Rajyalakshmi as Meena
Sangili Murugan as Sathyanathan

Soundtrack
The soundtrack was composed by M. S. Viswanathan.

Release and reception
Garuda Saukiyama was released on 25 February 1982. Thiraignani of Kalki negatively reviewed the film, criticising its similarities to The Godfather (1972). The film became a box-office bomb.

References

External links

1980s Tamil-language films
1982 crime films
1982 films
Films directed by K. S. Prakash Rao
Films scored by M. S. Viswanathan
Indian crime films


title: Beyond a Joke (2009 TV series)

text:
Beyond a Joke is a 2009 ITV3 documentary series exploring the social context of classic and contemporary British sitcoms. The documentary featured clips from the sitcoms and interviews with a variety of celebrities and experts, including John Cleese, Paul Nicholas, Tony Benn, Carla Lane, Jonathan Harvey, Don Warrington, Ian Lavender, Nina Myskow, Andrew Sachs, Edwina Currie and Vanessa Feltz. It was narrated by Dave Lamb.

Episodes

External links
Beyond a Joke at the British Comedy Guide

2009 British television series debuts
2009 British television series endings
2000s British documentary television series
ITV documentaries
ITV comedy
Television series by ITV Studios
English-language television shows


title: Zhang Shaolong

text:
Zhang Shaolong (born March 21, 1989) is a Chinese male acrobatic gymnast. Along with his partner, Li Ziyang, he finished 5th in the 2014 Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships.

References

1989 births
Living people
Chinese acrobatic gymnasts
Male acrobatic gymnasts


title: Thunai

text:
Thunai () is a 1982 Indian Tamil-language film, produced and directed by Durai. The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, Saritha, M. G. Chakrapani and Suresh. It was released on 1 October 1982.

Plot
Dasaratharaman is an easy-going widower with a grown son, Raghuraman. He works as a sub-registrar, and his jovial nature earns him the friendship of nearly everyone he meets. In the house near where he lives, a poor family consisting of a widowed mother and several children reside. Vidhya is the sole breadwinner of the family, while her younger brother Vijay is looking for a job. Her older brother left the home after a love-marriage and is struggling financially. She also has a younger sister, Nandhini, and another younger brother. Dasaratharaman makes it a point to look out for Vidhya as they take the same train to their respective jobs.

Vijay introduces Moorthy to his family as a relative of a friend, and he quickly endears himself to everyone. He promises to help both brothers find jobs and proposes marriage to Vidhya. To the family's joy, the two marry, with Dasaratharaman presiding.

Raghuraman is in love with his colleague, Radha, a determined woman with a forceful personality. Dasaratharaman, unaware of this, asks his friend, VKR, to find a bride for his son. Raghuram plots to trick his father into choosing Radha as his bride, but bad timing ruins his plan. Unaware of his identity, Radha is rude to Dasaratharaman in a bid to put off a marriage she doesn't want. Worried that he will now never approve, she pushes Raghuraman to marry her in secret. Dasaratharaman learns this and arrives in time to see the wedding.

Moorthy, meanwhile, turns out to be a wanted criminal who tricks women into marriage to steal their jewelry. He is arrested and Vidhya's marriage is annulled, leaving her humiliated. When both of her brothers are in need of cash to get a job, Vidhya helps her oldest brother, causing a fracture in the family. The rest of the family moves out, leaving her alone. Feeling guilty for presiding over the marriage, Dasaratharaman keeps an eye on her.

Radha and Dasaratharaman clash repeatedly. Unable to get over the circumstances of his son's marriage, he makes sly comments disparaging Radha to everyone. Radha, in retaliation, is rude to him and insinuates about his relationship with Vidhya. Matters come to a head when Raghuraman learns of Radha's behavior towards his father and Radha requests Dasaratharaman to leave the home.

In the end, when Vidhya suggests that they should get married as they both need companion and have no one, they go to registrar's office only for Vidhya to find out that he had arranged to adopt her much to the shock of Dasaratharaman's family.

Cast
Sivaji Ganesan – Dasaratharaman
Saritha – Vidhya
Suresh – Raghuraman
Radha – Radha
V. K. Ramasamy – VKR
Sukumari – Radha's mother
Rajeev – Moorthy
Dilip – Vijay

Soundtrack
Soundtrack was composed by Shankar–Ganesh.

Reception
Thiraignani of Kalki praised the acting of Ganesan and Radha and dialogues of Vietnam Veedu Sundaram and concluded Sundaram's dialogues are a support for this plot, Durai's hardwork is a support for dialogues, fans are support for Durai and for fans excitement is support.

References

External links

1980s Tamil-language films
1982 films
Films directed by Durai
Films scored by Shankar–Ganesh


title: Thomas Annandale

text:
Thomas Annandale, FRCS FRSE (1838–1907) was a Scottish surgeon who conducted the first repair of the meniscus and the first successful removal of an acoustic neuroma, and introduced the pre-peritoneal approach to inguinal hernia repair. He served as Regius Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. His collection of anatomical specimens was donated to the Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh and is now known as the Thomas Annandale Collection.

Life
Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 2 February 1838, he was third son of Thomas Annandale, surgeon, by his wife Elizabeth Johnston. He was educated at Bruce's Academy in Newcastle, and then apprenticed to his father. Continuing medical studies at Newcastle Infirmary, he matriculated in 1856 at Edinburgh University Medical School, and graduated M.D. in 1860 with the highest honours, receiving the gold medal for his thesis On the Injuries and Diseases of the Hip Joint.

Annandale was appointed in 1860 house-surgeon to James Syme at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and was Syme's private assistant from 1861 to 1870. In 1863 he was admitted Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and became a junior demonstrator of anatomy in the university under John Goodsir. He was also appointed in 1863 a lecturer on the principles of surgery in the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine, and gave there a course of lectures yearly until 1871, when he began to lecture on clinical surgery at the Royal Infirmary. Annandale was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on 15 July 1859, and Fellow on 12 April 1888; in 1864 he won the Jacksonian prize for his dissertation on The malformations, diseases and injuries of the fingers and toes, with their surgical treatment (Edinburgh 1865).

Appointed assistant surgeon to the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh in 1865, and acting surgeon there in 1871, Annandale became regius professor of clinical surgery in the University of Edinburgh in 1877, in succession to Joseph Lister, who then moved to King's College London.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1867. In 1872 Annandale was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh and served as president in 1900. In 1886 he was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club. He was made honorary D.C.L. of the University of Durham in April 1902, and was surgeon-general to the Royal Company of Archers, from 27 May 1900 until his death. He joined as an archer in 1870.

The newly graduated Richard James Arthur Berry came to work under him, as House Surgeon in the Royal Infirmary, in 1891.

In his final years Annandale is listed as living at 31 Charlotte Square, one of Edinburgh's most prestigious addresses.

Annandale died suddenly on 20 December 1907, having operated as usual at the Royal Infirmary on the previous day. He was buried in the Dean Cemetery in western Edinburgh. The grave lies in the northern section, backing onto the dividing wall to the original cemetery.

Recognition
The Annandale gold medal in clinical surgery was founded in his memory at Edinburgh university.

Works
Annandale published at Edinburgh, with papers in professional periodicals:

 Surgical Appliances and Minor Operative Surgery, 1866.
 Abstracts of Surgical Principles, 6 pts. 1868–70 (3rd ed 1878).
 Observations and Cases in Surgery, 1875.
 On the Pathology and Operative Treatment of Hip Disease, 1876.

Family
Annandale married in 1874 Eveline Nelson, the eldest daughter of William Nelson, an Edinburgh publisher, and the Son of Thomas Nelson & Sons. They had a family of three sons and three daughters.

Their eldest son, Thomas Nelson Annandale became a famous zoologist.

Annandale's great-granddaughter is Samoan doctor Viopapa Annandale–Atherton.

Notes

Attribution

1838 births
1907 deaths
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Scottish surgeons
Scottish medical writers
People from Newcastle upon Tyne
Academics of the University of Edinburgh
Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
19th-century Scottish medical doctors
Members of the Royal Company of Archers


title: Fraunhofer FDK AAC

text:
Fraunhofer FDK AAC is an open-source library for encoding and decoding digital audio in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. Fraunhofer IIS, developed this library for Android 4.1. It supports several Audio Object Types including MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC LC, HE-AAC (AAC LC + SBR), HE-AACv2 (LC + SBR + PS) as well AAC-LD (low delay) and AAC-ELD (enhanced low delay) for real-time communication. The encoding library supports sample rates up to 96 kHz and up to eight channels (7.1 surround).

Operation
The Android-targeted implementation of the Fraunhofer AAC encoder uses fixed-point math and is optimized for encoding on embedded devices/mobile phones. The library is currently limited to 16-bit PCM input. Other versions of the Fraunhofer encoder, like the one included in Winamp, are optimized for encoding music on desktop-class processors. Those versions of the encoder, however, are not open-source and require a commercial license. Version 2 of the library, introduced with Android P, also includes support for xHE-AAC and AAC-ELD v2. xHE-AAC extends the operating range of the codec from 12 to 300 kb/s for stereo signals and allows seamless switching between bitrates over this range for adaptive bitrate delivery (using standards such as MPEG-DASH or HLS for example). xHE-AAC also includes MPEG-D DRC mandatory loudness control to playback content at a consistent volume and offers new dynamic range control profiles for listening in noisy situations.

The FDK AAC encoder employs a more aggressive default low-pass filter than is used in other codecs. Higher frequencies are removed so that more bits are available to better describe sounds of lower frequencies, improving the overall quality for most combinations of recordings and listeners. In some, not completely rare, combinations the missing high frequencies are noticeable. The library allows overriding the low-pass filter setting, and in the highest VBR mode effectively applies no filter at all.

A cross-platform source distribution is maintained by Martin Storsjö as part of the opencore-amr project under the name fdk-aac. The code compiles into a shared library, libfdk-aac. The media frameworks FFmpeg and Libav support audio encoding through libfdk-aac.

Licensing
The license included by Fraunhofer in the FDK library source code allows redistribution in source or binary forms, but does not license patented technologies described by the code. The license states that the library may only be used for purposes as authorized by patent licenses. Via Licensing administers a patent pool that includes patent licenses for the AAC codecs, including xHE-AAC and MPEG-D DRC. The FDK license also states that "most manufacturers of Android devices already license these patent claims through Via Licensing or directly from the patent owners, and therefore FDK AAC Codec software may already be covered under those patent licenses when it is used for those licensed purposes only." There is no license fee required for using an AAC codec such as FDK AAC, only for manufacturing an "end-user" codec such as producing a phone loaded with AAC software.

Debian considers the FDK AAC license non-free because it prohibits people from charging a fee for distributing the library, which runs counter to the "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" rule in Debian Free Software Guidelines. The license was classified as free by Fedora after a review by the legal department at Red Hat, though it's no longer classified as "allowed" due Fedora adopting a more defensive posture toward patents. However, Fedora states that this will not affect the fdk-aac-free package, which enables only the commonly used "Low Complexity AAC" profile, which is what most people use. The US patents on LC-AAC have expired. The FSF also considers it to be free, though discourages its use due to the explicit lack of a patent grant.

See also
 Nero AAC Codec
 FAAC
 MPEG-4 Part 3

References

External links
Information

Fraunhofer AAC Audio Playback Test Site
Fraunhofer FDK AAC at Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase
Detailed information about the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder used in the EZ CD Audio Converter
Via Licensing Advanced Audio Coding

Implementations
Official FDK source code repository at the Android Open Source Project
fdk-aac at Debian Package Tracker
"libfdk-aac" repo at GitHub — FDK AAC as a shared library
"fdkaac" repo at GitHub.com – a cross-platform command-line encoding and metadata utility that employs the libfdk-aac shared library
"fdk-aac-win32-builder repo" at GitHub – a script for compiling the two repos above. (The binaries cannot distributed because of the FDK AAC licensing.)

Audio codecs
Cross-platform software


title: Oorum Uravum

text:
Oorum Uravum () is a 1982 Indian Tamil-language film, directed by Major Sundarrajan and produced by Pushpa Rajan. The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, K. R. Vijaya, A. V. M. Rajan and Thengai Srinivasan. It is a remake of the Telugu film Oorukichina Maata. The film was released on 14 November 1982.

Plot

Manikkam works hard as does his village to make his younger brother Pounraj a doctor to serve the people of the village. Once he becomes a doctor, he falls in love with a rich colleague, gets married to her and settles down in the city with his wealthy father-in-law. How Manikkam brings Pounraj to his senses is the rest of the story.

Cast
Sivaji Ganesan as Manikkam
K. R. Vijaya
A. V. M. Rajan
Thengai Srinivasan
Nizhalgal Ravi as Pounraj
Major Sundarrajan

Soundtrack
Soundtrack was composed by Shankar–Ganesh. Lyrics wrote by Vaali, Pulamaipithan and Vairamuthu.

Reception
Thiragnani of Kalki praised the acting of star cast and concluded saying the film has a vibrancy that is not in the title.

References

External links

1980s Tamil-language films
1982 films
Films directed by Major Sundarrajan
Films scored by Shankar–Ganesh
Tamil remakes of Telugu films


title: Cathy Wedge

text:
Catherine "Cathy" Wedge (born 29 December 1950) is a Canadian jurist who has served as a justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia since 2001. She is also a retired equestrian who rode several times on the Canadian Equestrian Team between 1971 and 1978.

Early years
Catherine Wedge was born on 29 December 1950 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was a justice of the Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan. He maternal grandfather was Emmett Matthew Hall, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Wedge began to ride at the Saskatoon Pony Club when she was eight. Wynona Mulcaster was the unpaid instructor at the club from 1945 to 1973 and influenced Wedge's career.

Equestrian career
Wedge entered international competition in 1969, when she won the Working Hunter Championship at the Seattle International Horse Show. At the 1971 Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia she won gold in the three-day team event riding her horse "Sumatra". She was named to the Canadian Olympic team for 1972, but could not compete due to a broken leg. In 1974 she won the Canadian three-day-event on "City Fella". In 1975 Wedge received serious arm and leg injuries in a competition in Massachusetts shortly before an event in Bromont, Quebec where she was scheduled to be part of the Canadian team. The coordinator of the event called her "the most artistic rider we had".

Cathy Wedge,  and , represented Canada in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. She again rode "City Fella". She placed 23rd in the mixed three-day individual equestrianism event, and her team placed 6th in the mixed three-day team equestrianism event. Wedge rode "Abracadabra" in the Canadian team that won gold at the 1978 Eventing World Championship. "Abracadabra" was the second horse of team captain Elizabeth Ashton.

Legal career
Wedge received a law degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1980 and was admitted to the B.C. bar the following year. She specialized in labour and employment law and was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia by justice minister Anne McLellan in 2001. In 2007 she presided over a civil trial between Francesco Aquilini and former business partners Tom Gaglardi and Ryan Beedie over Aquilini's purchase of the Vancouver Canucks. She ruled in favor of Aquilini.

References
Citations

Sources

1950 births
Living people

20th-century Canadian women
21st-century Canadian women
Canadian female equestrians
Canadian LGBT sportspeople
Equestrians at the 1971 Pan American Games
Equestrians at the 1976 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1971 Pan American Games
Olympic equestrians for Canada
Pan American Games gold medalists for Canada
Pan American Games medalists in equestrian
Sportspeople from Saskatoon
Judges in British Columbia
LGBT judges
University of Saskatchewan College of Law alumni


title: Baria massacre

text:
Baria massacre () was the massacre of unarmed Bengali Hindus in the village of Baria in present-day Gazipur Sadar Upazila of Bangladesh by the Pakistan army on 14 May 1971. Around 200 Bengali Hindus from Baria and nearby Kamaria were killed in the massacre, while hundreds more were injured.

Background
The village of Baria fell under Joydebpur sub-division of Dhaka district. At present it falls under Gazipur District of Dhaka Division. It is located at a distance of 8 km from the palace of Bhawal estate in Gazipur. In 1971, Baria was an almost exclusively Hindu inhabited village. The Pakistan army launched Operation Searchlight on 25 May. They set up a cantonment at the Bhawal estate.

Killings
On 14 May at around 1pm, local collaborators Awal, Hakim Uddin and Majid Mian led a contingent of around 500 Pakistani soldiers from the army cantonment at Bhawal estate to Baria. After entering the village, the troops spread out in all directions and opened fire on the villagers. Many died on the spot while others were seriously injured. The perpetrators looted the houses and set most of them on fire. Some of the villagers attempted to flee by crossing the Belai beel. The troops opened fire on them as well. The belongings of the fleeing villagers were looted by the Pakistan army and the collaborators. The army shelled a water pump at the Belai beel mistaking it as a cannon.

The mayhem continued till 6pm. At around 7:30pm there was a heavy downpour. The indiscriminate shooting left around 200 villagers of Baria and Kamaria dead, including women and children. Hundreds of people were wounded in the gun fire.

Aftermath
As the news of army killings in Baria spread to nearby villages, the Hindus left the villages and fled to relatively safer places.

References

1971 Bangladesh genocide
Massacres of Bengali Hindus in East Pakistan
1971 in Bangladesh
Massacres in 1971
Massacres committed by Pakistan in East Pakistan
May 1971 events in Asia


title: Freddie Sessler

text:
Arden Frederick "Freddie" Sessler (26 May 1923 – 18 December 2000) was the brother of London restaurateur and club owner Siegi Sessler, and a long-term intimate of the Rolling Stones, particularly Keith Richards, to whom he supplied drugs. A raconteur, Sessler claimed to have met and become friends with a number of important figures in twentieth century music. He attributed his manic lifestyle of partying and drug use to being almost the only one of his family to escape extermination by the Nazis during the Second World War. Ronnie Wood described Sessler as a "sex-fuelled, vodka charged, coke mountain".

Early life
Sessler was born in Kraków, Poland in 1923. He was one of seven children. He was aged 16, when the Nazis invaded Poland and Kraków became the Third Reich's administrative capital of the region. Initially, a Ghetto was created for the Jewish population of 200,000 (within two years there would be none left) during which time many, including his grandfather and youngest brother, who was four years old, were shot in the town square. Soon after, the regime began sending them to three concentration camps,  Bełżec, Płaszów and Auschwitz and Sessler and the surviving members of his immediate family  were sent to Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp - from where he, once again, managed to escape, reaching Russia, only to find himself interned in Siberia. Breaking free once more, he made his way over to England where his fluency in English, Polish, Russian, German and Yiddish, saw him find work as a translator. After the war he returned to Poland, to discover his entire family were dead and their home had been destroyed, so he returned to London where, by chance, he found his elder brother Siegi had survived the war. It was he who gave him the funds and suggested he make a new start in New York.

Jazz and the Beatles
In New York, Sessler got a job, initially, as a waiter and started to frequent places such as Birdland. Sessler told Bill German that when he was working at Lindy's, he mixed with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, both friends of Siegi and Billie Holiday and it was at this time he began to procure but never sell drugs. His next venture would make him his first fortune, the Perma Weave hair piece.

In 1961, Sessler began spending much of his time in West Germany developing a new type of car. It was there he claimed to have seen the Beatles in Hamburg when they were unknown, and to have become good friends with John Lennon and Eric Clapton. His development finally came to fruition when, in 1963, he set up, with several partners, The Amphicar Corporation of America, as President of the company.

The Rolling Stones
According to Ronnie Wood, Sessler loved being called "the ultimate Rolling Stones fan" and in his 70s, "the world's oldest rock and roll groupie".

Keith Richards
Sessler was particularly close to Keith Richards and Victor Bockris believes that Richards saw Sessler as a father figure. However, Sessler's lifestyle was problematic for Richards when later he was battling drug addiction. Early in his autobiography, Life, Richards calls Sessler, "an incredible character, my friend and almost a father to me who will have many parts in this story" and Sessler appears many times in Life.

Drugs
Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath remembered "I was also friends with Ron Wood and the guy who carried the Stones' pure pharmaceutical cocaine in the 60s and 70s, Freddie Sessler... I remember he put a huge mound of glittering, thick cocaine on a plate for me once" and Iggy Pop described him as "the kind of guy who can make a party happen". According to Ronnie Wood: "Freddie's real claim to fame was that he'd spent decades providing pharmaceuticals to everybody who was anybody in rock. I'm talking about a man who showed up with milk bottles full of high quality Mallencrodt and Merck." "Merck" cocaine was his specialty but, as Marilou Regan notes, Sessler claimed never to have been a "dealer" or "pusher", and never to have charged anyone anything for drugs, and he never had anything to do with heroin.

Julia Phillips, in You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again, remembered going backstage at a Stones' concert: "There is a smelly Israeli [sic] named Freddie who seems to be very important to everybody. He carries two medium-sized bottles filled with rock cocaine."

Sessler lent his name to the slang used by the Stones. The drugs he supplied were known as "Sessler’s Helpers" and his coterie of groupies, who changed from tour to tour, were known as the "Sesslerettes".

Business ventures
Sessler was involved in a number of dubious business ventures, including his Miami Venom Institute which used diluted snake venom to treat serious illnesses. One patient was the by then penniless Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces who was desperately searching for any possible cure from multiple sclerosis. When his Miami institute was closed down by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Sessler opened the Fairfield Hospital in Jamaica. He claimed that he made a fortune from selling aglets, another selling lightbulbs to the Empire State Building and that he had been involved with the Amphicar. Nothing ever worked out in the long term however and he said "I been a millionaire eight times, and I been broke eight times!"

Personal life
Sessler was married three times. He had three sons, all of whom are deceased. Sessler died on 18 December 2000 (Keith Richards' birthday), aged 77. He is buried at the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Letters to Sessler from Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were sold at auction by Bonhams in 2013.

References

External links
A tribute to Freddie Sessler on "The Keith Shrine"
Keith Richards talking about Freddie Sessler, on Youtube

1923 births
2000 deaths
Polish emigrants to the United States
20th-century American Jews
People from Kraków
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Drug dealers


title: List of phytosaur-bearing stratigraphic units

text:
Geological strata known to contain the fossils of the extinct group of reptiles known as phytosaurs occur predominantly in the United States and Europe.

List of formations

Phytosaur


title: Rifles of the I.R.A.

text:
Rifles of the I.R.A. is the fourth album by Irish folk and rebel band The Wolfe Tones. The album title Rifles of the I.R.A. makes reference to the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The cover shows the band members dressed in the traditional dress of the IRA.  The folk singer Christy Moore said of the cover, "I equate that particular record sleeve with Foster and Allen, dressed up as leprechauns.  It was the very same thing.  It had the same significance at the time."

Track list
 Slievenamon
 Erin Go Bragh
 God Save Ireland
 The Sun is Burning
 Big Strong Man
 In Garran na Bhile
 Four Seasons
 Rifles of the I.R.A.
 Skibbereen
 Sweet Carnlough Bay
 Ships in Full Sail
 Sean Tracy (Tipperary So Far Away)
 Holy Ground
 Uncle Nobby's Steamboat

References

External links
 Entry at discogs.com

The Wolfe Tones albums
1968 albums


title: 2014–15 Connacht Rugby season

text:
The 2014–15 season was Irish provincial rugby union side Connacht Rugby's fourteenth season competing in the Pro12, and the team's nineteenth season as a professional side. It was also Pat Lam's second season in charge of the side.

As well as playing in the Pro12, Connacht competed in the newly established Rugby Challenge Cup, having played in the now-defunct Heineken Cup the previous season. The second-tier side, the Connacht Eagles, competed in the 2014–15 British and Irish Cup.

Season

Background
The 2014–15 season saw the Heineken Cup replaced by the 20 team Rugby Champions Cup and the creation of this competition meant the Pro12 standings would have a greater impact on European qualification. Under the previous format, the Pro12 provided a minimum of ten teams, with Scotland and Italy providing two teams each, and Ireland and Wales both providing three.

The new system saw one place now being reserved for the highest finishing Pro12 team from each of four participating countries, along with three other qualifiers based solely on league position, for a total of seven teams. The other teams were to be entered in the new second-tier competition, the Rugby Challenge Cup. This meant Connacht were no longer required to finish ahead of another Irish province or rely on an Irish victory in a European tournament to qualify for the top tier of European rugby.

The final tournament spot in the 2015–16 Rugby Champions Cup was decided by a playoff involving the Pro12's highest finishing team that is not already qualified, along with the seventh highest finishing clubs from France's Top 14 and the English Premiership.

On the player front, Connacht entered the season with a new captain following the forced retirement of Craig Clarke due to persistent concussions. They will also be without the playing services of former captain and centurion Gavin Duffy, whose contract was not renewed the previous season. It was later announced that he was taking up a role with the province's commercial team.

Due to their 10th-place finish in the 2013–14 Pro12, Connacht were entered into the 2014–15 Rugby Challenge Cup, which replaced the European Challenge Cup, a competition Connacht hadn't competed in since the 2010–11 season. The draw for the Challenge Cup pool stages took place on 10 June 2014, with Connacht named in the same group as Exeter Chiefs, Bayonne and La Rochelle.

September
Connacht opened the season with victories at home against Newport Gwent Dragons and away to Edinburgh. The team then beat provincial rivals Leinster at home, the 10–9 win giving Connacht their first inter-provincial victory since beating Leinster in the same fixture in the 2012–13 season. Connacht experienced their first defeat of the season in the next round, losing to Glasgow Warriors in their final game of the month.

October
Following their opening defeat of the season to Glasgow, Connacht opened the month of October with a draw at home to Cardiff Blues the following week, but were able to return to winning ways before the first break for European matches, beating Benetton Treviso 6–9 in Italy. Connacht opened their 2014–15 Challenge Cup campaign at the Sportsgrounds on 18 October with a 48–12 bonus point victory over Top 14 side La Rochelle. The following week, however, saw the province beaten 33–13 away to Exeter Chiefs. Connacht's first game after the European break saw them beaten 26–11 in Wales by the Ospreys on Halloween night.

November
A break in the league for the November internationals meant that Connacht didn't play a competitive match in the month until 21 November. When they returned to action, Connacht picked up a comfortable bonus point victory over Zebre at home, posting a final score of 43–3. The team followed this with a 14–8 win against 6th place rivals Scarlets at the Sportsgrounds to keep their unbeaten home record intact.

December
Connacht opened the month of December with a crucial double-header against Bayonne in the Challenge Cup, and won the first of these games comfortably, picking up a bonus point in a 42–19 victory to narrow the gap to Exeter Chiefs. Connacht named an entirely new team for the return leg, and despite being 11 points down in the second half, the team fought back to win 27–29, with academy scrum-half Caolin Blade scoring both tries.

After the two European matches, Connacht finished 2015 with two provincial derbies in a row over the Christmas period. Connacht lost the first of these matches against Leinster in Dublin. This loss was followed by a narrow away defeat to Ulster on St. Stephen's Day in the last match of the calendar year.

January
On New Year's Day, Connacht picked up where they had left off in 2014, with another league match against Irish opposition. In the final derby of this period, Connacht managed to pick up a win, beating Munster 24–16. Following this high however, Connacht were beaten at home for the first time in the season, losing 13–16 to Edinburgh. The poor form was carried into Europe as Connacht lost another home match in quick succession, being beaten 24–33 by the Exeter Chiefs. The team was able to recover the following week to beat La Rochelle and secure a place in the knock-out stage of the competition.

February
There were no games in the opening weekend of the month as the 2015 Six Nations Championship was taking place. On 15 February Connacht returned to league action, suffering a 32–14 loss away to Scarlets. The following week, Connacht were away to another Welsh side, this time facing Newport Gwent Dragons, and recovered from the previous week's disappointment to emerge 25–30 winners.

March
Connacht opened the month of March with  bonus point victory over Benetton Treviso, crushing the Italians 53–5. On 6 March, Connacht faced Cardiff Blues away ahead of a tough series of matches against teams in the play-off places, making the game important in the qualification for the 2015–16 Rugby Champions Cup. Connacht were beaten 18–17 by a late try, after the referee controversially gave a penalty against Connacht with the game in overtime after Cardiff appeared to have knocked the ball on. In the aftermath of the game, Pat Lam criticised touch judge Leighton Hodges and lodged a complaint with the league. Lam was later charged with misconduct for his comments. In spite of Lam's comments and the misconduct charge, Hodges refereed Connacht's next match, away to Munster in Thomond Park, where Connacht were beaten 42–20.

April
The team's first match in April was a Challenge Cup quarter-final against Gloucester in Kingsholm Stadium. After going in 14–0 down, Connacht held the hosts scoreless in the second half and pulled themselves back into the match with a penalty try. They couldn't make up the deficit however, and Connacht were knocked out of the Cup by 14–7.

In their return to the Pro12, Connacht suffered their second home league defeat of the season, this time to Ulster. After another poor first half performance, Connacht went in 17–0 down, only to earn a losing bonus with a final score of 20–27. Another home defeat followed, with the team shipping five tries against Glasgow Warriors in a 13–31 defeat, leaving the team in danger of finishing behind Edinburgh in 8th place and missing not only automatic qualification for the Champions Cup, but also the chance at a play-off for the final spot.

May
Connacht were able to start the month with their first win since 1 March, beating Zebre 10–40 in Italy, to earn a try bonus and leave themselves with a chance of reaching the Champions Cup. In the final round of the regular season, on 16 May, Connacht faced Ospreys, while their rivals for the Champions Cup places, Scarlets and Edinburgh, faced Benetton Treviso and Leinster respectively. Connacht picked up a losing bonus, while Scarlets won and Edinburgh were beaten by 13, leaving Connacht in 7th place, their highest finish in a regular league season, but just short of qualification to the Champions Cup.

Connacht proceeded to a play-off involving Bordeaux Bègles, the 7th placed team in the 2014–15 Top 14 season, and Gloucester the 2014–15 Rugby Challenge Cup winners. Connacht played Gloucester away on 24 May for the chance to face Bordeaux. Connacht were leading 18–25 in the final minutes of the game, but a controversial penalty decision from Romain Poite gave Gloucester a try-scoring opportunity and sent the match to extra time, after which Gloucester emerged 40–32 victors.

Coaching and Management Team

Players

Senior Playing Squad

 Players qualified to play for  on dual nationality or residency grounds*
 Senior 15's internationally capped players in bold

Academy squad

 year 1
 year 1
 year 2
 year 2
 year 2
 year 3
 year 2
 year 2
 year 1
 year 2
 year 2

 year 2
 year 1
 year 2
 year 1
 year 1
 year 2

Preseason transfers

Players in
 HK  Tom McCartney from
 PR  Finlay Bealham promoted from academy
 LK  Quinn Roux from  Leinster (loan)
 SH  John Cooney from  Leinster (loan)
 SH  Ian Porter from  Ulster
 FH  Jack Carty promoted from academy
 CE  Bundee Aki from  Chiefs
 CE  Conor Finn promoted from academy
 CE  Shane O'Leary from  Grenoble
 WG  Niyi Adeolokun from  Dublin University
 FB  Shane Layden promoted from academy
 FB  Darragh Leader promoted from academy
 FB  Mils Muliaina from  Chiefs

Players out
 HK  James Rael to  Lansdowne
 PR  Brett Wilkinson retired
 LK  Craig Clarke retired
 LK  Dave Nolan to  Bourgoin
 FL  Aaron Conneely to  Lansdowne
 SH  Frank Murphy retired
 SH  Paul O'Donohoe retired
 FH  Dan Parks retired
 CE  Eoin Griffin to  London Irish
 CE  Brian Murphy to  Galwegians
 CE  Kyle Tonetti retired
 FB  Gavin Duffy to  Mayo Football

Playing kit
Connacht's official kit supplier for the season was Australian manufacturer BLK sport, who announced a comprehensive four-year agreement to supply the full range of apparel for all of Connacht Rugby's representative teams and support staff in 2013.

Connacht's main shirt sponsors were Irish sporting retailer Lifestyle Sports. Lifestyle Sports signed a four-season deal with the province, to will see their logo feature on the jersey until the end of the 2017–18 season, taking over from the previous season's sponsors Mazda Ireland.

Results

Pro12

Rugby Challenge Cup

Pool 2

Quarter-finals

Champions Cup play-offs

Match 1

Awards and recognition
At the end of the 2014–15 Pro12 season, an Awards evening was held in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, with Connacht among those honoured both as a team and for individual performance.

Connacht held their own awards ceremony in May, to acknowledge the services of individual players.

Connacht also had awards throughout the season for the Player of the Month, as voted by the team's supporters.

Notes

References

2014-15
2014–15 Pro12 by team
2014–15 in Irish rugby union