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ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

arstechnica.com

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Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#3
post #2

If it was an actual commercial strategy, private investors would pay. If the question is even put this way, this is bullshit and deserves to end nowhere.

You misunderstand the use of "commercial" here. This isn't about private corporations launching their payloads for commerce, it's about private (commercial) entities providing launch services to the ESA and other public space exploration orgs.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#4
- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility."

The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats.

- "ESA also isn't setting requirements on launcher performance, reusability, or..."

That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not shows how hopelessly unprepared they are.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#5
When you task bureaucrats to lead the economy, science, technology, research and development it is not going to end well. Soviet Union and other communist countries tried it and failed.

If you want something to be economically viable, you should create economic incentives, reduce regulation and reglementation and let private enterprises compete.

US had an entirely different vision of the economy and private sector and that's why it succeeded in many areas.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#6

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

> This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats.

The european way. I wonder if the bureaucrats even know this is the inevitable result or if it is the actual plan.

Probably just the result of them not knowing any other way of working and forcing it onto everyone they interact with.

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#7

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

lol you don't know the half of it. Working with ESA for anything but the most trivial project is beyond frustrating; it's basically 99% about producing swathes of documentation, which in itself is more akin to philosophy and semantic dissertations over obscure standards than actual technical work.

ESA is so risk averse that it's even weird for a space company

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#8

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

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Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#9

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

> to review startups' business plans

How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted?

> That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not

So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make their own plans and see who comes up with the best proposal?

Re: ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

#10
post #6

- "The top factors ESA will consider in this first phase of the challenge are each proposer's business plan, technical credibility, and financial credibility." The grand European strategy is... to task government bureaucrats to review startups' business plans?? This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. - "ESA also…

> This is going to so predictably lead to more of the same—the creation of companies optimized for writing proposals, and for pleasing bureaucrats. The european way. I wonder if the bureaucrats even know this is the inevitable result or if it is the actual plan. Probably just the result of them not knowing any other way of working and forcing it onto everyone they interact with.

I would love to disagree, but after being involved with Gaia X… they cannot even pin down what Gaia X is, even when prompted to. It’s something about a standard for creating standards for a European cloud, but by now we’re several years and even more meta layers in, millions have been spent, and… nothing has come out of it.

It feels like the EU could be so much, if only other people were steering it.

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