I wonder whether the Sámi people have been consulted or compensated for the use of their traditional lands as a rocket launch site. Given Norway’s long history of suppressing Sámi people and their land rights, I'd be interested to know how that was handled.
Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
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Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#92Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you don’t think the two sides should even try to find a diplomatic solution?
This is Russia's second violation of the Budapest Memorandum. We know Putin will simply ignore another treaty when he feels like. We also know the US under the current administration is "negotiating" in bad faith (via the president's son-in-law) and will do even less when the next treaty violation occurs.
No we don’t know that the current administration is negotiating in bad faith. That’s your opinion and one that doesn’t really reflect how the world of diplomacy and interactions between nation states work. Why would you waste time and money when any deal in which would be negotiated in bad faith requires Ukrainian participation?
Second, yes the Budapest Memorandum was violated. Why didn’t the other parties do anything or immediately declare war on Russia besides just the United States?
Here’s a better question though: why didn’t the EU do something when Russia violated it? Is your gear ready? Are you ready to deploy to the front lines? Why are 600 million Europeans asking 340 million Americans to defend them from 180 million Russians?
Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I really hate this revisionism of Elon as an extremely wealthy apartheid emerald mine heir who was a dumb guy who happened to get lucky at paypal and then stole all his money from the government while operating a car and rocket company. There is plenty to criticize about him, but SpaceX dramatically decreased cost to orbit which had reliance on Russian technology at the time.
Musk was raised affluent in apartheid-era South Africa, his father had some connection to Zambian emerald trading/mining, and Musk's companies have benefited enormously from public contracts and policy. He's not stupid.
Musk has benefited enormously from public contracts and policy, but all the questionable ones are in Tesla (and especially originally solarcity, but that got folded into Tesla).
The government contracts that made SpaceX were all open bid, where SpaceX bid an better solution than anything that any of the established companies did, at literally half the price. Falcon 9 was a massive gift to the US government, in that it drove the entire industry to halve the prices they extracted from the government. Dragon was just as good.
That they also built a profitable launch company out of it just highlights how much of an outlier SpaceX is. They sold the US government a dollar for fifty cents, made a profit doing it, and ended up driving half the rockets already flying out of the business.
Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
French Guiana is not a colony, it is a region of France. People who live there have the same constitutional rights as anyone living in mainland France. It has the same status in France as Alaska does in the US.
That's legally true, but I think it misses the distinction between formal political status and the legacy of colonialism. French Guiana is an overseas department of France, and its residents have French citizenship and constitutional rights. But that doesn't mean the historical relationship was equivalent to mainland France, or that the effects of that history disappeared when the legal status changed. The same point…
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Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#96Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#97This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily. Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.
Are we forgetting about Ariane?
Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#98This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily. Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.
Coupled or uncoupled, an equal relationship between the US and the EU is much healthier. Europe should have an economy, military and industrial capacity similar to the US.
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Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#99This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily. Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.
If they haven’t gotten the message yet, they never will congratulations, plan on doing more because you’re gonna have to.
Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU already had quite a bit of non-EU spaceflight capability, both in terms of rockets and launch sites.
I think you meant non-US? Although Ariane's rockets are wildly expensive and uncompetitive compared to SpaceX.
They are right now, but if Japan can do it, and China can do it so can Europe and by the way, so can Australia, New Zealand and Canada they have the abilities they just have to have the will and if they haven’t learned anything recently, they better develop the will. Once again congratulations.