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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

#261

Post by stackghost »

petcat wrote: post #154
xyzelement wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it mean that? Europe has had a space agency for a while now. So this story isn't "Europeans finally started to launch for space" but a private European company chose to launch from a continental location. It's funny how we can't be celebrate a European achievement without trying to interpret it into relationship to the US.

[flagged]

>It's because Europe is absolutely obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.

Is this the new cope?

The USA is a Goliath on the world stage. The deranged tweets of your president move global markets and the next time Israel manipulates him into starting another war it might not be Iran, it might be Denmark, or Canada.

People pay close attention to the US not because they want to buy because they basically have to.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#262

Post by panick21_ »

mag7269 wrote: post #213
zzzeek wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh we (the non idiots here) know full well what we lost. If Europe has a larger and more substantial science / technology community, that will just mean more trips/job offers in EU for me, so go Europe !

As an American, I welcome a multi-polar world where Europe pulls its weight when it comes to science, technology and engineering! More so in geopolitical matters. It’s always been very draining for one empire or nation to maintain world peace. The 19th century was Pax Britannica, the 20th, after WW2, was Pax Americana, we can now hope that Pax AmEuropana can offer a counter to the crazy rapid growth of Asia and also…

Yeah the world piece like all the wars in the middle east, Vietnam, proxy conflicts all over the world and so on and so on. I'm not blaming the US for all of these wars but they also didn't prevent them. And the US did overthrow many democracies and often made things much worse, Iran being a great example, but there are many others. I could go on.

Peace in Europe was maintained mostly by people in democracies generally wanting to work together. Yes the US had something to do with that as they supported that after WW2 but over the last 50 years, people in democracies generally don't fight each other. And more so by the threat of the Soviet Union that was so clearly the more dangerous option. Its easy to make allies if Stalin is on the other side.

And outside of Europe the US hardly maintained peace.

Nuclear weapons maintained 'peace' between Soviets and the US more then anything else.

And Europe has always pulled its weight in science, technology and engineering.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#263

Post by panick21_ »

eps wrote: post #54
manlymuppet wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are stronger together. European technology has been critical to many important American space missions, and that should continue to be the case. An ecosystem where we develop things independently is one where everyone loses.

> I think we are stronger together That's pretty damn obvious to everyone with a half of brain, yet here we are being pulled apart.

Except its not actually obvious. The US achieved most when they worked mostly by themselves. And the recent explosion in US activity, specially SpaceX is also highly separated from Europe.

There is a very credible argument to be made that excessive cooperation leads to incredibly heavy overly political programs that are completely static and can't adjust because of international agreements.

That doesn't mean working together isn't good but they way they have been has been pretty questionably in many ways (along with a lot of space policy).

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#265

Post by Cyph0n »

panick21_ wrote: post #259
Cyph0n wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But French Guiana is a geographically distant ex-colony, so there will always be a higher probability of future inaccessibility. Same applies to New Caledonia, Martinique, etc.

Its not an ex-colony, its part of France and the EU.

It was a French colonial subject as recently as the 20th century.

Regardless, a launch facility within Europe seems much less riskier long term from a geopolitical standpoint.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#266

Post by somenameforme »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #254
nine_k wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even the US in general, it's SpaceX specifically. Only the US and China have demonstrated reusable rockets, and only SpaceX demonstrated the actual reuse, the cadence and the economy of scale that it brings.

It means the laws of physics allow it, and anyone willing to invest the time and fiat to accomplish it can. This means the world will no longer need to rely on SpaceX for inexpensive lift to orbit through reusable first stages, which is objectively good. No different then China working towards obviating the need for ASML for EUV semiconductor manufacturing.

There are a lot more barriers to things in the real world. China has been dedicating immense effort and brainpower to cloning SpaceX, and they're still not especially close. I think a lot of us (certainly including myself) have no intuition for why this is, because we live in the software world where if you see something that is done then cloning it is generally just a matter of time and effort. But there's certainly some 'secret sauce' at SpaceX that does not seem easy to replicate.

That said I think this is awesome and hope the EU is able to make further advances. I have a very positive view of Musk, but the more competitors there are in space, the more likely we able to accelerate advances and efficiency in that domain. And I think everybody wins in that scenario.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#267

Post by num42 »

Congrats! How come European companies still haven't managed to match SpaceX's capabilities? Europe has an incredible talent pool, especially in aerospace, and some of the world’s best expertise in precision engineering, instrumentation, sensors, avionics, and other hard-tech subsystems. A huge amount of the expertise and supply chain for these components is concentrated in Europe.

So what are we missing? Is it mainly systems integration, manufacturing scale, risk tolerance, organizational structure, or the willingness to iterate as aggressively as SpaceX? It feels like Europe has many of the pieces needed to build world-class launch systems, but hasn't yet put them together at the same scale and speed.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#268

Post by aaron695 »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #252

Congratulations! An immensely important achievement, I’d say. IMO, this success has a great implication for accessibility and sovereignty of the EU. Although ESA can launch from French Guiana, the spaceport is an ocean-away from Europe! That fact alone affects the cost and the launch cadence for Europe greatly. Now they prove they can launch directly from Norway with their own production from Munich and elsewhere and…

[dead]

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#269

Post by consumer451 »

num42 wrote: post #267

Congrats! How come European companies still haven't managed to match SpaceX's capabilities? Europe has an incredible talent pool, especially in aerospace, and some of the world’s best expertise in precision engineering, instrumentation, sensors, avionics, and other hard-tech subsystems. A huge amount of the expertise and supply chain for these components is concentrated in Europe. So what are we missing? Is it mainly…

Probably the biggest thing is that capital in the EU is far more conservative.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#270

Post by logifail »

num42 wrote: post #267

Congrats! How come European companies still haven't managed to match SpaceX's capabilities? Europe has an incredible talent pool, especially in aerospace, and some of the world’s best expertise in precision engineering, instrumentation, sensors, avionics, and other hard-tech subsystems. A huge amount of the expertise and supply chain for these components is concentrated in Europe. So what are we missing? Is it mainly…

> So what are we missing?

There are some (many?) European companies which are considered as least as much as a jobs program as anything else.

In 2018, Alain Charmeau (in)famously expressed frustration with SpaceX in an interview with Der Spiegel and rejected reusability with these words:

“Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year,” he said. “That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: ‘Goodbye, see you next year!’”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-f...

from the original

https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/alain-charmeau-d...

A more recent example would be the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) project which was officially cancelled in June 2026, due to (?) industrial rivalry and leadership disputes, with a side order of politics.

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