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Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

space.com

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

#371

Post by mopsi »

drysine wrote: post #365
qwytw wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarian dictatorships will always behave in seemingly irrational ways (from the perspective of sane politicians). Dictators will always put their personal ambition and "career" first before their country's interests. If Russia behaved rationally they would have made a deal with Ukraine (decades ago) that protected the rights of the Russian minorities in Ukraine and continued massively profiting from gas and oil…

> they would have made a deal with Ukraine (decades ago) that protected the rights of the Russian minorities in Ukraine and continued massively profiting from gas and oil exports into Europe. Russia did, many times, last time in 2010.[0] But the US and the EU didn't like it, so the coup in 2014 happened with American help[1] which overthrew democratically elected president of Ukraine who introduced the law protecting…

There was no coup:

  Parliament votes 328-0 to impeach Yanukovych on Feb. 22; sets May 25 for new election

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

#372

Post by rbanffy »

cccbbbaaa wrote: post #349
rbanffy wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being an ocean away does not make Kourou reliant on the US. No, but it makes it vulnerable to the US.

“Vulnerable to the US” can mean so many things that it practically loses all meaning. Even with a launchpad in continental Europe, they have many ways to interfere with this project, from disrupting the supply chain to carpet bombing the launch site.

A ship crossing the ocean is much more vulnerable than a launch site with sophisticated air defences.

The US can also decide to “free” and “bring democracy” to the French Guiana because the rich oil deposits of its continental shelf won’t free themselves.

The point is that a slow ship crossing the ocean with hard to replace is very vulnerable in transit.

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

#373

Post by hdgvhicv »

drysine wrote: post #290
mag7269 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>As an American, ... maintain world peace I can't believe people are saying that with straight face. How on Earth can you see all the wars that the US has started or had a hand in igniting and still think that?

What it tends to mean is “prevent the US homeland from being threatened” and “keep US trade flowing”

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

#374

Post by torginus »

nine_k wrote: post #207
postingawayonhn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they've had a space agency, but the only launchers are expensive legacy vehicles. This launch is a move towards lower cost and more frequent launches, that in the US are provided by SpaceX.

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.

Reuse might turn out not to be the future - and its SpaceX has embraced this internally. At least not full reuse, or not the way most people think of a reusable spacecraft as a reusable aircraft. A reusable rocket engine might only have 2-3 flights in it, if that, with some routine inspection and maintenance between them.

3D printing has been a game changer that basically allows you to crank out rocket engines from raw materials, which means that building new ones is cheap and easy. If you look at the Raptor 3 (3D printed), it looks super clean, thanks to the fact that they integrated most of the piping into the 3d printed body, but that means you can't really fix or inspect it.

Which is fine tbh. SpaceX (and Tesla) has been shown to be pragmatic not dogmatic when it comes to new technology. 'Elon time' might be a meme, but Musk both pushes his employees very hard, but probably not harder than possible - and he's willing to take flak for delaying projects, changing scope or outright cancellation.

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

#375

Post by nephihaha »

jltsiren wrote: post #200
nephihaha wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't. Plesetsk is in European Russia and was built to prevent overreliance on Baikonur

You are thinking about Vostochny in Russian Far East. Plesetsk was an early ICBM launch site that started doing orbital launches in 1966. It was the busiest spaceport in Soviet times, and the cumulative number of orbital launches from Plesetsk still probably exceeds those from Florida.

No, I'm thinking of Plesetsk because it is in Europe. It is much nearer to Moscow than Baikonur is. Since the USSR broke up, this is even more the case.

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

#376

Post by celsoazevedo »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #203
erkt wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a deep breath.

[flagged]

That's just what the countries that defeated Germany did.

The Americans had Paperclip, the soviets had Operation Osoaviakhim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

Not to mention the initial dash to get to technology and scientists before the others.

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

#377

Post by drysine »

mopsi wrote: post #371
drysine wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would have made a deal with Ukraine (decades ago) that protected the rights of the Russian minorities in Ukraine and continued massively profiting from gas and oil exports into Europe. Russia did, many times, last time in 2010.[0] But the US and the EU didn't like it, so the coup in 2014 happened with American help[1] which overthrew democratically elected president of Ukraine who introduced the law protecting…

There was no coup: Parliament votes 328-0 to impeach Yanukovych on Feb. 22; sets May 25 for new election

There was no impeachment:

  Parliament did not vote to impeach the president, which would have involved formally charging Yanukovych with a crime, a review of the charge by the Constitutional Court, and a three-fourths majority vote in parliament—at least 338 votes in favor.[0]
Please don't spread misinformation

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#Removal_...

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

#378

Post by drysine »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #373
drysine wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As an American, ... maintain world peace I can't believe people are saying that with straight face. How on Earth can you see all the wars that the US has started or had a hand in igniting and still think that?

What it tends to mean is “prevent the US homeland from being threatened” and “keep US trade flowing”

> “prevent the US homeland from being threatened”

That's another thing that puzzles me. How people claim with straight face that anyone is threatening the US homeland.

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

#379

Post by FranOntanaya »

onion2k wrote: post #286
hypfer wrote: post #22

This 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.

I've always assumed that the reason there aren't many launch sites in Europe because the booster stage falls back to Earth, and generally you want that to be over the sea. People get cross if rockets fall on their houses. If you're using the Earth's axial rotation as a helper that means launching heading east, and in Europe east is pretty much always over land. That's why most spaceports are either by an ocean (USA,…

Not really, the actual issue is delta V, launching near the equator requires less fuel because you are getting all the benefit from Earth's rotation. Mass is almost everything for rocket launches.

Northern launches are done sometimes for high inclination orbits since they reduce the need to maneuver from an equatorial orbit.

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

#380

Post by ozim »

smnplk wrote: post #114
rexskimmer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They started developing this rocket in the late 2010s, way before the current US craziness (or the current level of craziness anyway). Independent access to space is always desirable for countries that can muster the resources, but this is just one of many companies that appeared back then as a response to SpaceX's initial success.

One would think that ze germans would be among the first to be conquering space with all that german engineering.

I don’t think Germany has favorable place for orbital launches.

For any failure you would need to have an ocean in the direction of launch.

Also not all orbits are equal because then you need more fuel etc.

It is silly to say every country has equal opportunity to go to space because space is only 100km up. That’s not how it works.

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