211–220 of 221 posts
This might even influence today's election in Sachsen. With a bit of luck, it could turn a few voters to a more optimistic world view.
Why would it influence the voters in Saxony-Anhalt? The voters are mainly voting AfD because all the other old parties have failed them miserably since the reunification and they don't have any other alternative, because voting for the same parties expecting a different result/future would be insanity.
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Ok, then why don't they launch from Norway and why is the article considered news even though the whole European package already exists?
1. Who is "they"? Isar Aerospace and Arianespace are distinct entities. 2. Isar Aerospace is the first fully private European company (a startup) to do this. Arianespace and the Ariane rockets have heavy state/ESA involvement. 3. It is the first launch to orbit from geographically European soil. French Guiana is politically part of France, but geographically obviously part of South America. 4. Why would everyone have…
Sure. But that's different from "Europe now has sovereign access to space." don't you think? If anything, a state-owned manufacturer is more "sovereign access" than a private company who can decide who they do business with. (Even though state regulates exports but they could decide where to manufacture things.)
> 3. It is the first launch to orbit from geographically European soil. French Guiana is politically part of France, but geographically obviously part of South America.
Sure. Though Norway has been part of Europe for a while and their space port isn't from yesterday either. A milestone? Sure. Never seen before sovereignity? Um...
I don't have answers to your other questions as I'd ask them too.
Congratulation and great news ! For Europe, but also the world, space access is one of those frontiers we can (and I believe will) see truly opened in my lifetime and I find that truly awesome. Interestingly there still seems to be a difference in approach between "few launch, expected to go well" in europe and "many launch as trial and error" in the US, with other countries falling somewhere in between those two lim…
French Guyana is in South America and our Burger friends have reinstated the Monroe doctrine.
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>If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans If that is true, then only because the company doesn't immediately have to fight Arianespace. It is France that has the strongest existing know-how and longest history in rockets, going further back than Arianespace. The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist.
There’s a huge difference between know how and the execution. What has France been doing since WWII? If they have the know how, shouldn’t they be at the same level as US now? Meanwhile Germany had to deal with partition, reunification and now the biggest economy in Europe and also build an economic empire without firing a single shot. That’s why I said Germans would be the only nation that can actually execute the kn…
A lot? I mean they were on the same level or above in the early 2000s.
Ariane was sort of the SpaceX of the 80s by commercializing and significantly decreasing the cost of space launches.
> from the Germans on how to build an empire
Yeah.. the German economy is in a remarkably great state these days.
Congrats to Isar Aerospace. If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans and I hope Isar would get strong support from the Bavarian state to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX.
Congrats to Isar but I think you don't understand the scale difference here and the immensity of what it would take to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX. The orders of magnitude of launch efficiency are... starting to become staggering. Isar is a good fallback for sovereignty and national defense! But, if Germany wants to compete with SpaceX in earnest, they will need to re-orient a large portion of their nation…
Their press release seems to center on: > Europe now has sovereign access to space. [...] Customers around the world now have a sovereign launch option at their disposal. They apparently try very hard to ignore Arianespace.
Arianspace launches from French Guiana while a French commune is not really close to the actual continent of Europe.
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1. Who is "they"? Isar Aerospace and Arianespace are distinct entities. 2. Isar Aerospace is the first fully private European company (a startup) to do this. Arianespace and the Ariane rockets have heavy state/ESA involvement. 3. It is the first launch to orbit from geographically European soil. French Guiana is politically part of France, but geographically obviously part of South America. 4. Why would everyone have…
> 2. Isar Aerospace is the first fully private European company (a startup) to do this. Sure. But that's different from "Europe now has sovereign access to space." don't you think? If anything, a state-owned manufacturer is more "sovereign access" than a private company who can decide who they do business with. (Even though state regulates exports but they could decide where to manufacture things.) > 3. It is the fir…
Andøya Spaceport has been a place for suborbital/sounding rockets, this is the first time a rocket has been launched into orbit from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andøya_Space
> I don't have answers to your other questions as I'd ask them too.
They were questions to you, as it is you making various weird claims.
I really like seeing new aerospace companies, and i really hope humans go interstellar by 2050
this seems a bit ambitious, considering that Voyager just left the solar system a permanent self sufficient colony on antarctica is a bit more like it, but still pretty ambitious
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> Who then gets to decide? You? It's a new world. He who has the biggest guns makes the rules. I don't like it, but in the Caribbean [probably throughout the world] these days, you really are dealing with the raw realities of power in a way you didn't have to previously. I doubt the EU has the stomach to confront Trump. And French Guiana is not Africa, there will be no China coming to save them.
> I doubt the EU has the stomach to confront Trump. Given what we did on short notice for Greenland, I think we would be willing (not eager, but willing) to have a hot war.