Its certainty an interesting engine but for a very advanced space program, as they Europeans want to be, it isn't anything ground breaking. If some US startup w

Its certainty an interesting engine but for a very advanced space program, as they Europeans want to be, it isn't anything ground breaking. If some US startup would announce something like this everybody would shrug and call it par for the course and not particularly innovative. Europe has never developed first stage close cycle engine. The Soviets have mastered close cycle engines as far back as the 60s and even today (at least until the Ukraine war) great Russian/Ukrainian engine were for sale. And today many even startups are working on close cycle engines. This engine is another open cycle engine while the world for real competitive launch vehicles is moving to more advanced engines. And those that do not, are not doing it because they want their next generation rocket to be there as soon as possible. While a European rocket with this engine is at least a decade or more out. It is targeted at being reusable and that is good of course but pretty much every modern engine program is gone be restartable and reusable. We don't have much information how many times it will be reusable, what its startup mechanism and we just generally don't have that much information. So the thing that's kind of stunning here is that Esa/Arianespace is developing this one next generation engine and keep hyping it and building it up as this next generation engine for Europe. But its really nothing special, there are many engines in development (some much further along) in the US that are just gone be as advanced or more advanced. ESA here looks more like a random startup, rather being a leader in technology: Relativity Space Aeon-R: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W91fO97WAPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W91fO97WAPo https://www.relativityspace.com/terran-r https://www.relativityspace.com/terran-r RocketLab Archimedes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_(rocket_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_(rocket_engine) Or how about Launcher E-2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th1mP0bU9L8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th1mP0bU9L8 https://launcherspace.squarespace.com/engine-2 https://launcherspace.squarespace.com/engine-2 Ursa Major: https://www.ursamajor.com/engines/arroway https://www.ursamajor.com/engines/arroway SpaceX Raptor 3: https://youtu.be/h_5ltDjun3g?t=72 https://youtu.be/h_5ltDjun3g?t=72 BlueOrigin BE-4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdS4azOaF2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdS4azOaF2M There are more that we could mention. So Europe hear is more like a small fish in a big pond. And compared to efforts like Raptor, this is many generations behind. This is not big ambition from Europe, but doing the bare minimum to have something that is somewhat modern. But by the time they will get it into a launch vehicle it will look old compare to the competition. The problem is that engine development in Europe is just very slow, and integrating engines to rockets is even slower. Consider the fancy new Vinci Upper Stage engine. It has been in development for over 20 years now, and will likely be 25 year of total time from start of development to first flight. And the worst of it is, the Ariane 6 Upper Stage mass is so heavy that Vinci amazing performance is held back by a terrible structural design. So even as they have this advanced engine, they resulting rocket isn't really great. ESA has a very, very long way ahead if they want their rocket to be more then just launcher military launches from its member states.