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There are a whole host of issues with the idea that ESA could do things like NASA does them now. Politics is one issue, but there are many others. > But I susp
by panick21_ 3y ago
There are a whole host of issues with the idea that ESA could do things like NASA does them now. Politics is one issue, but there are many others.
> But I suspect this wouldn't work well with EU funding
Just FYI, while EU funds some of ESA. ESA is independent and most of its budget is directly from member states.
- cubefox 3y agoDirect funding is even worse. Why would Italy fund a German rocket startup? It seems money could only come from the respective state itself, not via ESA.
- arlort 3y agoItaly and Germany pay ESA, ESA pays the contractors. But it's not like a layer of indirection means countries are magically unaware of where the money ends up It's not like ESA raises taxes on its own to pay for stuff
- panick21_ 3y agoI mean a more logic situation was if Italy and Germany both pay ESA, and ESA contracts the launch vehicle from Germany but maybe the space station module from Italy. But one project often is to large a part of the budget so instead of doing it per project, the split each project into tiny pieces and hand that to each government. However this is also changing a bit. For Ariane 6 they specifically went away from that and allow industry (Ariane Group) to ignore that to a certain extent.