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This may come as a shock but European companies have been putting commercial satelites into orbit since the 70s.
by INTPenis 2y ago
This may come as a shock but European companies have been putting commercial satelites into orbit since the 70s.
- boxed 2y agoYea, at enormous cost, and very slowly. Europe was also totally without any launch capacity for quite a while since Ariane 6 didn't work out great.
- josefx 2y agoThe Ariane 6 is mainly for larger payloads. Europe was still using Vega and Vega-C for satellites .
- rsynnott 2y ago> Europe was also totally without any launch capacity for quite a while since Ariane 6 didn't work out great. As someone else mentioned, Vega C was operational during this period, but also, define 'quite a while'. Last Ariane 5 launch was in mid 2023, First Ariane 6 launch was in mid 2024. Eutelsat is a commercial company, of course, and doesn't have to use Arianespace/ESA stuff; they have in the past used Ariane 4 and 5, Proton, Falcon 9, and various Atlases and Deltas, and are a fairly obvious candidate customer for Blue Origin.
- boxed 2y agoMy bad. I should have said heavy lift capacity, not all capacity. I screwed that up.
- Yeul 2y agoIndependence has a price. Something European countries are very aware of.