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Europe launches lots of rockets. Just not _from_ (geographical) Europe, because Europe is a bad place to launch equatorial orbit rockets from; it's too high lat

Europe launches lots of rockets. Just not _from_ (geographical) Europe, because Europe is a bad place to launch equatorial orbit rockets from; it's too high latitude, and there's too much stuff for bits of the rocket to fall on (most launches are equatorial/equatorial-ish, and for those launching east is desireable, but obviously not practical in most of Europe). European rockets are launched from French Guiana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiana_Space_Centre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiana_Space_Centre), which is part of France, and politically in Europe (it's in the EU), but not geographically in Europe. The Norway site is reasonable for polar orbit rockets, but this company appear to plan to use the existing ESA spaceport in Guiana for equatorial launches.

themgt 2y ago
Orbital launches in 2024: USA: 158 China: 68 Russia: 17 Japan: 7 India: 5 Iran: 4 Europe: 3 North Korea: 1 https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/country https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/country
- pb7 2y ago
  This is just another of many examples of Europe's decline in global relevance. It's what happens when your chief innovation is regulation.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    I don't know if it's regulation, or a combination of the other business factors HN brings up in the discussions about European startups. But the symptoms are alarming. Forget the graphs of past launches—look towards the future: check up how many newspace startups are being founded in each region, and how many are in the reusable launcher race. The EU has zero. (Isar isn't working towards reusable rockets). There are, as far as I find, fat-0 European startups working on it. USA has, by my subjective count, five—SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Labs, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space. That's just the big ones. China has—I'm too lazy to count right now, there are seriously too many search results. Deep Blue and Landspace seem to be the most talked-about ones (at least in the West). And—not only are they in serious competition to replicate Starlink, they have two groups in a race competing on that (Guowang, and Thousand Sails). https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-racing-to-catch-up-to-spacex-74b02a95 https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-ra... The 27 countries of the EU put together have 0. What the heck is failing in the EU?
    - icegreentea2 2y ago
      EU is definitely behind. It's at least an entire generation (perhaps 1.5) behind. ESA does have grants for funding reusable rocket development (ArianeGroup and Isar both got funding for that). Uhh... who knows how successful those programs will be. To be fair to both Isar and RFA (which are both much more in the 2010s New Space mold), the equivalent rockets (Falcon 1, Electron, etc) weren't reusable either. EU firms are playing catch up, I think its fair that they take some amount of incremental steps through. As people have generally noted, the market for stuff that Isar and RFA are building (1-2 ton to LEO) is actually really small. I think both companies are banking on building expertise and confidence and then trying to iterate relatively quickly to something Falcon 9 class with re-use. The American competitors like Relativity and Stoke get to bootstrap off of all the work that SpaceX (especially) and Blue Origin (less so) have done to give a more credible path to immediate re-use.
      - perihelions 2y ago
        Alright. But even if I concede that (that Americans startups are benefiting unfairly from SpaceX), at least two Chinese startups are on schedule for booster-recovery launches this year, https://spacenews.com/deep-blue-aerospace-raises-new-funds-targets-mid-year-orbital-launch/ https://spacenews.com/deep-blue-aerospace-raises-new-funds-t... https://spacenews.com/landspace-launches-third-methane-zhuque-2-targets-2025-launch-of-new-stainless-steel-rocket/ https://spacenews.com/landspace-launches-third-methane-zhuqu... In the case of Deep Blue, they're attempting recovery on their very first orbital launch (they're been hover-testing that booster up to 1 km already). Newspace startups don't have the luxury of competing against 2006-era Falcon 1; they're competing against 2025-era startups like Deep Blue—a dozen very aggressive competitors, all speedrunning towards the same goal. I don't feel the EU is even in the running. In the case of Landspace, it's their 6th launch attempt (I think). This launch is competing against SpaceX and Blue Origin both, for the first recovered-booster, orbital methane launch. It's possible they might come in first—that's how rapidly certain technological gaps have narrowed. (They already got the crown for the first orbital methane launch—Zhuque-2 in 2024. Meaning the first in history. No one in the West has heard of the word "Zhuque". That worries me. They beat even SpaceX to this milestone—our media ecosystem is completely sleeping on remarkably capable competition).
- perihelions 2y ago
  - "Europe: 3" It's worse than it looks: two of those were mini-rockets (Vega), and the Ariane 6 was an R&D test launch with no payload (mass simulator only).
  - baq 2y ago
    Arianne 6 actually launching is as good as it gets… for euro space, anyway.
  - cccbbbaaa 2y ago
    > the Ariane 6 was an R&D test launch with no payload The cubesats do not count as payloads?
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > mass simulator I had to laugh at this. I assume a chunk of concrete was used, but that actually is mass, not a mass "simulator".
tilt_error 2y ago
In 1995, World War III almost broke out after a rocket launch from the exact same location [1]. It was only a coincidence that stopped the Russians from doing retaliatory nuclear rocket launches. So, indeed, launching to the east is not a good idea from this latitude. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident

themgt 2y ago

Orbital launches in 2024: USA: 158 China: 68 Russia: 17 Japan: 7 India: 5 Iran: 4 Europe: 3 North Korea: 1 https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/country https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/country

pb7 2y ago
This is just another of many examples of Europe's decline in global relevance. It's what happens when your chief innovation is regulation.
- perihelions 2y ago
  I don't know if it's regulation, or a combination of the other business factors HN brings up in the discussions about European startups. But the symptoms are alarming. Forget the graphs of past launches—look towards the future: check up how many newspace startups are being founded in each region, and how many are in the reusable launcher race. The EU has zero. (Isar isn't working towards reusable rockets). There are, as far as I find, fat-0 European startups working on it. USA has, by my subjective count, five—SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Labs, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space. That's just the big ones. China has—I'm too lazy to count right now, there are seriously too many search results. Deep Blue and Landspace seem to be the most talked-about ones (at least in the West). And—not only are they in serious competition to replicate Starlink, they have two groups in a race competing on that (Guowang, and Thousand Sails). https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-racing-to-catch-up-to-spacex-74b02a95 https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-ra... The 27 countries of the EU put together have 0. What the heck is failing in the EU?
  - icegreentea2 2y ago
    EU is definitely behind. It's at least an entire generation (perhaps 1.5) behind. ESA does have grants for funding reusable rocket development (ArianeGroup and Isar both got funding for that). Uhh... who knows how successful those programs will be. To be fair to both Isar and RFA (which are both much more in the 2010s New Space mold), the equivalent rockets (Falcon 1, Electron, etc) weren't reusable either. EU firms are playing catch up, I think its fair that they take some amount of incremental steps through. As people have generally noted, the market for stuff that Isar and RFA are building (1-2 ton to LEO) is actually really small. I think both companies are banking on building expertise and confidence and then trying to iterate relatively quickly to something Falcon 9 class with re-use. The American competitors like Relativity and Stoke get to bootstrap off of all the work that SpaceX (especially) and Blue Origin (less so) have done to give a more credible path to immediate re-use.
    - perihelions 2y ago
      Alright. But even if I concede that (that Americans startups are benefiting unfairly from SpaceX), at least two Chinese startups are on schedule for booster-recovery launches this year, https://spacenews.com/deep-blue-aerospace-raises-new-funds-targets-mid-year-orbital-launch/ https://spacenews.com/deep-blue-aerospace-raises-new-funds-t... https://spacenews.com/landspace-launches-third-methane-zhuque-2-targets-2025-launch-of-new-stainless-steel-rocket/ https://spacenews.com/landspace-launches-third-methane-zhuqu... In the case of Deep Blue, they're attempting recovery on their very first orbital launch (they're been hover-testing that booster up to 1 km already). Newspace startups don't have the luxury of competing against 2006-era Falcon 1; they're competing against 2025-era startups like Deep Blue—a dozen very aggressive competitors, all speedrunning towards the same goal. I don't feel the EU is even in the running. In the case of Landspace, it's their 6th launch attempt (I think). This launch is competing against SpaceX and Blue Origin both, for the first recovered-booster, orbital methane launch. It's possible they might come in first—that's how rapidly certain technological gaps have narrowed. (They already got the crown for the first orbital methane launch—Zhuque-2 in 2024. Meaning the first in history. No one in the West has heard of the word "Zhuque". That worries me. They beat even SpaceX to this milestone—our media ecosystem is completely sleeping on remarkably capable competition).
perihelions 2y ago
- "Europe: 3" It's worse than it looks: two of those were mini-rockets (Vega), and the Ariane 6 was an R&D test launch with no payload (mass simulator only).
- baq 2y ago
  Arianne 6 actually launching is as good as it gets… for euro space, anyway.
- cccbbbaaa 2y ago
  > the Ariane 6 was an R&D test launch with no payload The cubesats do not count as payloads?
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > mass simulator I had to laugh at this. I assume a chunk of concrete was used, but that actually is mass, not a mass "simulator".

tilt_error 2y ago

In 1995, World War III almost broke out after a rocket launch from the exact same location [1]. It was only a coincidence that stopped the Russians from doing retaliatory nuclear rocket launches. So, indeed, launching to the east is not a good idea from this latitude. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident