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The government should be a regulator and set ground rules. It should provide a market and clear requirements. Then leave private business alone to meet those re

• jeeeb 2y ago
  They’re offering to fund 160 million euros to bootstrap private enterprises providing launch services to the ESA. Of course they want to review the business plan to make sure it’s viable before dropping a bundle of government money on some random company.
  • ghaff 2y ago
    To compare, meanwhile Astra just $80 million to relaunch (so to speak).
  • rapsey 2y ago
    Which is completely the wrong way of doing it. They are the market. So define it and leave it to private industry to fund and develop the capabilities to meet their requirements. If they say, we are willing to spend X amount of money on Y number of launches. You can rent our launch sites for tests. Here is a list of requirements. They would see incredible results. But no europe must micromanage and do things in their own bureaucratic way that has always failed.
• croes 2y ago
  That doesn’t really work if you try to create competitors to already established companies in a limited market
• inglor_cz 2y ago
  The EU is mostly stringent on the environment, and single-use rockets are pretty bad for the environment: all the metal and sophisticated parts must be produced, only to be thrown into the ocean. I would expect reusability to be a requirement based on that factor alone. You ca produce carbon-neutral fuel, but there is a lot of environmental load involved in production of the very rockets.
  • jeroen79 2y ago
    reusability is mainly done for cost instead of environment, but you need to launch a lot to re-cup the costs, and esa is not a commercial org like spacex. I do think the ESA rockets use a more eco friendly fuel then others, that is probably more important then some metal on the seabed.
    • perihelions 2y ago
      Solid rocket fuel is one of the less eco-friendly things that exists. A fully-stacked Ariane 6 is, by mass, 11% chlorine.