8 ms·

Themis (European Reusable Rocket) is assembled on launch pad

113 points by theamk 1y ago

mikebonnell 1y ago
Is there a specific reason why this site seems to have so much less visible infrastructure than ESA or NASA?
- philipwhiuk 1y ago
  It's a much much smaller rocket than you see at Kourou or at Kennedy. Kennedy was, let's not forget, built for a vehicle more powerful than the Saturn V. And both to handle the SRBs of Ariane launchers (which basically chuck flying rubble out the back on launch). The pad infrastructure is reasonably similar to an actual comparative launch site like Kodiak AK.
  - mikebonnell 1y ago
    Thank you, that makes so much sense.
rob74 1y ago
A few years ago there would have been comments along the lines of "why sink money into this, SpaceX is years ahead, just use their rockets", but I think that the recent events in the US have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  This is a terrific illustration of comparative advantage and economies of scale. If Europe and America could trade with trust, Europe could put these resources into space missions. (Or solar panels. Whatever.) SpaceX, meanwhile, would have more resources with which to scale Starship. Instead we have inefficient duplication and diseconomies of scale. All so…idk, the Italians stop taking advantage of America...
  - graemep 1y ago
    I disagree. It is good to have more than one design. It is not exact duplication so alternative approaches are taken. We have more than one design if one proves flawed. We avoid creating a monopoly. We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models. No one would suggest that is a good idea. Even the Soviet Union did not go to the extreme of having only one design for every possible product.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > It is good to have more than one design SpaceX has multiple designs generations ahead of anything in Europe in this category. (China is catching up, but it too is retracing Hawthorne's path.) Themis is cool. But it's duplicating what SpaceX did fifteen to twenty years ago and what China has been working on for ten. Methalox, open cycle gas generator, steel tanks...there aren't any daring design decisions here. And there shouldn't be. This is a solved problem. (Again, that doesn't mean Europe shouldn't be solving it independently. But it's not innovating anything here.) Consider an alternate universe where NATO isn't in shambles. Europe can use SpaceX for LEO. And in the meantime, it can focus on other designs, other categories. Maybe a different fuel. Maybe a novel engine. Maybe something entirely extra-atmospheric. Maybe it's a breakthrough in satellite design, or habitat science. Instead of replicating Falcon 1/9 and Raptor, there could be a genuinely new design. We don't get that, because Europe has to secure its launch sovereignty. That is the cost. > We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models Mature market. Multiple optima. See my comment on Airbus and Boeing. When you're pathfinding, you want multiple bets. When you're pursuing, R&D benefits from scale.
      - kybernetikos 1y ago
        I think that often theres a difference in ability to put capital to work between the US and europe. Lots of innovative work has happened in Europe, but it often gets bought by US or Asian capital, or gets outcompeted by vastly more resourced US competitors, or just withers on the vine from a lack of investment. Sabre seemed a really interesting space approach that failed from lack of funding.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)... It may not actually be that urgent, at least for their own use. A non-expendable Falcon 9 launch costs $70m; an Ariane 6 launch costs 80-100m EUR (for a more capable rocket, especially for GTO). Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters. They're not in drastically different cost realms. The bulk of the cost of most ESA launches would still be the payload, not the launcher. Also that Falcon 9 cost is up from about $60m a couple of years ago, so you wouldn't necessarily want to bet on it not rising further. And that's list price; in practice SpaceX charges NASA over $100m/launch and "Space Force" over $110m/launch (https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/reusable-rockets-are-here-so-why-is-nasa-paying-more-to-launch-stuff-to-space/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/reusable-rockets-are-h...), so, assuming that as another space agency ESA would be charged similar, Ariane may actually be the _budget option_. Now, for commercial it's a different story, though really Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive there; even before SpaceX their market was mostly stuff that couldn't go on Russian rockets.
  - mschild 1y ago
    Its not urgent until the US government starts blocking ESA from launching anything unless the EU agrees to some trade deal. Being independent isn't necessarily about lower cost. Its about having an alternative that you control.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      ... Wait, how would the US government block ESA from launching stuff? ESA has its own rockets, which launch from its own facility and which are not drastically more expensive than Falcon 9 (this is a _fairly_ recent change; Ariane 5 was far more expensive than 6).
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > ESA has its own rockets, which launch from its own facility and which are not drastically more expensive than Falcon 9 ESA's launch cadence does not permit populating a LEO constellation. On this, currently, America has a monopoly. (Soon, I expect, to be shared with China.)
- pjmlp 1y ago
  We also need to go back to the 1980's of having European computers, operating systems and programming languages.
  - flanked-evergl 1y ago
    Not going to happen with the EU.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Depends where geopolitics end up going wrong, more than they are already. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
      - flanked-evergl 1y ago
        I hope you are right.
    - ktosobcy 1y ago
      Because? (but please refrain yourself for spreading FUT of how awful and autoritarian the EU is)
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Because? I'm genuinely curious for the formal answer. But the simple one is European institutions seem to be built for consensus and around the assumption of a Pax Americana. They're a cross between a colony and confederation. If you were rebuilding Europe for strategic autonomy, you'd rejigger several electoral and decision-making systems. (The historic handicap of multiple languages may actually be a case where technology (live translation) solves a social problem.)
      - flanked-evergl 1y ago
        EU in practice serves no other function but to deindustrialize Europe and make it entirely dependent on the US, but even more so, China and Russia. In 2024 European countries paid more to Russia for gas than to Ukraine for aid, and I think this is still the case in 2025. We shut down industry because it's not environmentally friendly and then import from the worst polluters in the world. If I was China and Russia and I wanted to completely neutralize Europe as a rival there is no better way I could ever imagine to do it than what the EU is doing. You could say that EU can be fixed, sure, in principle, but we know it won't be fixed. We know it will only get worse because the rot has become systemic. If we were to objectively consider Europe, and say what could one do to prevent a war between Europe and other powers, there generally are two things. Prevent others from attacking Europe, and prevent Europe from resisting when others attack it. European politicians have chosen the second option. You can see it from how many people are willing to fight, you can see it from Europe's response to Russian aggression. Europe may be stronger than Russia on paper, but it pains me dearly to say that we have already surrendered to Russia.
- nickdothutton 1y ago
  If indeed they are capable of getting it working and can equal or closely match SpX for capability.
- dotnet00 1y ago
  I think even SpaceX fans have been waiting for years for others to finally adopt partial reusability, and thus support this effort. My complaint with Themis had only been that it didn't sound like they were taking it seriously back when it was announced. Even after all these years, there has only been one non-SpaceX orbital rocket with reusability built-in to the design goals from the start, to actually fly (but not reused, yet), so seeing another one getting closer to that is good. Edit: Though, IIRC Themis will mainly be doing hop tests in preparation for an orbital design.
ofrzeta 1y ago
"The first model of the European Space Agency's (ESA) reusable rocket demonstrator Themis is standing at its launch pad in Kiruna, Sweden." Is Kiruna a good place for this? I read that it's collapsing due to extensive mining for decades.
- ejolto 1y ago
  The Esrange launchpad is more than 50 km from the Kiruna iron mine, which is 4km long, 80m thick and 2km deep.
- ragebol 1y ago
  Any city would be a bad place for a rocket (test) launch facility, 'collapsing' due to mining or not. Luckily the city is some 44 km drive away from the launch site. And there's still people living in Kiruna, it's not collapsing but affected still in some shape of form. Heard on some podcast that mining blasts are timed to reduce the disturbance and some buildings (or their inhabitants probably) relocated, IIRC.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    afaik they are moving the city step by step. Hasn't the church been moved a few weeks ago?
    - unwind 1y ago
      Yes, on August 20: https://lkab.com/en/press/kiruna-church-has-found-a-new-home-a-historic-move-completed-as-planned/ https://lkab.com/en/press/kiruna-church-has-found-a-new-home....
- Hikikomori 1y ago
  The launch pad isn't in the town square.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
MaxPock 1y ago
Are they copying Space X or that accusation is reserved for China ?
- wosined 1y ago
  Only midwits shun copying. It is good way to learn. It is only bad if you lie about authorship.
  - XorNot 1y ago
    And also by now it should be clear that if China look at your design and knock out a decent copy, they still did a ton of engineering to make it work. It's like people forget Foxconn started as a copying operation and went mainstream.
- dotnet00 1y ago
  Within rocketry, a lot of accusations of copying against China are just hate. The form of rockets is dictated by physics, and so there are only so many ways to approach the same set of constraints and requirements with similar technologies. Plus, the exterior form of a rocket is the easy part. The engines, plumbing, control systems, and internal structure are the hard part (and also hard to copy part)
Gravityloss 1y ago
For history: Arianespace was founded in the first place to launch independent European communication satellites that USA wouldn't launch. Trade is extremely useful, but certain strategic capabilities are very useful also to have on your own. I personally think it would make sense from Europe's point of view for European companies or consortiums to develop operational stealth aircraft.
MomsAVoxell 1y ago
I sure wish SpaceX would just open source their designs so that nations around the world can join the space race, we can truly evolve as a whole species and not just as national identities, and we can get on with mining Psyche 16. That would be a truly revolutionary human endeavour, imho. Meanwhile, we're lobbing rockets at each other to kill innocents at massive scale, when we could, as an entire species, be building literal cities in the sky. Nevertheless if Europe starts making progress, I'm sure it'll catch up with the USA and China. Some day. Assuming we don't nuke ourselves over idiocy first. I know, it's a pipe dream. But a person can dream for the stars in spite of all the hatred that says otherwise.
- lurking_swe 1y ago
  cities in the sky? With all due respect…your head is in the clouds friend. We can barely keep the earth from warming catastrophically as it is, and you want to what - 5x global emissions? to build cities in the sky, where life is HARDER than on earth? That’s just nuts. How about we learn how to not screw up the earth first before worrying about cities in the sky. Because i guarantee we’d find a way to trash the next planet really quickly. Humans (as a large species) tend to be great at that. I don’t see other animals trashing the planet. Just us. I’m just looking forward to better satellites - better weather forecasting, communications, research, etc.
  - MomsAVoxell 1y ago
    I’m talking about space stations and mining Psyche 16. My head is way, way above the clouds, friend. The Earth would be far better off if we moved all heavy industrial manufacturing to space and left the Earth to flourish as the only garden we have. Yeah, it’s a pipe dream. Thats the point. We could do it - we don’t, because we’d rather argue about whose opinion is better, at mass scale.

113 points by theamk 1y ago

mikebonnell 1y ago

Is there a specific reason why this site seems to have so much less visible infrastructure than ESA or NASA?

philipwhiuk 1y ago
It's a much much smaller rocket than you see at Kourou or at Kennedy. Kennedy was, let's not forget, built for a vehicle more powerful than the Saturn V. And both to handle the SRBs of Ariane launchers (which basically chuck flying rubble out the back on launch). The pad infrastructure is reasonably similar to an actual comparative launch site like Kodiak AK.
- mikebonnell 1y ago
  Thank you, that makes so much sense.

rob74 1y ago

A few years ago there would have been comments along the lines of "why sink money into this, SpaceX is years ahead, just use their rockets", but I think that the recent events in the US have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)...

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
This is a terrific illustration of comparative advantage and economies of scale. If Europe and America could trade with trust, Europe could put these resources into space missions. (Or solar panels. Whatever.) SpaceX, meanwhile, would have more resources with which to scale Starship. Instead we have inefficient duplication and diseconomies of scale. All so…idk, the Italians stop taking advantage of America...
- graemep 1y ago
  I disagree. It is good to have more than one design. It is not exact duplication so alternative approaches are taken. We have more than one design if one proves flawed. We avoid creating a monopoly. We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models. No one would suggest that is a good idea. Even the Soviet Union did not go to the extreme of having only one design for every possible product.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > It is good to have more than one design SpaceX has multiple designs generations ahead of anything in Europe in this category. (China is catching up, but it too is retracing Hawthorne's path.) Themis is cool. But it's duplicating what SpaceX did fifteen to twenty years ago and what China has been working on for ten. Methalox, open cycle gas generator, steel tanks...there aren't any daring design decisions here. And there shouldn't be. This is a solved problem. (Again, that doesn't mean Europe shouldn't be solving it independently. But it's not innovating anything here.) Consider an alternate universe where NATO isn't in shambles. Europe can use SpaceX for LEO. And in the meantime, it can focus on other designs, other categories. Maybe a different fuel. Maybe a novel engine. Maybe something entirely extra-atmospheric. Maybe it's a breakthrough in satellite design, or habitat science. Instead of replicating Falcon 1/9 and Raptor, there could be a genuinely new design. We don't get that, because Europe has to secure its launch sovereignty. That is the cost. > We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models Mature market. Multiple optima. See my comment on Airbus and Boeing. When you're pathfinding, you want multiple bets. When you're pursuing, R&D benefits from scale.
    - kybernetikos 1y ago
      I think that often theres a difference in ability to put capital to work between the US and europe. Lots of innovative work has happened in Europe, but it often gets bought by US or Asian capital, or gets outcompeted by vastly more resourced US competitors, or just withers on the vine from a lack of investment. Sabre seemed a really interesting space approach that failed from lack of funding.
rsynnott 1y ago
> have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)... It may not actually be that urgent, at least for their own use. A non-expendable Falcon 9 launch costs $70m; an Ariane 6 launch costs 80-100m EUR (for a more capable rocket, especially for GTO). Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters. They're not in drastically different cost realms. The bulk of the cost of most ESA launches would still be the payload, not the launcher. Also that Falcon 9 cost is up from about $60m a couple of years ago, so you wouldn't necessarily want to bet on it not rising further. And that's list price; in practice SpaceX charges NASA over $100m/launch and "Space Force" over $110m/launch (https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/reusable-rockets-are-here-so-why-is-nasa-paying-more-to-launch-stuff-to-space/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/reusable-rockets-are-h...), so, assuming that as another space agency ESA would be charged similar, Ariane may actually be the _budget option_. Now, for commercial it's a different story, though really Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive there; even before SpaceX their market was mostly stuff that couldn't go on Russian rockets.
- mschild 1y ago
  Its not urgent until the US government starts blocking ESA from launching anything unless the EU agrees to some trade deal. Being independent isn't necessarily about lower cost. Its about having an alternative that you control.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    ... Wait, how would the US government block ESA from launching stuff? ESA has its own rockets, which launch from its own facility and which are not drastically more expensive than Falcon 9 (this is a _fairly_ recent change; Ariane 5 was far more expensive than 6).
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > ESA has its own rockets, which launch from its own facility and which are not drastically more expensive than Falcon 9 ESA's launch cadence does not permit populating a LEO constellation. On this, currently, America has a monopoly. (Soon, I expect, to be shared with China.)
pjmlp 1y ago
We also need to go back to the 1980's of having European computers, operating systems and programming languages.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  Not going to happen with the EU.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Depends where geopolitics end up going wrong, more than they are already. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
    - flanked-evergl 1y ago
      I hope you are right.
  - ktosobcy 1y ago
    Because? (but please refrain yourself for spreading FUT of how awful and autoritarian the EU is)
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Because? I'm genuinely curious for the formal answer. But the simple one is European institutions seem to be built for consensus and around the assumption of a Pax Americana. They're a cross between a colony and confederation. If you were rebuilding Europe for strategic autonomy, you'd rejigger several electoral and decision-making systems. (The historic handicap of multiple languages may actually be a case where technology (live translation) solves a social problem.)
    - flanked-evergl 1y ago
      EU in practice serves no other function but to deindustrialize Europe and make it entirely dependent on the US, but even more so, China and Russia. In 2024 European countries paid more to Russia for gas than to Ukraine for aid, and I think this is still the case in 2025. We shut down industry because it's not environmentally friendly and then import from the worst polluters in the world. If I was China and Russia and I wanted to completely neutralize Europe as a rival there is no better way I could ever imagine to do it than what the EU is doing. You could say that EU can be fixed, sure, in principle, but we know it won't be fixed. We know it will only get worse because the rot has become systemic. If we were to objectively consider Europe, and say what could one do to prevent a war between Europe and other powers, there generally are two things. Prevent others from attacking Europe, and prevent Europe from resisting when others attack it. European politicians have chosen the second option. You can see it from how many people are willing to fight, you can see it from Europe's response to Russian aggression. Europe may be stronger than Russia on paper, but it pains me dearly to say that we have already surrendered to Russia.
nickdothutton 1y ago
If indeed they are capable of getting it working and can equal or closely match SpX for capability.
dotnet00 1y ago
I think even SpaceX fans have been waiting for years for others to finally adopt partial reusability, and thus support this effort. My complaint with Themis had only been that it didn't sound like they were taking it seriously back when it was announced. Even after all these years, there has only been one non-SpaceX orbital rocket with reusability built-in to the design goals from the start, to actually fly (but not reused, yet), so seeing another one getting closer to that is good. Edit: Though, IIRC Themis will mainly be doing hop tests in preparation for an orbital design.

ofrzeta 1y ago

"The first model of the European Space Agency's (ESA) reusable rocket demonstrator Themis is standing at its launch pad in Kiruna, Sweden." Is Kiruna a good place for this? I read that it's collapsing due to extensive mining for decades.

ejolto 1y ago
The Esrange launchpad is more than 50 km from the Kiruna iron mine, which is 4km long, 80m thick and 2km deep.
ragebol 1y ago
Any city would be a bad place for a rocket (test) launch facility, 'collapsing' due to mining or not. Luckily the city is some 44 km drive away from the launch site. And there's still people living in Kiruna, it's not collapsing but affected still in some shape of form. Heard on some podcast that mining blasts are timed to reduce the disturbance and some buildings (or their inhabitants probably) relocated, IIRC.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  afaik they are moving the city step by step. Hasn't the church been moved a few weeks ago?
  - unwind 1y ago
    Yes, on August 20: https://lkab.com/en/press/kiruna-church-has-found-a-new-home-a-historic-move-completed-as-planned/ https://lkab.com/en/press/kiruna-church-has-found-a-new-home....
Hikikomori 1y ago
The launch pad isn't in the town square.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

MaxPock 1y ago

Are they copying Space X or that accusation is reserved for China ?

wosined 1y ago
Only midwits shun copying. It is good way to learn. It is only bad if you lie about authorship.
- XorNot 1y ago
  And also by now it should be clear that if China look at your design and knock out a decent copy, they still did a ton of engineering to make it work. It's like people forget Foxconn started as a copying operation and went mainstream.
dotnet00 1y ago
Within rocketry, a lot of accusations of copying against China are just hate. The form of rockets is dictated by physics, and so there are only so many ways to approach the same set of constraints and requirements with similar technologies. Plus, the exterior form of a rocket is the easy part. The engines, plumbing, control systems, and internal structure are the hard part (and also hard to copy part)

Gravityloss 1y ago

For history: Arianespace was founded in the first place to launch independent European communication satellites that USA wouldn't launch. Trade is extremely useful, but certain strategic capabilities are very useful also to have on your own. I personally think it would make sense from Europe's point of view for European companies or consortiums to develop operational stealth aircraft.

MomsAVoxell 1y ago

I sure wish SpaceX would just open source their designs so that nations around the world can join the space race, we can truly evolve as a whole species and not just as national identities, and we can get on with mining Psyche 16. That would be a truly revolutionary human endeavour, imho. Meanwhile, we're lobbing rockets at each other to kill innocents at massive scale, when we could, as an entire species, be building literal cities in the sky. Nevertheless if Europe starts making progress, I'm sure it'll catch up with the USA and China. Some day. Assuming we don't nuke ourselves over idiocy first. I know, it's a pipe dream. But a person can dream for the stars in spite of all the hatred that says otherwise.

lurking_swe 1y ago
cities in the sky? With all due respect…your head is in the clouds friend. We can barely keep the earth from warming catastrophically as it is, and you want to what - 5x global emissions? to build cities in the sky, where life is HARDER than on earth? That’s just nuts. How about we learn how to not screw up the earth first before worrying about cities in the sky. Because i guarantee we’d find a way to trash the next planet really quickly. Humans (as a large species) tend to be great at that. I don’t see other animals trashing the planet. Just us. I’m just looking forward to better satellites - better weather forecasting, communications, research, etc.
- MomsAVoxell 1y ago
  I’m talking about space stations and mining Psyche 16. My head is way, way above the clouds, friend. The Earth would be far better off if we moved all heavy industrial manufacturing to space and left the Earth to flourish as the only garden we have. Yeah, it’s a pipe dream. Thats the point. We could do it - we don’t, because we’d rather argue about whose opinion is better, at mass scale.