5 ms·

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 th

by 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.
      - _w1tm 1y ago
        > I think that often theres a difference in ability to put capital to work between the US and europe. It’s because the EU is 27 different countries with different regulations while the US is 1. Some work is being done to fix this but remains to be seen if we can reach a point where we have unified capital markets instead of national ones.
        graemep 1y ago
        That does not prevent something like this project happening which includes 23 different European countries, and not even through the EU. The point of the EU is to provide unified markets, and capital flows pretty freely between major European economies (including those outside the EU) so I do not think that is it.
        nradov 1y ago
        Meanwhile three of those EU member states can't be manage to cooperate on their 6th-generation fighter programs. https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-france-europe-fighter-jet-defense-aviation/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-france-europe-fighte...
        graemep 1y ago
        That is something that remains outside the EU's remit because it is military and decision lie in the hands of member states. I was rebutting a claim that differences in regulations preventing capital flows. That is not true in general in our globalised world (capital clearly flows freely between many countries) and certainly not true in the EU. It is possible that the EU loses somewhat from not having the central budget that the US federal government has which which to back big projects, but, in most cases, the bigger EU states are big enough to back most things (as is the UK) but will not do so. The lack of fiscal centralisation in the EU also affects its financial stability but I do not think that is directly related to this problem. As for sixth general fighters, a number of smaller economies than Germany alone have or plan their own sixth generation fighters, or have done so (some programmes have merged). Again, a difference in attitude and priorities.
  - amelius 1y ago
    You're talking about a different kind of redundancy. This was about parties who don't 100% trust each other. > We have more than one design if one proves flawed. One of the parties ends up with the right the design, the other will have a flawed design.
    - prasadjoglekar 1y ago
      Trust but verify; that's a Russian proverb I'm told. Verification and ability to verify comes with having some leverage. This brings some leverage to the table.
  - wuschel 1y ago
    Absolutely. Healthy Competition helps to spur innovation and value value provided to the customer.
- anovikov 1y ago
  But that's govspace, it's not at all about efficiency or economy, it's a jobs program.
- makkes 1y ago
  "If everybody would just use Windows, companies and developers wouldn't sink money and effort into the development of operating systems."
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  No, access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate. It’s not something you can buy. Even before the Trump debacle, the USA were extremely unreliable when it came to satellite images for exemple. Do you remember the fake images passed as Irak developing weapons of mass destruction? Because I certainly do. Europe needs their own launcher in the same way it needs its own defence industry. It’s just sad that it took so long for some members to finally realise that provided they actually did.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate New York isn't "delegating" its space access to California, Texas and Florida. (Same as America never saw itself delegating shipbuilding to our Japanese and Korean allies.) I'm not arguing Europe isn't acting rationally. Just that this is the cost of strategic independence. Everyone shares a burden of duplication and diseconomies of scale. It really isn't that long ago that NATO members--America included--didn't think that way.
    - pjc50 1y ago
      Interestingly, NY and some other states have de-delegated some health collaboration because they can no longer trust the CDC: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/northeast-us-states-form-health-alliance-response-federal-vaccine-limits-2025-09-18/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... Politics of division will end up with fragmentation. But yes, Europe does need its own space capability as part of its own military capability in order to remain an independent block without undue external pressure. Conversely, that subordinates the independence of countries within the block, which is why things like an "EU military" haven't got off the ground until now.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        Yup. If that happens in America between states, it further underlines the argument. We're in a world where soveriegnty must be protected. But in this we lose the peace dividends of comparative advantage and economies of scale.
- chrizel 1y ago
  You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus. Why should Europeans build their own aircrafts? Today I think a lot of people are happy, that Airbus exists to compensate for the problems that Boeing has. Competition is good and will lead to better solutions in the long run.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    While I don't disagree, Airbus's origin was more or less the opposite of that; it was a merger of existing aircraft manufacturers. Both Airbus's creation, and Boeing's merger with McDonnell Douglas _decreased_ competition, and arguably neither should have been allowed.
    - rob74 1y ago
      Not sure about Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, but for the many European aircraft companies that first cooperated under the Airbus name and then (much later) merged into a single company, there wasn't really an alternative (unless you consider bankruptcy an alternative). Even in the late 1960s, when the original A300 was designed, that task was more expensive than any individual European manufacturer could shoulder, and without a new product, they would have quickly faded into irrelevance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%932000:_Airbus_Industrie_GIE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%9...
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus You couldn't. Boeing and Airbus have pursued different strategies, both in design and production. There is very little actual duplication between their work. To the extent there is, it's in each de-risking different technologies and then the other, after seeing the results, rapidly catching up. This is partly a reflection of commercial aviation being a relatively mature market. Both in the pace of required innovation (and regulation). And the fact that the difference between branching out and marching forward is difficult to know ex ante. Put another way, the next steps in launch vehicles are relatively constrained. The goals aren't particularly unknown, just the path. For aviation, on the other hand, the goals are quite varied.
- riffraff 1y ago
  the US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries. It's one of those things where it's important to have alternatives.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries They're going after different markets with similar tech (mostly not working, to be honest) or trying different tech. Themis and Prometheus are entirely unoriginal designs. (Which is fine. Their point isn't to be innovative, but to be there, in Europe, where Trump can't touch them.) There are incredibly cool, novel designs in Europe. But they can't see the light of day because these duplication projects soak up funding. (Again, as they probably must.)
- baq 1y ago
  This is simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff. If you know where to look, you'll find instances of it absolutely everywhere, with some spectacular blowups when efficiency prioritization is mistimed and some very boring out-competition failures in the other case.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff Absolutely. The point is when pursuing a proven technological forefront, there are benefits to being able to focus on efficiency. Moreover, scale expands solution space. Not always. But high-throughput manufacturing allows SpaceX to pursue both efficiency and resilience in e.g. engine design in a way not possible if you're building engines one at a time. (You always have multiple engines in process, which enables a higher risk tolerance, which enables a higher feedback rate, which allows for faster and more-meaningful iteration.)
- harpiaharpyja 1y ago
  I'm not sure if "economies of scale" is the thing here. I think calling it that may confuse people. Really what produces an advantage is an environment of trust. Having that reduces a lot of friction when it comes to economic activity.
  - johncolanduoni 1y ago
    The economy of scale is the mechanism that provides the mutual economic benefit - the environment of trust is the political situation that facilitates economies of scale expanding beyond national borders.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Mmm. > All so…idk, the Germans stop taking advantage of us… Other than this part, I thought you had it: comparative advantage makes everyone richer. You don't actually want both parties getting richer when your counterparty appears to have gone mad and might be about to stab you in the face.
- nradov 1y ago
  Duplication of effort is not an actual problem. Intense competition spurs progress far better than having more resources. And in the case of government programs — especially in Europe — more resources are often just wasted.
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.

by rob74 1y ago

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.
    - _w1tm 1y ago
      > I think that often theres a difference in ability to put capital to work between the US and europe. It’s because the EU is 27 different countries with different regulations while the US is 1. Some work is being done to fix this but remains to be seen if we can reach a point where we have unified capital markets instead of national ones.
      - graemep 1y ago
        That does not prevent something like this project happening which includes 23 different European countries, and not even through the EU. The point of the EU is to provide unified markets, and capital flows pretty freely between major European economies (including those outside the EU) so I do not think that is it.
        nradov 1y ago
        Meanwhile three of those EU member states can't be manage to cooperate on their 6th-generation fighter programs. https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-france-europe-fighter-jet-defense-aviation/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-france-europe-fighte...
        graemep 1y ago
        That is something that remains outside the EU's remit because it is military and decision lie in the hands of member states. I was rebutting a claim that differences in regulations preventing capital flows. That is not true in general in our globalised world (capital clearly flows freely between many countries) and certainly not true in the EU. It is possible that the EU loses somewhat from not having the central budget that the US federal government has which which to back big projects, but, in most cases, the bigger EU states are big enough to back most things (as is the UK) but will not do so. The lack of fiscal centralisation in the EU also affects its financial stability but I do not think that is directly related to this problem. As for sixth general fighters, a number of smaller economies than Germany alone have or plan their own sixth generation fighters, or have done so (some programmes have merged). Again, a difference in attitude and priorities.
- amelius 1y ago
  You're talking about a different kind of redundancy. This was about parties who don't 100% trust each other. > We have more than one design if one proves flawed. One of the parties ends up with the right the design, the other will have a flawed design.
  - prasadjoglekar 1y ago
    Trust but verify; that's a Russian proverb I'm told. Verification and ability to verify comes with having some leverage. This brings some leverage to the table.
- wuschel 1y ago
  Absolutely. Healthy Competition helps to spur innovation and value value provided to the customer.
anovikov 1y ago
But that's govspace, it's not at all about efficiency or economy, it's a jobs program.
makkes 1y ago
"If everybody would just use Windows, companies and developers wouldn't sink money and effort into the development of operating systems."
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
No, access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate. It’s not something you can buy. Even before the Trump debacle, the USA were extremely unreliable when it came to satellite images for exemple. Do you remember the fake images passed as Irak developing weapons of mass destruction? Because I certainly do. Europe needs their own launcher in the same way it needs its own defence industry. It’s just sad that it took so long for some members to finally realise that provided they actually did.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate New York isn't "delegating" its space access to California, Texas and Florida. (Same as America never saw itself delegating shipbuilding to our Japanese and Korean allies.) I'm not arguing Europe isn't acting rationally. Just that this is the cost of strategic independence. Everyone shares a burden of duplication and diseconomies of scale. It really isn't that long ago that NATO members--America included--didn't think that way.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    Interestingly, NY and some other states have de-delegated some health collaboration because they can no longer trust the CDC: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/northeast-us-states-form-health-alliance-response-federal-vaccine-limits-2025-09-18/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... Politics of division will end up with fragmentation. But yes, Europe does need its own space capability as part of its own military capability in order to remain an independent block without undue external pressure. Conversely, that subordinates the independence of countries within the block, which is why things like an "EU military" haven't got off the ground until now.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Yup. If that happens in America between states, it further underlines the argument. We're in a world where soveriegnty must be protected. But in this we lose the peace dividends of comparative advantage and economies of scale.
chrizel 1y ago
You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus. Why should Europeans build their own aircrafts? Today I think a lot of people are happy, that Airbus exists to compensate for the problems that Boeing has. Competition is good and will lead to better solutions in the long run.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  While I don't disagree, Airbus's origin was more or less the opposite of that; it was a merger of existing aircraft manufacturers. Both Airbus's creation, and Boeing's merger with McDonnell Douglas _decreased_ competition, and arguably neither should have been allowed.
  - rob74 1y ago
    Not sure about Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, but for the many European aircraft companies that first cooperated under the Airbus name and then (much later) merged into a single company, there wasn't really an alternative (unless you consider bankruptcy an alternative). Even in the late 1960s, when the original A300 was designed, that task was more expensive than any individual European manufacturer could shoulder, and without a new product, they would have quickly faded into irrelevance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%932000:_Airbus_Industrie_GIE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%9...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus You couldn't. Boeing and Airbus have pursued different strategies, both in design and production. There is very little actual duplication between their work. To the extent there is, it's in each de-risking different technologies and then the other, after seeing the results, rapidly catching up. This is partly a reflection of commercial aviation being a relatively mature market. Both in the pace of required innovation (and regulation). And the fact that the difference between branching out and marching forward is difficult to know ex ante. Put another way, the next steps in launch vehicles are relatively constrained. The goals aren't particularly unknown, just the path. For aviation, on the other hand, the goals are quite varied.
riffraff 1y ago
the US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries. It's one of those things where it's important to have alternatives.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries They're going after different markets with similar tech (mostly not working, to be honest) or trying different tech. Themis and Prometheus are entirely unoriginal designs. (Which is fine. Their point isn't to be innovative, but to be there, in Europe, where Trump can't touch them.) There are incredibly cool, novel designs in Europe. But they can't see the light of day because these duplication projects soak up funding. (Again, as they probably must.)
baq 1y ago
This is simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff. If you know where to look, you'll find instances of it absolutely everywhere, with some spectacular blowups when efficiency prioritization is mistimed and some very boring out-competition failures in the other case.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff Absolutely. The point is when pursuing a proven technological forefront, there are benefits to being able to focus on efficiency. Moreover, scale expands solution space. Not always. But high-throughput manufacturing allows SpaceX to pursue both efficiency and resilience in e.g. engine design in a way not possible if you're building engines one at a time. (You always have multiple engines in process, which enables a higher risk tolerance, which enables a higher feedback rate, which allows for faster and more-meaningful iteration.)
harpiaharpyja 1y ago
I'm not sure if "economies of scale" is the thing here. I think calling it that may confuse people. Really what produces an advantage is an environment of trust. Having that reduces a lot of friction when it comes to economic activity.
- johncolanduoni 1y ago
  The economy of scale is the mechanism that provides the mutual economic benefit - the environment of trust is the political situation that facilitates economies of scale expanding beyond national borders.
ben_w 1y ago
Mmm. > All so…idk, the Germans stop taking advantage of us… Other than this part, I thought you had it: comparative advantage makes everyone richer. You don't actually want both parties getting richer when your counterparty appears to have gone mad and might be about to stab you in the face.
nradov 1y ago
Duplication of effort is not an actual problem. Intense competition spurs progress far better than having more resources. And in the case of government programs — especially in Europe — more resources are often just wasted.

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.