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How can it be the first European rocket? There’s the ESA! Are you telling me we have all these organisations and none of them have ever launched from their own
by MisterMunchkin 26d ago
How can it be the first European rocket? There’s the ESA! Are you telling me we have all these organisations and none of them have ever launched from their own continent?
- dmaa 26d agoThey launch from Guiana afaik
- echoangle 26d agoFrench Guiana to be exact, which is a different country
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- tristanj 26d agoEdit: Misread
- globular-toast 26d agoThey meant French Guiana is a different country to Guyana... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guianas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guianas
- loeg 26d agoEurope isn't on or remotely near the equator, which is somewhat favorable for launches.
- smitty1e 26d ago> The German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space Center in northern Norway today To speculate, they could be targeting a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
- Achterlangs 26d agoESA launches French Guiana. Since it is cheaper to launch closer to the equator with the extra speed provided by the earth's rotation.
- artisinal 26d agoReally comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator. It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.
- tristanj 26d agoFrench Guiana is not a colony, it is a region of France. People who live there have the same constitutional rights as anyone living in mainland France. It has the same status in France as Alaska does in the US.
- pjc50 26d agoIt's a colony even if it's legally part of France. (Had to check: free movement does apply to Guianans, but in the other direction it's not part of Schengen)
- TFNA 26d agoGuianans tend to get pissed off if outsiders suggest in any way that they are any different as a French region from l'Hexagone (the French mainland). Your banging on about colonies would not be well received there.
- sublimefire 26d agoIreland is not part of Schengen as well for example, it is because that is much harder to practically achieve for folks living on islands.
- peterfirefly 25d ago
- xixixao 26d agoArticle says Western Europe, but Norway is in Northern Europe. “First rocket to launch from Europe outside Russia” would have been perfectly correct.
- setopt 26d agoIn the political sense, «Western Europe» is typically taken to be «NATO Europe», and «Eastern Europe» is «Warsaw Pact Europe». Which is different from a strict geographic definition.
- sublimefire 26d agoThat is also not correct anymore as Northern countries were reallocated to include the Baltics in UN as an example.
- xixixao 25d agoYou’d have to say which NATO. Czechia is in NATO and was in Warsaw pact. If you said: Americans usually incorrectly think of Western Europe as those countries not partially or fully under control of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, then I’d agree with you.
- mytailorisrich 26d agoThe French used to launch their rockets from Algeria. Their first satellite was launched from there. Since then they moved to (French) Guiana. The UK launched from Australia.
- nephihaha 26d agoAnd Russia launches some rockets from Plesetsk, in Europe.
- hypfer 26d ago> How can it be the first European rocket? Not at all. You've missed the "Private" in the headline. And that it apparently is.
- nephihaha 26d agoIt isn't. Plesetsk is in European Russia and was built to prevent overreliance on Baikonur
- jltsiren 26d agoYou are thinking about Vostochny in Russian Far East. Plesetsk was an early ICBM launch site that started doing orbital launches in 1966. It was the busiest spaceport in Soviet times, and the cumulative number of orbital launches from Plesetsk still probably exceeds those from Florida.
- nephihaha 25d agoNo, I'm thinking of Plesetsk because it is in Europe. It is much nearer to Moscow than Baikonur is. Since the USSR broke up, this is even more the case.
- jltsiren 25d agoI meant that Vostochny is the one that is supposed to reduce their reliance on Baikonur, while Plesetsk is more like the Russian equivalent of Vandenberg. During Soviet times, Baikonur was the premium spaceport for all the big high-profile missions. Plesetsk was a boring mundane place, where the military launched spy satellites and things like that every week or so for >20 years.