Comment by misiek08
18 days ago
"It works!" is the only thing that will be visible on web page after hundreds of milions will be burned. I’m observing few of such „unprecedented” cooperation projects from EU funds. A lot of meetings, a lot of managers, plenty of very unskilled people creating mess and few names doing presentations so companies will believe everybody know what are they doing. Same from company side - they need being in those projects to comply with stupid EU rules about being eco.
Ball of mud.
Europe runs its space programme in this way and so far it has pretty good track record. There are more ways to build stuff than the worship of personality.
I don't think Ariane have a "pretty good track record".
Most expensive bug of all time that crashed a whole rocket, because of outdated and wrong software engineering practice.
They dont innovate, looked down on SpaceX, they have bet against Falcon, and lost the bet.
Now they are betting against the Starship.
> Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor
-- ESA chief 2024
https://spacenews.com/europe-aims-to-end-space-access-crisis...
Meanwhile EU members are now launching their public project with SpaceX instead of ESA:
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/spacex-rocket-next-g...
https://apnews.com/article/nasa-spacex-launch-astronauts-pri...
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/IRIDE_p...
If your metric of innovation is the amount of rockets exploded at debuts you shouldn't bring up SpaceX really.
The EU had committed to a number of deep space and scientific instrument programmes spanning decades and seen them through to success. It operates its own GNSS constellation. It is second only to NASA. Calling it a failure is ridiculous.
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> most expensive bug of all time that crashed a whole rocket
being valued at $ 370 million in 1996 that bug was recently dwarved by crowd strikes multi-billion-dollar disaster in 2024
> Europe runs its space programme
Different Europe. The ESA is is not an EU agency so it runs by its own rules, its members include several non-EU countries, it has a non-European "cooperating state" and its funding is direct from member states.
https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Member_States_Co...
Which are the non-member states still? Is that post Brexit UK and Norway (the EEA member)?
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The only thing the European space program has consistently done right is using the metric system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)
Europe honestly had pretty... mid track record for space program.
should i bring up Galileo and how many years it took?
Is Galileo up there or it is just the PDFs and the red tape orbiting?
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