Comment by hypfer
14 hours ago
This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily.
Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.
Does it mean that?
Europe has had a space agency for a while now. So this story isn't "Europeans finally started to launch for space" but a private European company chose to launch from a continental location.
It's funny how we can't be celebrate a European achievement without trying to interpret it into relationship to the US.
> It's funny how we can't be celebrate a European achievement without trying to interpret it into relationship to the US.
It really isn’t funny. The US shat the bed and for now the repercussions are mainly being felt outside the US. When the US realises what it’s lost it’s going to be too late.
Oh we (the non idiots here) know full well what we lost. If Europe has a larger and more substantial science / technology community, that will just mean more trips/job offers in EU for me, so go Europe !
13 replies →
Yes, they've had a space agency, but the only launchers are expensive legacy vehicles.
This launch is a move towards lower cost and more frequent launches, that in the US are provided by SpaceX.
It's not even the US in general, it's SpaceX specifically. Only the US and China have demonstrated reusable rockets, and only SpaceX demonstrated the actual reuse, the cadence and the economy of scale that it brings.
7 replies →
Ariane 5 was the cheapest option available for a long time, now they're a bit behind. But the ESA is now working on reusable rockets too, it seems, with their Themis program.
Have there been other rocket launches from continental Europe?
Britain’s Black Arrow could, but it launched from a RAF base in Australia. Definitely not continental Europe, but part of Europe if you consider it from the Eurovision point of view.
A real shame Britain abandoned their own research.
> Have there been other rocket launches from continental Europe?
Continental Europe? yes. The Russian's Plesetsk Cosmodrome is well within the boundaries of the European continent.
Continental Europe outside of Russian influence? no.
From a sovereignty perspective, does a launch from continental Europe actually matter when Arianespace/CNES/ESA has been launching from France for decades?
13 replies →
Yes, but most of them in the early 1940s.
Orbital? Maybe not. Sub-orbital and ballistic? Absolutely.
7 replies →
> Does it mean that?
When the US government funded SpaceX, it was motivated in no small degree by a desire to not be permanently reliant on a geopolitical wildcard (Russia) for getting astronauts into orbit. Now that the US itself has become a geopolitical wildcard, savvy countries know that they need to seek out alternatives to SpaceX under more stable regimes.
>geopolitical wildcard
How is Russia a wildcard? What unexpected thing do you think Russia has done?
6 replies →
[dead]
Belgian here.
I think Trump definitely pushes allies away much faster than ever anticipated, that's probably the only achievement from the current administration.
The alliance still stands, but it's hard to trust the US when the current president is constantly praising violent dictators and doesn't seem to grasp the concept of laws/rules + tries to blame everyone else + threatens to invade EU countries + the requirement to bribe him with funds/crypto to have "alliance".
You can know a guy by the friends he keeps :)
Fyi. I used to always use US tech, the last year I've done my best to adhere to the "European Souvereign Cloud". My current stack on US providers is down from 300 € / month to 35€ / m. And many are following suite ( it's slowly becoming a requirement for tenders for the governement + cities)
[flagged]
Yeah, in the same way that as a home owner I’d be “obsessed” with my neighbour if he was showing a predilection towards arson.
I’d love to be able to go a day without having to see whatever the latest stupidity we’ll have to deal with the fallout from is, I really would.
10 replies →
>It's because Europe is absolutely obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.
Is this the new cope?
The USA is a Goliath on the world stage. The deranged tweets of your president move global markets and the next time Israel manipulates him into starting another war it might not be Iran, it might be Denmark, or Canada.
People pay close attention to the US not because they want to buy because they basically have to.
Hackernews is slowly turning into the same primitive social networking shit as X, Threads, insta, Linkedin. Time to get off of it I suppose
1 reply →
They started developing this rocket in the late 2010s, way before the current US craziness (or the current level of craziness anyway). Independent access to space is always desirable for countries that can muster the resources, but this is just one of many companies that appeared back then as a response to SpaceX's initial success.
One would think that ze germans would be among the first to be conquering space with all that german engineering.
I don’t think Germany has favorable place for orbital launches.
For any failure you would need to have an ocean in the direction of launch.
Also not all orbits are equal because then you need more fuel etc.
It is silly to say every country has equal opportunity to go to space because space is only 100km up. That’s not how it works.
They are - but in cooperation with others. Parts of the Orion capsule of the current Artemis mission program are based on the German ATV, which is a capsule which was developed to supply ISS. On ISS there are German modules like Galileo. German Spacelab was a major component of many Space Shuttle missions. German companies like Zeiss provided optics and laser components for Apollo. To name a few, besides lots of satellites and other things. However after WW2 there were different political decisions, so that Germany won't build its own rockets, but German technology was key to Saturn V and Ariane rockets.
Aside from technology, Germany also got major control centers and mission planning capability in Cologne and Oberpfaffenhofen.
Most components are there, but not the political will to go on a national mission.
2 replies →
> One would think that ze germans would be among the first to be conquering space
After the horrors of WWII, Europe decided it would rather do things collectively than each country doing its own thing. This resulted in wonderful things like Concorde, fast rail, Airbus, and Ariane. Europe became more than the sum of its parts.
Is this sarcasm or do you still live in the 1980s?
Yeah this is just the effect of SpaceX showcasing "space launch is no longer the realm of government efforts only".
They kicked off the wave of commercial space launch - and now, it reached the EU too.
Eh, you can split us Europeans up into two camps; those who do not want to see the problem and those who couldn't look away.
The second camp saw the craziness when the later Bush was elected a second time.
one of those bush votes was to ensure he could clean up his own mess.
2 replies →
I'd split it into 2 camps. Elites who realize Europe isn't a unified group or has a military strong enough for defense..
And people who get wet when France says they are going to send soldiers to Ukraine and it never materializes.
The general population has 0 understanding of international relations. It's the United States and China right now. Any other belief comes from someone who has read 0 international relations Realism books.
7 replies →
Coupled or uncoupled, an equal relationship between the US and the EU is much healthier. Europe should have an economy, military and industrial capacity similar to the US.
While in the current case I agree it is the path that should be taken, ideally I would prefer efficient relations, where people cooperate rather than having to duplicate everything because they don't trust their neighbor (should I make my bread because the baker might decide to poison me?!).
But having educated people everywhere is hard, so some people, because they don't get how some stuff works, they try to abuse friends and allies and make things worse (inefficient) for everybody in the process.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”. A Europe that is internally powerful can conduct trade in the fair and liberal way that matches its ideals.
Ideally, yes. But when the baker is running around with a red hat renaming lakes, you have to start kneading if you have any sense.
1 reply →
I've always assumed that the reason there aren't many launch sites in Europe because the booster stage falls back to Earth, and generally you want that to be over the sea. People get cross if rockets fall on their houses. If you're using the Earth's axial rotation as a helper that means launching heading east, and in Europe east is pretty much always over land. That's why most spaceports are either by an ocean (USA, Japan) or over a huge area of land no one lives in (Russia).
Not really, the actual issue is delta V, launching near the equator requires less fuel because you are getting all the benefit from Earth's rotation. Mass is almost everything for rocket launches.
Northern launches are done sometimes for high inclination orbits since they reduce the need to maneuver from an equatorial orbit.
The EU already had quite a bit of non-EU spaceflight capability, both in terms of rockets and launch sites.
I think you meant non-US?
Although Ariane's rockets are wildly expensive and uncompetitive compared to SpaceX.
They are more expensive but the figures I have seen are 3x for Ariane 5 and 2x for Ariane 6 (source : https://spacenexus.us/guide/space-launch-cost-comparison).
Then, it depends on what you need to do. A 3x cost if you deploy a strategic constellation is fine. A 3x cost if you want to launch huge payloads for a Mars trip (I know costs were for LEO, just giving an example) is probably uncompetitive.
3 replies →
They are right now, but if Japan can do it, and China can do it so can Europe and by the way, so can Australia, New Zealand and Canada they have the abilities they just have to have the will and if they haven’t learned anything recently, they better develop the will. Once again congratulations.
4 replies →
Cost decreases with scale. Spacex was also wildly expensive, it grew up thanks to government assistance
19 replies →
No, counterintuitively Ariane is non-EU. It launches from South America
5 replies →
I think having more distribution in launch locations and more provider options will ultimately be a net positive in the long run.
I think we are stronger together. European technology has been critical to many important American space missions, and that should continue to be the case.
An ecosystem where we develop things independently is one where everyone loses.
Yes, definitely, but being together by choice instead of by necessity is vastly preferable.
Especially given that recent history has shown us that we're back to "power" being the only language spoken.
__
Rel: The ecosystem thing.
I would challenge that, because if there's one thing where the US has had absurd leverage over the EU (and world, for that matter), then it's tech ecosystems.
A healthy ecosystem would not be owned by SV/US alone.
So right now, we're not really "strong together" but rather weakly dependent. That should be remediated, and decoupling like this is exactly the tool for that.
>Especially given that recent history has shown us that we're back to "power" being the only language spoken.
"Power being the only language spoken", never left in the first place in order to get back to it, it's how the world always worked and will always work.
Granted, power wasn't actually the "language spoken", but more accurately it was the stick ensuring the enforcement of the terms agreed within the "language spoken", a lesson as old as time that many in EU forgot after post-USSR collapse and now have to re-learn it, but at a heavy cost and with added interest.
"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", couldn't be more true.
1 reply →
> I think we are stronger together
That's pretty damn obvious to everyone with a half of brain, yet here we are being pulled apart.
Except its not actually obvious. The US achieved most when they worked mostly by themselves. And the recent explosion in US activity, specially SpaceX is also highly separated from Europe.
There is a very credible argument to be made that excessive cooperation leads to incredibly heavy overly political programs that are completely static and can't adjust because of international agreements.
That doesn't mean working together isn't good but they way they have been has been pretty questionably in many ways (along with a lot of space policy).
I dont think the EU is stronger when they get bullied and undermined by trump, or whichever american president decides to dust off trump's playbook in the future
I think the stronger together argument implies good faith co-operation on both sides
1 reply →
The opinion of american billionaires is driving this.
Are we forgetting about Ariane?
Ariane is an expensive legacy rocket.
Launched from South America, not Europe.
Ariane is from the ESA, which is an organization under EU. The claim was that "EU is finally decoupling itself from the USA". My point is: the EU already has Ariane, for instance. It decoupled a long time ago.
2 replies →
It's from the European part of South America.
This took about eight years of work by a private company (funded by US VC and an ex-SpaceX leader). This wasn't an intentional decision to decouple from the US, if that's what you're implying, but a business decision.
If they haven’t gotten the message yet, they never will congratulations, plan on doing more because you’re gonna have to.
It is indeed a huge success but it also underlines how far ahead the rest of the world is.
I'd honestly rather like to use this opportunity to talk about that this is a success than returning to our regularly scheduled doomer loop.
A rocket launched into orbit from Norway. That's insane progress and worth celebrating.
> That's insane progress and worth celebrating.
A non-reusable launcher that can put small payloads into a Polar orbits only, due to launch site latitude and lack of an orbital bus. It's fairly 1960s stuff.
[flagged]
7 replies →
So what should they do nothing? They have to get started somehow if Japan and China can do it so can Europe, and I think long-term once again, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand won’t be far behind…
I think New Zealand is ahead. RocketLab was the second company in the world after SpaceX to get a privately developed launch vehicle to orbit, back in 2017. They've now had 86 successful launches from their NZ launch site.
That's essentially what they have done for military/defense.
The United States saves the day. France pretends they are in charge with grand speeches.
I was close to a European immigrant and 2 things she was shocked about:
How rich the United States was. Even our poor had more than her upper middle class family had.
How people in the United States do not take 2 hour coffee and cigarette breaks.
3 replies →
only four countries in the world have private/commercial space launch capacity, and SpaceX towers over everyone else so I'd say this is doing pretty alright compared to the rest of the world
As EV’s have shown, I don’t think they’re gonna be ahead for long and long-term the current technology is just a steppingstone because damaging the ozone layer can’t go on forever with the current technique being used something else. Better has to come forward.
Multiple European nations gaining their own independent launch capabilities will merely result in the sinking of ESA and ArianeSpace. Look forward to lots of infighting in the near future.
ESA is going to remain on the mission/payload side. ArianeSpace makes sense as a launch services provider handling everything that's not the rocket. ArianeGroup (the company that actually builds the rockets) will just become the French rocket company that will end up competing with the Italian and German ones.
Like most "small rocket companies" they'll come to the conclusion that they need bigger rockets to launch bigger payloads. Rockets that compete directly with Ariane 6. With some luck these will be reusable to, making Ariane 6 and ArianeSpace obsolete.
ESA and ArianeSpace will slowly but surely decay into obsolescence.
2 replies →
I think being a competitor in a market doesn't mean you're 'decoupling' from it, rather you're on equal footing.
The french always had Ariane??
The Ariane is as much German as it is French. It is considerably Italian too.
This is incorrect, ArianeGroup is mostly french, it's a joint venture between Airbus and Safran.
4 replies →
o/
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]
> Just look at how today the USA tried to hand over land of Ukraine to Putin
Was it the land that Russia currently controls and Ukraine is very unlikely to retake? There's a spectrum between ideological behavior and pragmatic behavior. If Ukraine gives up this land and achieves peace, maybe it's worth it. I'm not suggesting it definitely is but at least the US is trying to negotiate or find some sort of solution, even if it's not going well.
In retrospect the US should have prepared for war and been willing to fight to uphold what was agreed to with Russia but that would have been a hard sell.
> So, no more support to that crazy country.
Nah Europe will still support it. Nothing will change there. But if you want things to change, we can completely withdraw from NATO, move bases back from Europe where we see fit, and un-sanction Russia while no longer providing support to Ukraine in any fashion and no longer sell weapons to Europe. That would be a disaster for Europe, which is why I tend to think comments like this are either ignorant, or pro-Russia/Iran/China with the intent to further inflame whatever tensions exist.
> Was it the land that Russia currently controls and Ukraine is very unlikely to retake? There's a spectrum between ideological behavior and pragmatic behavior. If Ukraine gives up this land and achieves peace, maybe it's worth it. I'm not suggesting it definitely is but at least the US is trying to negotiate or find some sort of solution, even if it's not going well.
It wasn't the US's decision to make, certainly not without having talked to Ukraine.
And right now, well, this war will continue until one of them runs out of money. The EU currently appears to consider Ukrainian sovereignty in this war to be in their own national interests, so they will keep funding it. Who will support the Russian economy in the same way?
> Nah Europe will still support it. Nothing will change there. But if you want things to change, we can completely withdraw from NATO, move bases back from Europe where we see fit, and un-sanction Russia while no longer providing support to Ukraine in any fashion and no longer sell weapons to Europe. That would be a disaster for Europe, which is why I tend to think comments like this are either ignorant, or pro-Russia/Iran/China with the intent to further inflame whatever tensions exist.
You, and many like you, really need to stop thinking Trump's behaviour is something that can be easily undone. You write to suggest dissenting voices are pro-China: Trump's actions have already forced many in the EU to consider the USA to be a bigger threat than China.
This isn't us liking China, we think poorly of their human rights record etc., it's just that the USA has fallen that far in our eyes.
Just to make it specific: Which city do you live in? I want you to imagine it getting actually, literally, nuked by French or British missiles in response to the USA doing what Trump keeps saying he'll do to Canada or Greenland.
Actual nukes.
I hope that will stay imagination.
Trump has a lot of levers he could pull that would be de facto acts of war besides annexing allies like he says he wants to. Ordering all the tech companies to stop providing services overnight, even that might do it given current dependencies.
6 replies →
Russia's word has been ironclad each time it's been given to Ukraine previously. It surely would be the same this time.
7 replies →
Why is this a sign of decoupling? Is any EU technological development decoupling?