Comment by brandonagr2
5 days ago
Europe would have to not only build the satellites, but launch them, which rocket program do you think exists in Europe that could do that? The pace of Ariane launches could not accelerate quickly enough
5 days ago
Europe would have to not only build the satellites, but launch them, which rocket program do you think exists in Europe that could do that? The pace of Ariane launches could not accelerate quickly enough
Ariane can't, but then again neither could any non-SpaceX American launch provider.
What's the total funding needed to get a Falcon 9 equivalent, given it's demonstrably possible? Likely about the same as SpaceX actually spent in time and money?
Is it actually possible for Europeans to build a company capable of deploying capital as efficiently as SpaceX? Due to cultural and regulatory factors I suspect they would need 2-3 times as much funding to accomplish the same thing. Where would that capital come from? Private EU capital markets are still too thin. Are governments willing to step up?
European markets could fund it if they wanted to, and so could several governments; the question, as is always the case at this scale, is what else could they invest in instead?
Looking at capital markets, one common thing in the EU is how often our investments go to businesses outside our market, while the current issue with the US is all the money is flowing to anything with "AI" in the prospectus.
When it comes to "yes, but what else could we spend this money on?", I think EU governments may be interested in rockets to the extent they're dual-use military assets, but not much beyond that. We do, after all, also want to rapidly shift a few hundred gigawatts of power supply (mostly for heating and transport, but also electricity) away from fossil fuels and towards something less prone to global geopolitical nonsense like Hormuz.
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