But we just get one still image, taken from what looks like the worst position.
ESA is doing really cool stuff, but they're doing a bad job of convincing people that they're doing cool stuff.
The European (approximate) equivalent, AATSR, had a lot of really nice scientific qualities, but it was missing a blue channel, meaning that the 'true-colour' images it produced always had a blue tint to the clouds. There was a similar problem with the European geostationary satellite imager (SEVIRI) [1].
Scientifically, SEVIRI was incredibly useful (and far in advance of the American equivalent at the time), but the lack of a blue channel meant that it was never really used for those shots that made it onto the news (and neither was AATSR). When you have spent multiple billions on a satellite programme, you generally want the public to see it.
I remember being told at one point that this was considered such an issue that the Europeans would 'never launch a satellite without a blue channel again' - although that might be overstating it a little.
7th graders control your budget.
Those close up shots of the rocket and the massive letters USA plastered everywhere is a textbook example of how to market space related projects.
Remember Juno was also almost launched without a camera as well
Always. Show. The. Rocket.
Modesty is great and all, but this comes across more like "thanks for the taxes, now fuck off".
I'm not a European taxpayer so nobody owes me a video. I'm just perplexed by the attitude of the (I presume) Europeans in this thread. Being proud of the fact that your government doesn't care if you're happy with their use of your taxes is...I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't modesty.
And before anyone (correctly) points this out: Yes, the US government doesn't much care what we think either, though it does a better job of pretending to. But you'd be hard pressed to find an American who will brag about it. And at least NASA releases cool videos.
It's deflection. ESA and ArianeSpace have left a massive strategic hole in Europe's capabilities, in large part due to the arrogance of their leadership.
I haven't met a capable European (and yes, I think I can speak that broadly to this) who couldn't communicate why they'd be good at a job or why a job done was done well. When people say they're eschewing promotion out of humility, it's usually because they don't have anything promotable or are bad communicators.
Or maybe you’ve just been unable to appreciate it for the ones that didn’t promote themselves your way?
I do a really good job, but there’s no reason to make a big deal out of it because that’s what I’m hired for.
I grew up in Europe, so I understand what you’re saying. Constant self promotion is one thing. Knowing when to point out that you have the skills to help or taking credit when it’s due (and callable upon) is another. Most of the people who complained about not being able to do the latter had little more than effort to call on.
I wouldn't even mind if they sucked at things like this if they would actually have the right strategy and do the large things correct. Sadly they are really bad at the large things and the small things.
The ESA is at its core all about cooperation and has to navigate an international landscape very far from the US government. It’s a technocratic agency; it cannot be used for communication purposes by politicians. Their job is to do the work and leave the communication bits to journalists. On one hand I’d like them to do more outreach towards the general population, because history has proven time and time again that you cannot trust journalists for vulgarisation. On the other, I don’t want this to turn into a political circus and funding to fluctuate as political parties get interested or not.
The good side of this is that science gets done reliably, on predictable budgets that span decades and not years, even the unsexy science that would not set crowds on fire. True, it reduces enthusiasm but you cannot have everything.
Yeah but here is the thing. If you systematically exclude journalist. Don't give them any access. Hide everything you are doing and not even provide basic video footage of a engine test, they don't have anything to work with.
And of course that is even more true when Arianespace is flat out hiding damaging information that tax payers should know. And ESA supports them in that.
Major issues with Ariane 5 fairings were hidden from the public and it took a long time until it came out.
Lets face the facts, ESA has constructed a space monopoly and the monopolist is doing everything to hide its failures from the public, not giving journalist access so they can't talk about it. Journalist that are known to ask critical questions are routinely not invited to events.
If that is the kind of society you want to live in, be my guest. But I prefer that we actually have some accountability from our tax pair funded agency and monopolist.
> The good side of this is that science gets done reliably, on predictable budgets that span decades and not years
That's just not really true. ESA has as many project go over budget as anybody else. The Ariane 6 is a massive delayed and has a massively increased budget (and no end in sight). And we could talk about many other projects too.
The idea that ESA is some unpolitical agency that just executes perfectly is what they want you to believe and they downplay all the issues. Journalist that report on these issues have to find the details the hard way. But because space is so uninteresting in Europe there is not much good reporting on it.
Its also not true that ESA is humble and unpolitical. If they have something to brag about they do so pretty relentlessly. Go read ESA and Arianespace comments about SpaceX around 2015-2019, the were basically all over them selfes talking about how much superior they were.
And reticently they have done a lot of political lobbying to increase their budget and pushing for European space flight.
They do all these things, its just less visible to the public because the public cares less then in the US.
Sure, it was poorly worded. I meant from the funding providers’ side. Funding just does not get cut capriciously for political reasons.
> The idea that ESA is some unpolitical agency that just executes perfectly is what they want you to believe and they downplay all the issues. Journalist that report on these issues have to find the details the hard way. But because space is so uninteresting in Europe there is not much good reporting on it.
Yeah, I tend to agree. But it’s not unique to space, the same is true in most fields, even technologies that affect people’s lives daily.
> Its also not true that ESA is humble and unpolitical. If they have something to brag about they do so pretty relentlessly. Go read ESA and Arianespace comments about SpaceX around 2015-2019, the were basically all over them selfes talking about how much superior they were.
Yeah, that one was quite bad. And also childish, because everyone saw what was happening and the fact that they went through so much effort to say that everything was fine was very suspicious.
NASA is directly accountable to the US Congress, both in terms of the appointment of its director and its budget.
ESA is an IGO, and its Director-General is appointed by consensus amongst the member states, and its budget is set by them based on national contributions as well.
Not to mention that most also have their own space agencies (of varying capabilities). Even the EU has EUSPA, separate to, but collaborating with, ESA.
It does. But I also enjoy me rocket videos. Having a nice video instead of a still image would not appreciably move the meter of my bullshit detector.
SpaceX, on the other hand, is building a very polluting business, which IMHO should be forbidden in 2023. But there I would think that the people in the EU are more aware of the problem than in the US.
The US spends four times the amount of tax money per capita.
Yes ESA budget is small compared to NASA but they also do far less things.
And when they do things its not efficient. Ariane 6 for example is a minor upgrade over Ariane 5 with mostly parts that were developed for Ariane 5 ME. And yet somehow it cost will easily pass 5 billion $ and that doesn't include even e new engine. And a lot of cost is also hidden on other balance sheet, a full accounting would be likely more.
That might be about 2x as much as the complete Falcon 9 (+ Falcon Heavy) + Merlin + Re-usability program cost.
So yes, a comparative small budget, but that doesn't actually explain many of the issues.
Well I point out in other places. That's exactly what they said they wanted when they started building it.
Only now where they know they are way off they say 'oh that's never what we actually wanted'.
Europe was successful in getting commercial payloads on their rockets and that helped them finance everything. So a primary goal and justification for Ariane 6 in favor of Ariane ME was exactly this commercial market.
> If the EU wanted cheap, they'd just eat the shit sandwich of using Russian launch vehicles.
That literally exactly what they did. Arianespace launched more Soyuz then anything else.
But that simply wasn't tenable anymore.
So the reality is ESA was eating shit sandwiches until Russia tried to eat Ukraine and got diary. Now they can't handle it anymore.
"working on" is not good enough, most start-ups never succeed. Very few have a fully-tested reusable engine. And the engine has to be in the same class - most start-ups work on miniature rockets, only good to launch a couple tons into space.
Bottomn line is, Europe does not have the intense private investment for this sort of thing, but the work still needs to be done.
> And the engine has to be in the same class - most start-ups work on miniature rockets, only good to launch a couple tons into space.
Read my to level comment, I have a whole list. And I didn't even include smaller engines.
> Bottomn line is, Europe does not have the intense private investment for this sort of thing, but the work still needs to be done.
I didn't say they should do any investing or building engine. What I said is that you can't just say ESA has a smaller budget and that's why they don't have these things.
There is no such thing as "green energy": even if SpaceX only used renewable energy, a) renewables are not zero-carbon and b) renewables are not infinite, so if you use it for SpaceX, you don't use it for something else, and that something else may well be using fossil fuels.
But let's be clear: SpaceX doesn't run 100% on renewable energy. So there's that.
Then, right now it is not launching rockets everyday, but I understand that the goal is to grow a lot. Create a whole new space industry. Just like one plane does not pollute that much on its own, if you take the entire aviation sector, that starts to make a lot.
I guess my point is generally that we are facing huge problems (peak oil, biodiversity collapsing, climate change just joining the party) that will probably destroy society as we know it. I don't think that pushing a lot more with a commercial space business is a good idea.
Reusable rockets are like the 5G for mobile comms: for the same usage, it requires less energy. But 5G will enable much more usage and hence it will use much more energy than 4G. Reusable rockets getting to 10M a launch... well rich people will be able to go have dinner in space, just for fun. That's not sustainable.
> peak oil, biodiversity collapsing, climate change just joining the party
Peak oil isn't a thing.
Rocket launch pads actually are great for biodiversity as it requires a lot of land around it without humans. And animals turns out aren't that bothered by occasional rocket launches. See the high biodiversity around Kennedy Space Center as an example.
Climate change will mostly be decided on other playing fields.
> well rich people will be able to go have dinner in space, just for fun
How about trying not hold back the space industry when that is more then 0.0X% of the the market.
https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-End-Blain-Christophe-eb...
Written by a true expert, Jean-Marc Jancovici. Just check who he is, usually engineers like him, even if they don't like the conclusion (which is that engineers tend to be part of the problem, not the solution).
https://news.yahoo.com/spacexs-debris-spewing-starship-launc...
SpaceX breaks the law all the time.
This is more about ESA culture then European culture in general.
On the other hand, more traditional enterprises, like, say, Mercedes Benz, will be quite cautious with claims about their R&D, until they have their level III autonomous car system actually approved (and even then… don't make too much of a fuzz, as it is still limited, etc…)
Meanwhile Mercedes just brings a product to market that is superior without big fanfare.
(It somewhat boils down to, US firms have something which may be called "anticipatory marketing", which is deemed rather off-limits for European organisations. To the least, you'd paint quite a big bull's eye onto yourself.)
Any basic company can simply throw out some micro-car on the market. These cars are rarely profitable and their production numbers are mostly irrelevant part of the market. People for the most part don't want these cars, and car manufactures don't want to produce them either. The Citroën Ami will never replace actual ICE cars in large numbers and therefore it being affordable doesn't actually matter in the overall transition.
When Tesla talks about an affordable car, they are not talking about some low volume money losing marketing car. They are talking about something that has the capacity to cut directly into the market of a Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla. A car that can be produced in the millions, is actually profitable and most importantly has demand for millions.
That's what it actually takes to make affordable EV scale and to transition an industry where 90 million cars a year are produced to EV.
> (It somewhat boils down to, US firms have something which may be called "anticipatory marketing", which is deemed rather off-limits for European organisations. To the least, you'd paint quite a big bull's eye onto yourself.)
This is just complete nonsense. VW and others have also already talked about their future cars that are gone be cheaper. In fact they have gone much further then Tesla, even showing pictures and announcing prices and so on.
But somehow European regulators have not yet put VW leadership in front of the firing squad.
There is nothing illegal about saying 'we are gone have awesome products in the future'.
P.S: Cheap EV are already mass produced in China at large numbers. Citroën is not even remotely interesting or leading any any way in this. Ironically GM China is in the lead see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not against these small cars. I think they are good and if anything we should encourage more use of them. But its simply not apples-to-apples comparison.
Its just that ESA in particular has that culture.
Have you ever seen a European sports crowd vs an American one?
European crowds are passionate. American crowds are exaggerated.
Nice find - if I could upvote your post I would.
To me (european), I don't like how SpaceX shows off. The technology is cool though, but when I see their kind of communication, to me it sounds like "US marketing".
So yeah... cultural thing maybe.
We're at an inflection point when it comes to space exploration. Ar this rate, future generations will have days of video and documentation of the accomplishments in America, and a footnote along the lines of "Europe did some things, too. Visit the sub-basement of a library in an office building in Paris for more information."
Also at this rate, future generations will have to focus on surviving with much less fossil fuels (we're passed peak oil), in a world that basically wants to kill them due to global warming.
Chances are that days of video of the accomplishments of the generation that actively destroyed their world (while being fully aware of it) won't be their main concern.
The resulting services and sats actually help in any reasonable climate change strategy.
> Not sure who will spend days watching the same rocket takeoff and land :-).
Here is the thing. Anytime can be the first time for somebody. If you don't make an effort to show everything you do, nobody will ever know you exists.
Yes some space obsessed people will watch everything, and that's fine also. But you never get those people if they don't see something first time.
I am European too and I like how transparent SpaceX is, and they don't even have to be. Arianespace literally tried to hide for 1 year that they had major issues with Ariane 5. When asked why it wasn't launching they were basically saying 'everything is ok'. But eventually journalist got wind off the fact that there were major issues in the fairings.
The culture of secrecy and non-transparency has done nothing but harm to European space flight.
Its not barging to show a video of a test fire or a test launch.
Well it's more than you may think (don't take only the fuel for the flight, but consider the whole construction of the thing).
But more importantly, they are making space a business. The first plane was a drop in a bucket, but it enabled modern aviation. If SpaceX hits their target of 10M per flight... rich people will go have lunch in space.
> The resulting services and sats actually help in any reasonable climate change strategy.
What? I very strongly disagree. But I won't elaborate more than you did.
Currently, no its not.
> don't take only the fuel for the flight, but consider the whole construction of the thing
Making them reusable is a huge gain in efficiency.
> What? I very strongly disagree. But I won't elaborate more than you did.
Earth observation sat measure climate change. We measure the atmosphere with sats. We conduct planetary science. Sat imagery is vital when looking at ecosystems like the Amazon. Space based monitoring is valuable for all kinds of application and can increase efficiency of farming, mining, infrastructure and so on. Weather satellites are vital in many way, including preventing harm people. GPS is a vital technology for so many industries. Space based communication brings modernity to many people who don't live close to major infrastructure.
You simply can't separate modern humanity from space.
Granted space isn't anywhere close to the most important, but it does play an important role. Generally energy production, heating, transport and steel/cement are the real issues. And where the overwhelming focus should be.
> If SpaceX hits their target of 10M per flight... rich people will go have lunch in space.
Just like with aviation we need to consider what regulation we want to apply to these things. I am not against regulating these things.
Your attitude of nobody is allowed to show any pride in anything related to fossil fuels and its general bad and shouldn't be done is simply no way to go forward.
Not saying it should not be done at all. Reusable rockets would be nice, if they were used like the non reusable ones (i.e. rarely). But that's not how technology works: if the technology becomes cheaper, we don't use the same amount for cheaper; we use more.
Can you seriously look at SpaceX and think that they just want to send a few rockets per year, for a fraction of the cost?
> Just like with aviation we need to consider what regulation we want to apply to these things.
That's the thing: if you regulate the rockets market such that it does not start polluting orders of magnitudes more, then it is not a viable market.
> Earth observation sat measure climate change. [...] GPS is a vital technology for so many industries.
We did not need SpaceX for that. Compared to Starlink, Copernicus and all the GNSS satellites (GPS, Galileo, Glonass, ...) just don't count. GPS is something like 30 satellites. Starlink wants to send tens of thousands.
And what if a government doesn't make the necessary investment into fiber? You can stand around here saying what everybody should do all you want, but governments don't just magically do it because you want them to. Those people are just fucked and its their problem?
There are also advantage to using lasers as internet backbone.
In summation, if it wasn't need and it was so easy, why to millions of people want it?
Sure, life without TikTok in every ship and airplane is terrible. /s
> To every mining site? Along every farmers field?
Yeah, to me the biggest problem is really not having fiber while I'm visiting the Titanic. I hope Starlink is working on that. /s
> governments don't just magically do it because you want them to. Those people are just fucked and its their problem?
Is that a new kind of US interventionism? "We believe those people deserve to pay a subscription to our national high-speed satellite ISP. We do it to save them." The world loves US interventionism. /s
> There are also advantage to using lasers as internet backbone.
And disadvantages.
That people like you exists on a platform like Hacker News is actually mind blowing.
Then most of the Internet bandwidth is used for videos, not for corporate e-mails. So... not just TikTok, but I suppose you can make the effort to get my point.
> That people like you exists on a platform like Hacker News is actually mind blowing.
You mean software professionals who don't believe that technology will save us and that we should produce more connected crap because we can?
I like good technology, not profitable technology.
I mean software professional that believe the internet isn't an essential tool for progress.
But then I do believe that most modern technology is bad: we went into this loop of building more crap on top of old crap because it is profitable, completely missing the actual problems we are facing as a species.
We don't need to send (rich) people to Mars, we need to save life on Earth. But engineers don't like this, because most of the fun and profitable projects today go in the wrong direction: they assume infinite growth, and no consequences.
But engineers seem to believe that if they don't work hard to help humanity destroy itself, then it means that they have to advocate going back to horses and no Internet. And in the meantime we are going (faster and faster) towards wars and famine - probably for us, quite certainly for our children.
(Rockets are tiny fraction of fossil fuel usage, <1% of aviation industry.)
Have you met a small child?
I mean, it's cool to have some videos. I watched a few SpaceX launches, and I still will watch the next Starship flights. But it's not like I watch every single launch of every single rocket (does SpaceX even make such an event every time?).
Looking at SpaceX streams sometimes feel more like a sporting event than the coverage of a space mission. I mean, is it really necessary to cheer at every successful phase of the launch even though these are pretty much nailed down, that the mission is still underway, and that the hard part (like the landing when it wasn't a routine thing) is up ahead?
For me, NASA is the best. They show the things as they are, without trying to pump up the hype. I mean, rocket launches are maybe the most awe inspiring thing humanity can do, alongside nuclear explosions (imagine nuclear rockets if we ever make them). Some of the most iconic footage from NASA is technical footage, not originally intended for the public, so really, let the thing speak for itself, no need for SpaceX cheerleaders.
But on the pro side: SpaceX was the pioneer with on-screen graphics, including the dynamic timeline displaying, where we are in the flight. I deeply appreciate that, not just for making it easier to mute the lunatics and the clapping. It’s good information design.
I realize that not everyone "gets" how SpaceX "sells" their product but it is super helpful when people see you as a cool, forward thinking, place to work contribute.
Why does it matter?
They don't need to convince you that they're doing "cool stuff", they need to convince the people who want to put up satellites that they're going to offer cheap cost-competitive launch vehicles.
Not realising that would be gross incompetence on their part.
ESA's member states might need to show their publics what they're doing with public money, and they do that, in part, by showing their collaboration with other ESA partners on projects.
SpaceX funding comes from the members of ESA. The member countries are proportionally awarded contracts developing things for ESA in return.
They absolutely need to convince us they're doing "cool stuff".
This is a cultural difference.
This thread is full of people claiming Europeans are not boastful or self-promoting, which is pretty strange to me because the internet is full of Europeans boasting about how much better their countries allegedly are than the US about almost any subject you can think of. Healthcare, public transport, crime, politics, you name it. But you find one topic where US is unquestionably better than Europe (like rocketry), and all of a sudden it's a grave sin to boast about things, and the discussion turns into how much better Europe is at not being boastful.
Not to mention that SpaceX only exists because of corruption at government level that resulted in contracts to SpaceX. Basically friend favours.
IMO it demonstrates the incredibly sad state of space transport technology and technology developmnet in general in Europe (compared to the US).
Just a reminder that SpaceX was basically where ESA is in 2023 two (2) decades ago.
…0 km.
The US has built relatively few metros or trams or even bicycle infrastructure, anything modern and sustainable is not done and not developed. I’d guess the EU has built about 10 times more of these infrastructures in the last 40 years, if not more.
Yes. Another example is when JWST was launched, it should really have been compared to Herschel rather than Hubble.
Besides, what’s there to sell? An experiment SpaceX did back in 2016?
I'm not American and even then it left me with a weird feeling of little man syndrome.
(digging about)
Dr. J. https://youtu.be/bPH8PNlNilY - which leads me back to https://esahubble.org/videos/hubblecast50a/
But they've gone from a fairly charismatic/geeky presenter to white text on pictures with a music background. https://youtu.be/gbz_VRKMrh4
... and so now I watch PBS Space Time with Dr. Matt for the long form science videos from a trusted source.