It is a US/Europe difference in attitude that can be seen across all fields.
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.
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.