Taking on SpaceX: Why Germany is building its own spaceport
dw.com
dw.com
This company apparently doesn't even produce orbital rockets: https://www.t-minus.nl/post/barracuda-rocket-at-esa-pac-symp...
Their largest in-development rocket is tiny, like a 1/4th the size of New Shepherd? Nowhere is it mentioned what orbital rocket would be launching from this spaceport. Just back of napkin I can't imagine you'll see any orbital payload delivered from this pad by 2030?
The obvious thing for Europe to do would be have ESA fund a replica of NASA's COTS/CCDev/HLS programs, which have overall delivered stunning return on investment and arguably the only reason China isn't absolutely dominating space launches now. This type of token "spaceport to nowhere" pet project is going to deliver absolutely zilch. Ariane 6 is a dead end and there appears to be no plan forward.
They are committed to Orion service module and have no interest in going back to cargo resupply. Given how close the ISS is to the end. By the time they would have finished a new cargo ship, the station is gone be close to gone.
And they simply don't really have the budget for CCDev. It simply doesn't fit in their budget. And even worse, given how absurdly high the cost for the Ariane 6 are, you would expect 6-10 billion for a crew capsule. And you know the European would go for some dumb space plane idea that's gone cost even more.
There's a tendency by some to describe money paid out by the government for services rendered as "government funding", framed like some sort of unearned charitable gift given by the government to the company which entitles the government to all of the credit in the end. This is an immature point of view that is often the product of motivated reasoning (particularly, motivated by personal dislike of the people/companies involved. There's also some people who thought that capitalism would be trapped on earth with space being the exclusive domain of governments, and are bitter to realize that won't be the case.) Maybe your comment is reacting in part to this tendency, I find myself frustrated with it as well.
Nevertheless, the truth is that SpaceX didn't have the money to develop Falcon 9 until they got that contract. I think themgt is correct to say the creation of contracts like that in Europe could provide European rocket companies the same kind of opportunity to develop technology and prove themselves.
Europe has literally just spend 5 billion $ on a SINGLE rocket. Its not hard to understand why they don't have money for anything else.
SpaceX was saved by COTS because they were able to borrow money against that contract. And it really only included a couple 100 million to develop the initial Falcon 9. The waste majority of the money was for Dragon.
And they could do it that cheaply and fast because they had the legacy of the Falcon 1 and its infrastructure to build off. And that was mostly developed privately.
At the end of the day SpaceX underbid on COTS and actually didn't make money, it only helped them develop things that would make money other ways.
https://maritime-spatial-planning.ec.europa.eu/media/14877
Looks like the latitude will be around 55°N, not exactly ideal for a spaceport.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out because there are other nations participating in ESA that have both land and launch sites that are at higher latitudes than Germany's floating launch site (e.g., [1]).
[1]: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/13/this-arctic-space-c...
A high latitude should work fine for Earth observing satellites that are suited for polar orbits, but I can't help but think it would make more sense for Germany to make a deal with France to share the Guiana Space Centre.
Such projects would work much better if they would instead relyon the strength of govs instead of being a fish trying to follow a bird.
Of course, attempting to do it anyway and failing miserably while transferring the public money into parasites is a very gov thing to do.
So it will happen.
Every weakness can be a strenght depending of the context. Good profiles that would not consider working in high pressure, high risk envs like spacex can be interested in gov projects.
We can survive six months of an environmental impact study.
[1] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Sabotage_Fi...
Can't buy a screw without every single other company that might sell screws filing lawsuits. Repeat this for every part, every service, etc. The only winners are the legal parasite class who are very powerful in Germany. This kind of problem isn't unique to Germany of course, but they exemplify it. And if you try to cut through this BS then German people get spooked; I think due to their history they prefer being bogged down in legal BS and are prone to be suspicious of any attempt to cut through red tape. I don't think this will change until the collective psyche of Germany heals.
And as for the German government paying for everything, not really gone happen. They are already unhappy about what they have to pay for Ariane 6. They never even wanted Ariane 6. And they have been slushing their space budget.
This seems to me to be a news site making to much of some early concept that are not close to be happening.
They have a shrinking economy and a rapidly aging population.
Problem is: a weak Germany is a problem for the current European economic balance.
When?
But lets not pretend the lackluster growth isn't related to issues with energy.
Germany's GDP is estimated at $4.4 trillion for 2023.
In 2008, the high before the crash, it was $3.7 trillion. Inflation adjusted that should be $5.4 trillion just to be even with 2008. They have never recovered.
During the good years of the 1990s for the global economy, 1995 was the peak for Germany, and that high was $2.6 trillion. That is $5.3 trillion today. You can pick most years from the 1990s though and it's a bad outcome inflation adjusted to today.
28 years later and the economy needs to increase by 20% just to catch up to where they were in the mid 1990s.
The reason Germany has passed Japan is because they have been suffering from an even worse economic stagnation the past two decades.
How long can Germany pretend things are fine?
We don't. But having the 3. largest economy still kind of negates that point:
"Germany doesn't have the resources to take on anything."
And I think we still have lots of enthusiastic space nerds as well - we just don't have any big company or project to draw them together, like Space-X or NASA did. All of the german/european projects are pretty fragmented.
What we don't have, is the dedication or the will to focus on space. And granted, there are quite some other problems waiting for solutions.
You have to be really patriotic to not take a 3x raise.
An interesting aspect of European salaries is that the best doesn't get too much more than the median.
This leaves Germany and others with mediocre devs (in general, of course there would be exceptions.)
And smart kids usually get very decent scholarships.
Yeah, those who don't want to leave friends and family behind, just for the money.
And hopefully, your friends feel the same about you.
Uprooting ones existence has to be worth it and money can make up for something, but not everything.
BTW if you know somebody of those, who can decently code, let me know… because I do not find them!!!
"BTW if you know somebody of those, who can decently code, let me know… because I do not find them!!!"
And depending on what you are looking for and what you can offer, I would be willing to relocate, if the conditions are right. Email is in my profile.
Like in a joke about Mongolia, where the population density is so low, some Mongolians never seen another Mongolian.
I'm two years in and yet to see a senior software engineer in real life in Germany.
Is it because of remote work? What about seeing your University friends (or did you take not a SE or CS related field)?
I immigrated to Germany from Israel (and to Israel from Ukraine), so my University friends are all over the world, but not in Germany.
Germany on its own very much could develop its own rocket, the question if just if this is a priority or not. And it isn't.
> Nothing useful is coming out.
They are doing engine test and structural test. Same as pretty much most second generation rocket startups.
And of course they are going 'nowhere' but that has nothing to do with Germany and everything to do with the economics of launch. There is a reason Virgin Orbit went bust. Astra is about to be bust. And a few others will follow soon enough.
The modern debt based economic systems tend to have that characteristic.