But how many more decades until ESA finally has a launch vehicle stack with a fully reusable first stage? It’s like theyre still living in the 70s.
Note that NASA also doesn't have one: It only has SpaceX'.
Europe has a fair number of private rocket startups, e.g. Isar, Orbex, RFA ... some have seen government investments. We'll see if/when ESA becomes one of their customers.
Another way of saying this is that SpaceX is a contractor; which means that both NASA and the ESA 'own' the same # of reusable rockets (zero), and have the ability to purchase the same number of reusable rockets from the industry (one, from spaceX).
I guess there’s still a lot of legacy gov backed ones with full sunk cost dynamics in the short term. Although I admittedly don’t have much knowledge of the business side.
All I know if is the one tweet from musk years ago that said 90% savings. But ... musk tweets a lot of bullshit so idk
And it undercut its sellers <https://www.npr.org/2023/10/11/1204264632/amazon-sellers-pri...>
There's no way they're stripping the whole thing down and replacing 30% of parts in that short of a timeframe. Especially given they do it in Florida, and don't bring them back to the factory. So it's hard to say for sure, but the time can give us some sense of what they must be doing.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/a-historic-falcon-9-is...
They could allow SpaceX and the Chinese to compete for the Earth/Mars ship & cycler market, while Europe could step one step further distant. and become the king of ultra-long-haul journeys such as between Jupiter’s moons, the asteroids, etc.
Eventually this could culminate in Europe leading the creation of modern, state of the art new vehicles to run the Grand Tour and go so fast they outrace the Voyagers.
..Somewhere in these paragraphs I totaly forgot to make a good pun about ruling Europa
In terms of "looking far away", Euclid is pretty amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(spacecraft)
It's hard to be anything else but that given the colossal failures of so many so expensive European projects. So much inefficiency and waste just because we can't get our shit together.
We try to be a second USA, but we lack the willpower to do so - we have no clear, democratically backed European leadership (just look into how von der Leyen got into office!), the leadership that we do have is 90% incompetent duds that were shifted off to Brussels because their host countries wanted to get rid of them, the parliament can't even submit own proposals for laws, and the EU barely has any federal tax income so its budget is almost exclusively member state contributions and debt. On top of that, many countries choose to propose highly unpopular laws in Brussels, get them passed there, and blame "the EU" when local voters get enraged.
And I personally don't want us to be a second USA. I don't want that high level of crime and social inequality, low level of social welfare etc. Extreme prices of medical care in the US. Ubiquitous firearms. Here we do care about the climate, about privacy, work-life balance (holidays) and so many other things the US doesn't care about. The US measures everything in money. We don't. Quality of life is not about who produces the most billionaires.
The EU is not a great institution I have to admit but I wouldn't trade it for the US. Here I just go to the doctor when I'm sick and I don't have to even whip out my wallet.
Von der Leyen is not the sharpest tool but EU presidents are chosen to be the least offensive to everyone's national interests, not to be some strongman leader. I'd much rather have her in that position than someone like Trump. We don't have a political system trying to tear itself apart.
We're doing just great and launch capability is a tiny rounding error in the equation of what being in the EU means to citizens. It's like Africa laughing at us because we're so inefficient at producing bananas. Sure if you ignore literally everything else it looks like they're better.
Anyway, there is no such thing as president of the eu.
Except when your state provided healthcare ends up inadequate and you find out there are no other options.
Except when your family member ends up uninsured and you find out insurance is actually tied to employment, just like in the US.
Except when you need dental care which costs as much as in the US, but your salary is 4x lower and taxes 2x higher.
Depends on the location and various factors. It's not universal.
This is simply fiction.
EU is mules better than USA at building infrastructure, cost per mile is 4 to 9 times lower for bridges / roads / tonnels than USA/UK. The financial times has a report on it.
The EU is / has built like 5 record holding tonnels in the past five years, the base tonnel in the alps, the underwater tonnel in scandinavia, etc.
Each of those projects is in the same sort of scale as the much beleaguered Californian rail, or HighSpeed 2 in UK, and is completed 4 times faster and cheaper per mile, with less political in-fighting and sabotage.
I would argue that civil infrastructure is actually one of the most important things for an average joe
https://youtu.be/kc29axOAzRs?si=8YBTIhKqM0jtOoIW
I'm seriously wondering what kind of brainwashing are you reading to think that - and why are you ignorring all the "colossal" successes many of the projects also are.
Maybe cut out on american media a bit?