Themis (European Reusable Rocket) is assembled on launch pad | Hacker News Reader

Themis (European Reusable Rocket) is assembled on launch pad

phys.org

113 pointstheamk104 comments

A few years ago there would have been comments along the lines of "why sink money into this, SpaceX is years ahead, just use their rockets", but I think that the recent events in the US have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)...

This is a terrific illustration of comparative advantage and economies of scale.

If Europe and America could trade with trust, Europe could put these resources into space missions. (Or solar panels. Whatever.) SpaceX, meanwhile, would have more resources with which to scale Starship.

Instead we have inefficient duplication and diseconomies of scale. All so…idk, the Italians stop taking advantage of America...

I disagree. It is good to have more than one design. It is not exact duplication so alternative approaches are taken. We have more than one design if one proves flawed. We avoid creating a monopoly.

We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models. No one would suggest that is a good idea.

Even the Soviet Union did not go to the extreme of having only one design for every possible product.

> It is good to have more than one design

SpaceX has multiple designs generations ahead of anything in Europe in this category. (China is catching up, but it too is retracing Hawthorne's path.)

Themis is cool. But it's duplicating what SpaceX did fifteen to twenty years ago and what China has been working on for ten. Methalox, open cycle gas generator, steel tanks...there aren't any daring design decisions here. And there shouldn't be. This is a solved problem. (Again, that doesn't mean Europe shouldn't be solving it independently. But it's not innovating anything here.)

Consider an alternate universe where NATO isn't in shambles. Europe can use SpaceX for LEO. And in the meantime, it can focus on other designs, other categories. Maybe a different fuel. Maybe a novel engine. Maybe something entirely extra-atmospheric. Maybe it's a breakthrough in satellite design, or habitat science. Instead of replicating Falcon 1/9 and Raptor, there could be a genuinely new design.

We don't get that, because Europe has to secure its launch sovereignty. That is the cost.

> We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models

Mature market. Multiple optima. See my comment on Airbus and Boeing. When you're pathfinding, you want multiple bets. When you're pursuing, R&D benefits from scale.

I think that often theres a difference in ability to put capital to work between the US and europe. Lots of innovative work has happened in Europe, but it often gets bought by US or Asian capital, or gets outcompeted by vastly more resourced US competitors, or just withers on the vine from a lack of investment.

Sabre seemed a really interesting space approach that failed from lack of funding.

> I think that often theres a difference in ability to put capital to work between the US and europe.

It’s because the EU is 27 different countries with different regulations while the US is 1. Some work is being done to fix this but remains to be seen if we can reach a point where we have unified capital markets instead of national ones.

That does not prevent something like this project happening which includes 23 different European countries, and not even through the EU.

The point of the EU is to provide unified markets, and capital flows pretty freely between major European economies (including those outside the EU) so I do not think that is it.

Meanwhile three of those EU member states can't be manage to cooperate on their 6th-generation fighter programs.

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-france-europe-fighte...

That is something that remains outside the EU's remit because it is military and decision lie in the hands of member states.

I was rebutting a claim that differences in regulations preventing capital flows. That is not true in general in our globalised world (capital clearly flows freely between many countries) and certainly not true in the EU.

It is possible that the EU loses somewhat from not having the central budget that the US federal government has which which to back big projects, but, in most cases, the bigger EU states are big enough to back most things (as is the UK) but will not do so. The lack of fiscal centralisation in the EU also affects its financial stability but I do not think that is directly related to this problem.

As for sixth general fighters, a number of smaller economies than Germany alone have or plan their own sixth generation fighters, or have done so (some programmes have merged). Again, a difference in attitude and priorities.

SpaceX was started by someone with a few million dollars and self-funded at the start.

Sabre was always a dead end.

It took 100 million to get to falcon 1, and the company was probably not viable until NASA gave space X the crs1 contract for >1billion...

And where did that initial money come from? Musks sale of PayPal shares, which he got when PayPal acquired his payments company... Would that have happened if he'd started his payments company in Europe? Would Compaq or an equivalent have been interested in paying for zip2, which provided the initial money to found x.com if he'd built zip2 in Europe?

Musk deliberately and intentionally moved to silicon valley, and I think a big part of the reason was almost certainly that the US is more prepared to invest money in these kinds of ventures.

I think it is a difference of attitude. There is a lack of belief in big projects, particularly from the government - especially in the UK and Sabre is British.

You're talking about a different kind of redundancy. This was about parties who don't 100% trust each other.

> We have more than one design if one proves flawed.

One of the parties ends up with the right the design, the other will have a flawed design.

Trust but verify; that's a Russian proverb I'm told.

Verification and ability to verify comes with having some leverage. This brings some leverage to the table.

Absolutely. Healthy Competition helps to spur innovation and value value provided to the customer.

But that's govspace, it's not at all about efficiency or economy, it's a jobs program.

"If everybody would just use Windows, companies and developers wouldn't sink money and effort into the development of operating systems."

No, access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate. It’s not something you can buy.

Even before the Trump debacle, the USA were extremely unreliable when it came to satellite images for exemple. Do you remember the fake images passed as Irak developing weapons of mass destruction? Because I certainly do.

Europe needs their own launcher in the same way it needs its own defence industry. It’s just sad that it took so long for some members to finally realise that provided they actually did.

> access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate

New York isn't "delegating" its space access to California, Texas and Florida. (Same as America never saw itself delegating shipbuilding to our Japanese and Korean allies.)

I'm not arguing Europe isn't acting rationally. Just that this is the cost of strategic independence. Everyone shares a burden of duplication and diseconomies of scale. It really isn't that long ago that NATO members--America included--didn't think that way.

Interestingly, NY and some other states have de-delegated some health collaboration because they can no longer trust the CDC: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

Politics of division will end up with fragmentation. But yes, Europe does need its own space capability as part of its own military capability in order to remain an independent block without undue external pressure. Conversely, that subordinates the independence of countries within the block, which is why things like an "EU military" haven't got off the ground until now.

Yup. If that happens in America between states, it further underlines the argument. We're in a world where soveriegnty must be protected. But in this we lose the peace dividends of comparative advantage and economies of scale.

> Do you remember the fake images passed as Irak developing weapons of mass destruction?

I remember Colin Powell giving a presentation at the UN holding a glass vial of "proof" Irak had WMDs..

What a good thing he didn't drop it, otherwise they would all be "dead"..

You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus. Why should Europeans build their own aircrafts? Today I think a lot of people are happy, that Airbus exists to compensate for the problems that Boeing has. Competition is good and will lead to better solutions in the long run.

While I don't disagree, Airbus's origin was more or less the opposite of that; it was a merger of existing aircraft manufacturers. Both Airbus's creation, and Boeing's merger with McDonnell Douglas _decreased_ competition, and arguably neither should have been allowed.

Not sure about Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, but for the many European aircraft companies that first cooperated under the Airbus name and then (much later) merged into a single company, there wasn't really an alternative (unless you consider bankruptcy an alternative). Even in the late 1960s, when the original A300 was designed, that task was more expensive than any individual European manufacturer could shoulder, and without a new product, they would have quickly faded into irrelevance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%9...

> You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus

You couldn't. Boeing and Airbus have pursued different strategies, both in design and production. There is very little actual duplication between their work. To the extent there is, it's in each de-risking different technologies and then the other, after seeing the results, rapidly catching up.

This is partly a reflection of commercial aviation being a relatively mature market. Both in the pace of required innovation (and regulation). And the fact that the difference between branching out and marching forward is difficult to know ex ante.

Put another way, the next steps in launch vehicles are relatively constrained. The goals aren't particularly unknown, just the path. For aviation, on the other hand, the goals are quite varied.

the US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries. It's one of those things where it's important to have alternatives.

> US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries

They're going after different markets with similar tech (mostly not working, to be honest) or trying different tech. Themis and Prometheus are entirely unoriginal designs. (Which is fine. Their point isn't to be innovative, but to be there, in Europe, where Trump can't touch them.)

There are incredibly cool, novel designs in Europe. But they can't see the light of day because these duplication projects soak up funding. (Again, as they probably must.)

This is simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff. If you know where to look, you'll find instances of it absolutely everywhere, with some spectacular blowups when efficiency prioritization is mistimed and some very boring out-competition failures in the other case.

> simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff

Absolutely. The point is when pursuing a proven technological forefront, there are benefits to being able to focus on efficiency. Moreover, scale expands solution space.

Not always. But high-throughput manufacturing allows SpaceX to pursue both efficiency and resilience in e.g. engine design in a way not possible if you're building engines one at a time. (You always have multiple engines in process, which enables a higher risk tolerance, which enables a higher feedback rate, which allows for faster and more-meaningful iteration.)

I'm not sure if "economies of scale" is the thing here. I think calling it that may confuse people.

Really what produces an advantage is an environment of trust. Having that reduces a lot of friction when it comes to economic activity.

The economy of scale is the mechanism that provides the mutual economic benefit - the environment of trust is the political situation that facilitates economies of scale expanding beyond national borders.

Mmm.

> All so…idk, the Germans stop taking advantage of us…

Other than this part, I thought you had it: comparative advantage makes everyone richer. You don't actually want both parties getting richer when your counterparty appears to have gone mad and might be about to stab you in the face.

Duplication of effort is not an actual problem. Intense competition spurs progress far better than having more resources. And in the case of government programs — especially in Europe — more resources are often just wasted.

> have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)...

It may not actually be that urgent, at least for their own use. A non-expendable Falcon 9 launch costs $70m; an Ariane 6 launch costs 80-100m EUR (for a more capable rocket, especially for GTO). Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters. They're not in drastically different cost realms. The bulk of the cost of most ESA launches would still be the payload, not the launcher.

Also that Falcon 9 cost is up from about $60m a couple of years ago, so you wouldn't necessarily want to bet on it not rising further. And that's list price; in practice SpaceX charges NASA over $100m/launch and "Space Force" over $110m/launch (https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/reusable-rockets-are-h...), so, assuming that as another space agency ESA would be charged similar, Ariane may actually be the _budget option_.

Now, for commercial it's a different story, though really Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive there; even before SpaceX their market was mostly stuff that couldn't go on Russian rockets.

Its not urgent until the US government starts blocking ESA from launching anything unless the EU agrees to some trade deal.

Being independent isn't necessarily about lower cost. Its about having an alternative that you control.

... Wait, how would the US government block ESA from launching stuff? ESA has its own rockets, which launch from its own facility and which are not drastically more expensive than Falcon 9 (this is a _fairly_ recent change; Ariane 5 was far more expensive than 6).

> ESA has its own rockets, which launch from its own facility and which are not drastically more expensive than Falcon 9

ESA's launch cadence does not permit populating a LEO constellation. On this, currently, America has a monopoly. (Soon, I expect, to be shared with China.)

Developing a reusable launch vehicle is not needed for a fast launch cadence. The expendable Soyuz family has had 2006 launches since 1957 [1]. That's one in just over 12 days, and in reality, the cadence has been a lot faster at times (for long, continuous stretches).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launcher...

> a reusable launch vehicle is not needed for a fast launch cadence

You're correct. But ESA isn't developing a mass-manufactured ELV, either. Themis is basically rebuilding Falcon 1, Prometheus a methalox Merlin.

Nothing ESA is doing generates launch independence from America (or China) in respect of LEO constellations or a war in space.

(That said, I think reusable super-heavy launch, e.g. Starship, will render both mass-manufactured ELVs and these Falcon 1/9 siblings obsolete.)

2nd amendment.

How does that help the European Space Agency?

A joke on how Americans use it to solve their problems, even ones studying from the 2nd amendment itself.

ESA has in the recent past used SpaceX rockets to deliver payloads. [0]

ESA now has the ability but my comment was specifically pointing out that ESA absolutely should have the independent ability to launch equipment.

https://www.satellitetoday.com/launch/2024/10/07/spacex-laun...

Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters

Ariane 6 cost $5 billion to develop, more than NASA paid SpaceX for all of HLS development and lunar landing, and has had as many successful launches (2) in its entire 14 month launch history as Falcon 9 has had in the last 2 days. And Falcon 9 is the old, boring, table stakes rocket.

If your goal is actually getting stuff to space then only being able to get ~1/100th the stuff to space does matter quite a lot.

That $5bn is a sunk cost, and Arianespace should be, within reason, able to deliver as many of them as ESA wants. My point is that it's not clear that ESA actually has a huge problem here; an Ariane 6 launch would appear to cost them similar to or less than a Falcon 9 launch does NASA (never mind a Falcon 9 Heavy, for which NASA pays about 200 million a shot; the bigger Ariane 6 variant sits somewhere between the two in role). This is a change from Ariane 5, which really was far more expensive (almost twice the cost).

It's just totally nonsensical to talk about price when Falcon 9 has no competition on price. SpaceX is rationally going to charge the highest price customers will pay. If a launch costs them $20m but no one else can do comparable kg-to-orbit priced lower than $80m (at much lower volume of launches), they will charge $70-80m.

should be, within reason, able to deliver as many of them as ESA wants

Where "within reason" means 1-2% of launches Falcon 9 can do. Again, if Ariane 6 internal costs were $20m and they could do 150 launches/year, you would see actual competition and prices going down, and Jevons paradox with a lot of new launch demand.

As a _launch customer_, it doesn't _really_ matter to ESA what the underlying cost is, only what they are _charged_. For the time being, Ariane 6 isn't drastically more expensive than the list price for the competition, and is, as above, _cheaper than the cost that other space agencies are actually paying for Falcon 9_.

If ESA was actually a commercial launch company, this would be different, but they're not. (Arianespace _is_, kind of, and _it_ should be far more concerned about this).

For practical purposes the number of Ariane 6 launches is gated by demand. Over the long term you'd probably expect it to be 5 to 10 per year, same as Ariane 5 used to be.

> For the time being, Ariane 6 isn't drastically more expensive than the list price for the competition

That's because SpaceX is soaking up its spare capacity with Starlink. I expect once that market is saturated SpaceX's launch prices will begin plummeting, as it seeks to maximise volume through market share.

More critically: SpaceX discounts for volume contracts. And it's the only launch company offering the kind of cadence populating a LEO constellation requires.

Your cheaper cost is leaving out the subsidies paid to ArianeSpace by EU governments.

> "My point is that it's not clear that ESA actually has a huge problem here"

It's not about the ESA as a client and those bespoke science payloads; it's about (mass-produced) European satellite constellations, and similar high-volume, low-cost payloads.

Apples, oranges... Falcon proved new use cases for rockets and with the EU looking for alternative of Starlink, the EU now must cover the same use case as well without Trump in the supply chain.

> Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive

Arianespace is run as a jobs programme and profit centre. It explicitly doesn't even try to compete [1].

So long as Arianespace soaks up European launch budgets, SpaceX's trans-Atlantic primacy is assured.

[1] https://illdefinedspace.substack.com/p/catching-super-heavy-...

> Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters. They're not in drastically different cost realms

SpaceX internal costs are < $20m a launch. There's a huge profit margin.

SpaceX prices have risen because they have effectively no competition in the medium-> heavy launch market, not because they are more expensive to launch than they used to be.

It's a huge gulf.

> Now, for commercial it's a different story, though really Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive there; even before SpaceX their market was mostly stuff that couldn't go on Russian rockets.

This is also not true. Arianespace dominated the commercial market prior to SpaceX. They were doing half a dozen GTO missions a year. Yes it's not dozens and dozens but prior to the dropping of launch costs, expensive GEO satellites launched into GTO was the market.

I'm sorry but this "maybe reusability isn't worth it" is the exact line that ULA and Arianespace have bandied around for a decade and they have lost their entire lunch to a company that can undercut them and still make a healthy profit margin.

We also need to go back to the 1980's of having European computers, operating systems and programming languages.

Not going to happen with the EU.

Depends where geopolitics end up going wrong, more than they are already.

Drastic times call for drastic measures.

I hope you are right.

Because?

(but please refrain yourself for spreading FUT of how awful and autoritarian the EU is)

> Because?

I'm genuinely curious for the formal answer. But the simple one is European institutions seem to be built for consensus and around the assumption of a Pax Americana. They're a cross between a colony and confederation.

If you were rebuilding Europe for strategic autonomy, you'd rejigger several electoral and decision-making systems. (The historic handicap of multiple languages may actually be a case where technology (live translation) solves a social problem.)

EU in practice serves no other function but to deindustrialize Europe and make it entirely dependent on the US, but even more so, China and Russia.

In 2024 European countries paid more to Russia for gas than to Ukraine for aid, and I think this is still the case in 2025. We shut down industry because it's not environmentally friendly and then import from the worst polluters in the world.

If I was China and Russia and I wanted to completely neutralize Europe as a rival there is no better way I could ever imagine to do it than what the EU is doing.

You could say that EU can be fixed, sure, in principle, but we know it won't be fixed. We know it will only get worse because the rot has become systemic.

If we were to objectively consider Europe, and say what could one do to prevent a war between Europe and other powers, there generally are two things. Prevent others from attacking Europe, and prevent Europe from resisting when others attack it. European politicians have chosen the second option. You can see it from how many people are willing to fight, you can see it from Europe's response to Russian aggression. Europe may be stronger than Russia on paper, but it pains me dearly to say that we have already surrendered to Russia.

In 2024 EU gas imports were 19% from Russia, down from 45% before the war with Ukraine, IOW cut down the revenue stream by more than a half.

And EU just decided last week to forbid all Russian gas imports starting Jan 1st 2027, among other things.

I don't think you have your story straight.

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/eu-imports-of-russ...

> EU imports of Russian fossil fuels in third year of invasion surpass financial aid sent to Ukraine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more...

> EU spends more on Russian oil and gas than financial aid to Ukraine – report

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxk454kxz8o

> How the West is helping Russia to fund its war on Ukraine

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/27/europe-imports-more...

> Europe imports more Russian gas, aiding wartime economy, report finds

https://europeannewsroom.com/why-is-europe-still-paying-russ...

> Why is Europe still paying Russia billions for oil and gas?

---

> I don't think you have your story straight.

I do. You don't.

The commitment for 2027 is great, but that is about 3 years later than it should have come, and it's also made without an actual plan to implement it.

If 2024 (19%) is more than the help to Ukraine that means the cut of cash flow to Russia i.e the drop from 45% to 19% (26%) is also more than the help to Ukraine.

> that is about 3 years later than it should have come

We can always wish it would be possible to arbitrarily turn a big faucet closed overnight, the harsh reality is that one can't turn their own economic, industrial, and ultimately social system to a grinding halt as well, which is counterproductive to any effort at fighting this war.

Note that the original plan from 2022 was to cut by two thirds within a year and completely by 2030, so 2027 is 3 years earlier.

You could argue that the mistake was to have 45% of pre-war gas imports coming from a single source... but it's hard to argue that EU is not pulling their weight in this fight given the hole they were in.

China and India is buying all the gas that Europe is not. Russia is doing pretty okay financially. And this helps China further undercut European industry.

Europe dug their own hole, against the advice of others. German diplomats were laughing at Trump in 2019 when he warned them against total dependency on Russian energy. They don't get extra points for creating the conditions for the war and then creating the conditions for its continuation.

I don't see how EU would have any bearing on China's policy to buy gas.

By definition if any money not spent by the EU is somehow compensated by China buying the then-unsold gas then EU decisions regarding spending money on Russian gas don't matter and the whole rhetoric falls on its face.

Germans were laughing at Trump because - however in a position of power he may be - he's a total clown. Everyone knew that the dependency was a problem, way before the war.

Fun fact, the U.S continues importing goods from Russia, including massive amounts of fertilisers, as well as palladium, uranium and plutonium.

But I see we're moving goalposts here, and the discussion is largely unproductive, so I'll disengage.

Trump in 2019 was right that EU should stop buying gas from Russia. German politicians were laughing because they are idiots.

I share your opinions on the EU, sadly. Von Der Leyen and many others did a great job making skeptics of people like us.

However, I disagree that stopping to buy Russian fossil fuels is a great short term goal. It's not like they would ever have left it in the ground and go bankrupt as a consequence. While we buy shale oil and LNG from the US at a premium price, Russia just sells its supply to other countries, which use it to produce our food or manufactured goods. It's making us poorer and weaker but we can pretend our euros aren't buying weapons to kill Ukrainians.

We don't have natural resources, factories, armies, but at least we have the highest horse.

That is a fair point, and likely why we have not stopped buying gas from Russia. What I'm advocating for is not rash moralistic actions, but a course correction. Instead of making industry impossible in Europe and giving us no other choice than to move it to China, we need to make it easier to become independent of China.

Same goes for energy.

Pretty wild claims, but I guess you're entitled to your opinion.

It's factual. Industry is moving out of Europe to China. EU is still dependent on Russian gas. If you think I'm wrong, tell me about what.

---

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/eu-imports-of-russ...

> EU imports of Russian fossil fuels in third year of invasion surpass financial aid sent to Ukraine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more...

> EU spends more on Russian oil and gas than financial aid to Ukraine – report

Oh, I'm well aware how Europe is and has been dependent on Russian fossil fuels. It's not simple to just end it quickly, but the progress is ongoing.

I meant mostly everything else in your comment.

Is European industry not mostly relocating to Asia?

I don't know, how does it relate to the claims in your comment?

> EU in practice serves no other function but to deindustrialize Europe and make it entirely dependent on the US, but even more so, China and Russia.

If EU is doing something, and what it is doing is resulting in the deindustrializing EU and making EU dependent on Russia and China ... that is the entirety of my claim.

You could say that it's not in China's interest to have EU dependent on it, maybe, that is a pretty wild claim, but maybe. But we have seen how dependence on despotic powers has worked out with Russia, and it has not gone swimmingly.

China is also incidentally one of the biggest buyers of Russian gas today. All the gas that Europe no longer buys from Russia goes to China on the cheap so they can further undercut European industry.

Just because industry moves to Asia (not purely european phenomenon), it obviously doesn't mean EU serves no other function. Or that moving industry is EU's goal per se. It's a bit more complicated and I'm sure you're aware, but it's hard to take you seriously because of such "hot takes".

Most of its other functions are completely negated if Europe becomes an effective vassal of foreign powers. You can prevent war by surrendering pre-emptively, but I don't want to surrender pre-emptively.

Because EU is what it is - not a country. There are no EU companies, EU technologies, EU universities etc.

Moreover, EU is a child of US hegemony. It was created because of this hegemony (US was actively helping create EU), it existed because of this hegemony and global order enforced by it, and now there is big chance it will dissolve because hegemony is gone, and with it the world that gave birth to EU.

The other alternative would be to change the nature of EU towards centralization or federation, but no member state will go with it.

Contrary to some claims, EU main problems were not industry or economy, even though they suffered from the same neoliberal virus that destroyed US. Problems always were, and will be, political.

This is just American exceptionalism cope. With the US hegemony circling the drain, there's no end of "well Europe will fall too!" claims going around because how embarrassing for the US if their system was a failure and socialist Europe a success.

I live in Poland, I think membership in EU was highly beneficial to us, and I consider our, and rest of EU countries, reliance on US a huge problem.

I never said "Europe will fall too!", for Europe and EU are not referring to the same thing. This is why discussing these matters with people here is usually pointless, as there is so much misconception floating around about what EU is. EU is set of bureaucratic institutions facilitating cooperation between some countries in Europe. It cannot fall, it will simply stop working. And it cannot create OSes, as suggested in this thread.

As for "socialist Europe" - please. Social democracy, maybe with exception of Nordics, is on decline for quite some time now, although the extent to which Nordics are socialist is debatable as well.

Whatever you want to call what Norway is doing, one thing is certain, it's going poorly.

Isn't SUSE an European OS?

You don’t have to look that far afield - Canonical Software (Ubuntu) is headquartered in London.

Huh. I didn't know they're no longer a South African company.

Mainly yes, but I am not getting laptops at FNAC with SuSE pre-installed and 100% everything working under warranty.

If indeed they are capable of getting it working and can equal or closely match SpX for capability.

I think even SpaceX fans have been waiting for years for others to finally adopt partial reusability, and thus support this effort.

My complaint with Themis had only been that it didn't sound like they were taking it seriously back when it was announced.

Even after all these years, there has only been one non-SpaceX orbital rocket with reusability built-in to the design goals from the start, to actually fly (but not reused, yet), so seeing another one getting closer to that is good.

Edit: Though, IIRC Themis will mainly be doing hop tests in preparation for an orbital design.

I sure wish SpaceX would just open source their designs so that nations around the world can join the space race, we can truly evolve as a whole species and not just as national identities, and we can get on with mining Psyche 16.

That would be a truly revolutionary human endeavour, imho.

Meanwhile, we're lobbing rockets at each other to kill innocents at massive scale, when we could, as an entire species, be building literal cities in the sky.

Nevertheless if Europe starts making progress, I'm sure it'll catch up with the USA and China. Some day. Assuming we don't nuke ourselves over idiocy first.

I know, it's a pipe dream. But a person can dream for the stars in spite of all the hatred that says otherwise.

cities in the sky? With all due respect…your head is in the clouds friend. We can barely keep the earth from warming catastrophically as it is, and you want to what - 5x global emissions? to build cities in the sky, where life is HARDER than on earth?

That’s just nuts. How about we learn how to not screw up the earth first before worrying about cities in the sky. Because i guarantee we’d find a way to trash the next planet really quickly. Humans (as a large species) tend to be great at that. I don’t see other animals trashing the planet. Just us.

I’m just looking forward to better satellites - better weather forecasting, communications, research, etc.

I’m talking about space stations and mining Psyche 16. My head is way, way above the clouds, friend.

The Earth would be far better off if we moved all heavy industrial manufacturing to space and left the Earth to flourish as the only garden we have.

Yeah, it’s a pipe dream. Thats the point. We could do it - we don’t, because we’d rather argue about whose opinion is better, at mass scale.

For history: Arianespace was founded in the first place to launch independent European communication satellites that USA wouldn't launch.

Trade is extremely useful, but certain strategic capabilities are very useful also to have on your own. I personally think it would make sense from Europe's point of view for European companies or consortiums to develop operational stealth aircraft.

Is there a specific reason why this site seems to have so much less visible infrastructure than ESA or NASA?

It's a much much smaller rocket than you see at Kourou or at Kennedy. Kennedy was, let's not forget, built for a vehicle more powerful than the Saturn V. And both to handle the SRBs of Ariane launchers (which basically chuck flying rubble out the back on launch).

The pad infrastructure is reasonably similar to an actual comparative launch site like Kodiak AK.

Thank you, that makes so much sense.

"The first model of the European Space Agency's (ESA) reusable rocket demonstrator Themis is standing at its launch pad in Kiruna, Sweden."

Is Kiruna a good place for this? I read that it's collapsing due to extensive mining for decades.

The Esrange launchpad is more than 50 km from the Kiruna iron mine, which is 4km long, 80m thick and 2km deep.

Any city would be a bad place for a rocket (test) launch facility, 'collapsing' due to mining or not.

Luckily the city is some 44 km drive away from the launch site.

And there's still people living in Kiruna, it's not collapsing but affected still in some shape of form. Heard on some podcast that mining blasts are timed to reduce the disturbance and some buildings (or their inhabitants probably) relocated, IIRC.

afaik they are moving the city step by step. Hasn't the church been moved a few weeks ago?

Yes, on August 20: https://lkab.com/en/press/kiruna-church-has-found-a-new-home....

The launch pad isn't in the town square.

Are they copying Space X or that accusation is reserved for China ?

Only midwits shun copying. It is good way to learn. It is only bad if you lie about authorship.

And also by now it should be clear that if China look at your design and knock out a decent copy, they still did a ton of engineering to make it work.

It's like people forget Foxconn started as a copying operation and went mainstream.

Within rocketry, a lot of accusations of copying against China are just hate. The form of rockets is dictated by physics, and so there are only so many ways to approach the same set of constraints and requirements with similar technologies.

Plus, the exterior form of a rocket is the easy part. The engines, plumbing, control systems, and internal structure are the hard part (and also hard to copy part)

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