You jest, but the Kennedy Space Center is in Florida. Putting the world’s busiest spaceport out of commission might put a damper on future asteroid deflection missions…
Why not invest in a bunch of the smaller companies like Rocket Factory Ausburg, PLD Space, MaiaSpace, HyImpulse, etc? They won’t all be successful, but if just a couple of them are, the competition would put Europe in a much stronger position than if they were to establish Euro-ULA.
It’s wasteful, immediately hazardous to any crews, and eventually (if not also immediately) harmful to the environment with any wreckage and other pollution that may be produced.
Interesting, I interpret “Europe must embrace a cultural shift towards speed and innovation” in almost exactly the opposite way.
Ariane 6 was essentially an outdated design before it even launched. All of the major American and Chinese launch companies are operating or developing reusable rockets. The launch startups which wrote the open letter are some of the only European organizations actively pursuing reusability, something Arianespace has ignored for far too long.
Argonaut will be a multi-role lunar lander capable of delivering up to 1,800 kilograms of cargo to the surface of the Moon.
According to a Phase A/B1 development document published in July 2024, ESA is targeting 2031 for the launch of the first Argonaut mission. The lander is set to launch aboard an ArianeGroup Ariane 64 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre.
I love that we launched a spacecraft with the sole purpose of measuring the positions of as many stars as possible, just because we could. Well done Gaia, and all the teams who worked on it.
Ah, I didn’t realize you were referring exclusively to crewed missions. Yes, you are correct, the first crewed Falcon 9 launch was in 2020. The flew plenty of uncrewed commercial missions prior to that, though.
It seems like crewed European launch vehicles have a similarly slow timeline to reusable European launch vehicles.
I wouldn’t have imagined that nearly a decade later, Falcon 9/Heavy would still be the only reusable orbital launch vehicle. The entire launch industry is playing catch up.
2020 (which is coincidentally the year in wich Falcon 9 became commercially available
Falcon 9 has been flying commercial missions since 2013, no? I think CASSIOPE was the first…