It's not even the US in general, it's SpaceX specifically. Only the US and China have demonstrated reusable rockets, and only SpaceX demonstrated the actual reuse, the cadence and the economy of scale that it brings.

From a sovereignty perspective, does a launch from continental Europe actually matter when Arianespace/CNES/ESA has been launching from France for decades?

Orbital? Maybe not. Sub-orbital and ballistic? Absolutely.

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Yeah, in the same way that as a home owner I’d be “obsessed” with my neighbour if he was showing a predilection towards arson.

I’d love to be able to go a day without having to see whatever the latest stupidity we’ll have to deal with the fallout from is, I really would.

Hackernews is slowly turning into the same primitive social networking shit as X, Threads, insta, Linkedin. Time to get off of it I suppose

Oh we (the non idiots here) know full well what we lost. If Europe has a larger and more substantial science / technology community, that will just mean more trips/job offers in EU for me, so go Europe !

They are - but in cooperation with others. Parts of the Orion capsule of the current Artemis mission program are based on the German ATV, which is a capsule which was developed to supply ISS. On ISS there are German modules like Galileo. German Spacelab was a major component of many Space Shuttle missions. German companies like Zeiss provided optics and laser components for Apollo. To name a few, besides lots of satellites and other things. However after WW2 there were different political decisions, so that Germany won't build its own rockets, but German technology was key to Saturn V and Ariane rockets.

Aside from technology, Germany also got major control centers and mission planning capability in Cologne and Oberpfaffenhofen.

Most components are there, but not the political will to go on a national mission.

one of those bush votes was to ensure he could clean up his own mess.

I'd split it into 2 camps. Elites who realize Europe isn't a unified group or has a military strong enough for defense..

And people who get wet when France says they are going to send soldiers to Ukraine and it never materializes.

The general population has 0 understanding of international relations. It's the United States and China right now. Any other belief comes from someone who has read 0 international relations Realism books.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick”. A Europe that is internally powerful can conduct trade in the fair and liberal way that matches its ideals.

They are right now, but if Japan can do it, and China can do it so can Europe and by the way, so can Australia, New Zealand and Canada they have the abilities they just have to have the will and if they haven’t learned anything recently, they better develop the will. Once again congratulations.

They are more expensive but the figures I have seen are 3x for Ariane 5 and 2x for Ariane 6 (source : https://spacenexus.us/guide/space-launch-cost-comparison).

Then, it depends on what you need to do. A 3x cost if you deploy a strategic constellation is fine. A 3x cost if you want to launch huge payloads for a Mars trip (I know costs were for LEO, just giving an example) is probably uncompetitive.

Cost decreases with scale. Spacex was also wildly expensive, it grew up thanks to government assistance

No, counterintuitively Ariane is non-EU. It launches from South America

Like most "small rocket companies" they'll come to the conclusion that they need bigger rockets to launch bigger payloads. Rockets that compete directly with Ariane 6. With some luck these will be reusable to, making Ariane 6 and ArianeSpace obsolete.

ESA and ArianeSpace will slowly but surely decay into obsolescence.

Ariane is from the ESA, which is an organization under EU. The claim was that "EU is finally decoupling itself from the USA". My point is: the EU already has Ariane, for instance. It decoupled a long time ago.

It's from the European part of South America.

>Especially given that recent history has shown us that we're back to "power" being the only language spoken.

"Power being the only language spoken", never left in the first place in order to get back to it, it's how the world always worked and will always work.

Granted, power wasn't actually the "language spoken", but more accurately it was the stick ensuring the enforcement of the terms agreed within the "language spoken", a lesson as old as time that many in EU forgot after post-USSR collapse and now have to re-learn it, but at a heavy cost and with added interest.

"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", couldn't be more true.

I think the stronger together argument implies good faith co-operation on both sides

This is incorrect, ArianeGroup is mostly french, it's a joint venture between Airbus and Safran.

I'd prefer to use this opportunity to talk about this as a success as well without this America decoupling nonsense doomer loop too.

Does anyone know if folks in Germany are posting about the huge ego and phallus shaped memes for this company doing something that SpaceX and Blue Origin were also doing? I'm guessing not, because the lens is "decoupling" and not "America bad" like so many felt inclined to report when our private companies were successfully launching rockets.

Anyway, congrats to the team at Isar. I like to celebrate these successes around the world as further space exploration, colonization, science, and economic development benefit us as a species and there is a lot of room for a lot of competitors.

I think New Zealand is ahead. RocketLab was the second company in the world after SpaceX to get a privately developed launch vehicle to orbit, back in 2017. They've now had 86 successful launches from their NZ launch site.

That's essentially what they have done for military/defense.

The United States saves the day. France pretends they are in charge with grand speeches.

I was close to a European immigrant and 2 things she was shocked about:

How rich the United States was. Even our poor had more than her upper middle class family had.

How people in the United States do not take 2 hour coffee and cigarette breaks.

As EV’s have shown, I don’t think they’re gonna be ahead for long and long-term the current technology is just a steppingstone because damaging the ozone layer can’t go on forever with the current technique being used something else. Better has to come forward.

> Was it the land that Russia currently controls and Ukraine is very unlikely to retake? There's a spectrum between ideological behavior and pragmatic behavior. If Ukraine gives up this land and achieves peace, maybe it's worth it. I'm not suggesting it definitely is but at least the US is trying to negotiate or find some sort of solution, even if it's not going well.

It wasn't the US's decision to make, certainly not without having talked to Ukraine.

And right now, well, this war will continue until one of them runs out of money. The EU currently appears to consider Ukrainian sovereignty in this war to be in their own national interests, so they will keep funding it. Who will support the Russian economy in the same way?

> Nah Europe will still support it. Nothing will change there. But if you want things to change, we can completely withdraw from NATO, move bases back from Europe where we see fit, and un-sanction Russia while no longer providing support to Ukraine in any fashion and no longer sell weapons to Europe. That would be a disaster for Europe, which is why I tend to think comments like this are either ignorant, or pro-Russia/Iran/China with the intent to further inflame whatever tensions exist.

You, and many like you, really need to stop thinking Trump's behaviour is something that can be easily undone. You write to suggest dissenting voices are pro-China: Trump's actions have already forced many in the EU to consider the USA to be a bigger threat than China.

This isn't us liking China, we think poorly of their human rights record etc., it's just that the USA has fallen that far in our eyes.

Just to make it specific: Which city do you live in? I want you to imagine it getting actually, literally, nuked by French or British missiles in response to the USA doing what Trump keeps saying he'll do to Canada or Greenland.

Actual nukes.

I hope that will stay imagination.

Trump has a lot of levers he could pull that would be de facto acts of war besides annexing allies like he says he wants to. Ordering all the tech companies to stop providing services overnight, even that might do it given current dependencies.

Russia's word has been ironclad each time it's been given to Ukraine previously. It surely would be the same this time.