Varilion wrote:That Europe is falling behind in space is evident to everybody except to the European political leadership... or maybe they see that too, but they have other priorities.
Europe should focus on the things it does well, namely space science. I don't think anybody can compete with SpaceX at the moment, least of all a bureaucratic government program. Hell even Bezos cannot keep up.
Varilion wrote:Here i see two main problems:
1. The overall budget is lower than in the US. I don't know the exact figures, but i remember that space industry employed in EU 1/3 of the people it employs in the US. If we look at the money, the figures are likely to be even more unbalanced. (though, ESA is traditionally more "efficient" than NASA in spending the money)
2. European space industry is a construct of political agreements between the different EU-states, which makes more (politically) difficult pushing reforms to move away from the traditional concepts and foster potentially disruptive private initiatives. There is something ongoing in Germany (the largest country) e.g. Isar Space or RFA, but it has yet to be seen whether this can scale up.
1. Yes, though if you count all the national space agency budgets, it's not THAT far behind. NASA budget is $22.6bn. ESA budget is 6.5bn euros + CNES budget 2.8bn euros + DLR budget 3.8bn euros + ASI budget 2bn euros etc. However the space industry is definitely smaller in Europe.
2. True, although that applies also to the US to a certain extent, where pork barrell programs like SLS/Orion (dubbed the "Senate launch system") are hugely expensive and slow because their primary purpose is to provide benefits to individual states, not to get anything done.
Sandzak wrote:The Russians work already on the Amur rocket which should be in 2026 in operation, a reusable Sojus-rocket is also in discussion.
Russia has a lot of rocket plans that go nowhere. How is this different?