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An Anonymous Coward writes:

A German rocket startup seeks to disrupt the European launch industry:

"For our customers, it's a pain to go to Russia, the United States, or India."

Some space entrepreneurs in Germany believe that the European launch industry—which principally consists of the state-backed Arianespace corporation—is ripe for disruption.

The industry, they say, mirrors that of the United States more than a decade ago, before SpaceX emerged onto the scene and began to disrupt the near-monopoly held by United Launch Alliance. SpaceX successfully launched its first Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, and the company followed that with the Falcon 9 booster less than two years later. Since then, it has forced competitors to innovate and put downward pressure on launch prices.

"Europe is where the US launch industry was 15 years ago," said Daniel Metzler, co-founder and chief executive of the Munich-based Isar Aerospace rocket company, in an interview.

If the company's attitude seems a bit brash, seeking to challenge the existing order of the European launch industry, perhaps it is not surprising given the company's advisors. They are led by Bulent Altan, an aerospace engineer who joined SpaceX in 2004 out of Stanford University. Atlan[sic] played a key role in the development of the avionics system that guided the Falcon 1 and later Falcon 9 rockets in flight. And he spent his pre-college years in Germany.

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