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from the government-efficiency-vs-private-enterprise-disruption dept.
Europe is starting to freak out about the launch dominance of SpaceX:
A little more than a week ago, the European Space Agency[(ESA)] announced an initiative to study "future space transportation solutions." Basically, the agency provided about $600,000, each, to three companies—ArianeGroup, Avio, and Rocket Factory Augsburg—to study competitive launch systems from 2030 onward.
[...] there now appears to be increasing concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets will not be competitive in the launch market of the near future. This is important, because while member states of the European Space Agency pay for development of the rockets, after reaching operational status, these launch programs are expected to become self-sufficient by attracting commercial satellite launches to help pay the bills.
Economic ministers in France and Italy have now concluded that the launch market has changed dramatically since 2014, when the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets were first designed. According to a report in Le Figaro newspaper, the ministers believe the ability of these new European rockets to compete for commercial launch contracts has significantly deteriorated since then.
It would seem that ESA's payback plan didn't expect an agile competitor to disrupt the entire market with efficiencies that governments seem unable to match. But, there's more.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet in talks for a place in the UK’s $6.9 billion ‘Project Gigabit’:
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is in talks with the United Kingdom for the company’s Starlink satellite unit to potentially earn funding as a part of the government’s new $6.9 billion internet infrastructure program, CNBC confirmed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 24 2021, @10:15AM (1 child)
> If no European company can compete with SpaceX, that's ok
No. It is not acceptable strategically for a major nation to *not* have a space programme. It's such a big piece of infrastructure - imagine not having any capability to launch weather satellites, or indeed nukes and spy satellites. It just is not practical to go without a space programme.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 24 2021, @02:56PM
What good is a space program?
Sure, we can take any country's space program in the world and point to some kind of activity with modest benefit for the country or for mankind (particularly in the area of technology demonstration projects). But the big problem with each of these space programs is opportunity cost. They're way overpriced for what they do, and they pull skilled people away from more productive employment (particularly in commercial space, which is where the future of space development lies). These are huge strategic deficits.