Congratulation and great news ! For Europe, but also the world, space access is one of those frontiers we can (and I believe will) see truly opened in my lifetime and I find that truly awesome.
Interestingly there still seems to be a difference in approach between "few launch, expected to go well" in europe and "many launch as trial and error" in the US, with other countries falling somewhere in between those two limits, it's often seen as a threat here of "if we don't do more more often we won't make any progress" but ignoring the economical side (and I think it's fair, given than even with massive subsidies SpaceX is not financially viable until it feed itself through Starlink) it's been a remarkable series of years for new European vehicules launch success.
Also one thing I have to point:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space.
I understand what is meant here, and of course said company need to push that forward, but French Guyana is full french territory, it's not even a foreign territory. It's part of the EU (known as the outermost region of the European Union), EU law applies, it's citizens are EU citizens, EU citizens from other countries can freely move and work and live there ... It's technicaly more EU than Norway.
But less Europe than Norway, sure. Still, on the context of "sovereign access", I would argue both side of that coin have their attributes, and for long term sovereignty I would prefer EU territory instead of "inside-europe-Belarus" for exemple.
Yeah but although the crazies in charge have been very negative toward our continent and my country (Frace), they've also steered very clear away from any seizing claim about any of our territory, despite going against anyone from Canada to Denmark to Spain to UK, to ...
Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).
I'm not saying this in a "we're awesome" way, more like a hard case of the TACO, bullies avoid the ones who punch back. Nothing would be happening in Iran right now if they had not believed in advance Iran would lie down like Venezuela did after losing its leader, though most would say confusing the two situation makes no sense.
Ultimately this is so much lost time and resources for nothing of value, it's so utterly disappointing...
> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).
And the rest of Europe loves you for that! But we're also very worried if that'll all remain so if Le Pen or Mélenchon win next year.
Believe me, I'm even more worried than you. I think Melanchon would actually do more damage, as crazy as it seems, Le Pen is incompetent and a sellout, Melanchon actually believes the BS he vomits.
Macron finished the traditionnal left and right wing parties, which were too large and rotten to the core, but it's left us with a large center and two extremes, it's high time we have the normies left and right come back.
If the extremes are unelectable, the center party should split eventually. They'll find something to disagree about.
As long as they are more terrified of losing to the extremists they'll try to keep it together as long as they can. I hope they don't become too corrupt in the process.
> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur ...
The problem is France used to be the world's superpower, with an economy bigger than the one of the UK. Literally number one.
Then the monarchy fell and all it took was a mere 15 years for that little arrogant man that Napoleon was to get its arse (and France's arse) handed to him in Waterloo in 1815.
15 years to throw away centuries of greatness: what an amazing success the revolutionaries managed to pull. They fucked up so bad they realized it and tried to, peacefully, re-instate monarchy, but it was too late. Charles X was king of France after the Waterloo SNAFU (1824 to 1830) but it was too late to fix things.
It's nice and all, on paper, to want no king. But France is considered to have lost, forever, its place as the world's n 1 superpower when Napoleon lost in Waterloo.
I'm not saying monarchy is better: what I'm saying is that the french revolution coincides with France losing its status as the world's 1st super power.
And France has been arrogant ever since but it went from 2nd to 3rd to 4th to 5th to 6th to now 7th place.
It's a never ending fall.
With the biggest public deficit and the biggest public debt in the entire EU, and the level of primary education going down the drain (university is still doing OK), I fear it's only ever more pain ahead for France.
The country is literally crumbling left and right and communists, siding with islamists (the party of Melenchon are downright commies, who understood that if they were cozy with islamists, they'd get a chance a winning the elections), are planning to destroy the little that's left of France's past grandeur.
If you think those in charge now are negative towards their own country, you haven't seen anything should either the communists (Melenchon) or the national-socialists (Le Pen / Bardella: which are for a national preference with a deeply socialist program) win the next elections.
Besides an aching aircraft carrier France still has the atom bomb and that's it.
No more money. No more education.
France is toast.
P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)
I have no idea what's your point but I have to say I find "The country is [...] siding with islamists" when we were literally the only country willing to defend the freedom to speech and caricature religion a couple years ago against islamism, with Quebec the outlier that sided with us (even though Canada did not).
Overall: I don't think any country should be on top. I'm glad France is not number one, and I hope it remains strong but never get in that position again. Part of why I love the EU is that no one, not even us or germany, is strong enough to fully impose its will without concession. Some would disagree with that, but they clearly don't know their history. So ... I'm not sure what your point is, but I think I disagree with it.
> P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)
I wander how "national-socialist" sounds in other European languages, and whether it might have some history of referring to fascist movements. Say, what would the Germans call someone like that? Nationalsozialistische? I don't remember if there is any history about someone who called themselves that being a fascist...
Yeah, "when have national-socialists ever been fascist!" is all I read in GP's post after I got to that part. It's just a brain crash for me (I'm German)
I think it's ridiculous to write that much without realizing the most obvious thing that happened, that France had its birth rate drop first and very quickly, meaning that they lost their demographic advantage against the rest of Europe.
Am no expert at French history, but this feels like cherry-picking to me of what happened to France.
From what I read, one of the biggest reasons (besides the defeat at Waterloo) for the downfall of France to Britain was that in the 1700’s, France had wild speculation in the colonies in the Americas, specifically, in the Mississippi Company. When the bubble started collapsing, the Prime Minister at the time (John Law), put a lot of the French treasury into trying to support that bubble, but it collapsed anyway. Now the French government was relatively cash poor, which eventually led to losing a lot of its colonies to Britain, a great deal of unrest in France and the French Revolution.
And I am no history expert, so am unsure of this myself, but in my humble opinion, the idea that monarchy is why France lost its place in the world doesn’t seem like a major factor.
> salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start
No offense to France, I don't really care one way or another, but didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine? Where are those troops? Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).
So I would recommend making sure to inform yourself properly rather than assuming what you read (or thought you read) is correct
> Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).
But as you said, they're NOT EU, not in an official military alliance with France. If you cannot see the difference between the two situation, I can't make it any clearer for you.
If you're saying "we should do the same for those that are out that for those that are in", what you are saying is "being in has no purpose, why take the commitment". I believe your point of view is as wrong as can be.
> The situation in Ukraine, which has been under invasion by Russian troops for the past two years, was deteriorating. The war was getting bogged down. "In any case, in the coming year, I'm going to have to send guys to Odesa," said the president before a handful of guests. [1]
This was 2+ years ago and in the years since Russia has captured even more territory and is now bombarding Kyiv. And still no French troops.
Well, you'll notice how Russia just ignored what Macron said and proceeded with their attempted conquest of Ukraine anyway. Because it's just "game theory". It's just "tit for tat".
You have events completly backward, Russia was already invading when Macron said it. If you can't even get years in the right order you're not really arguing in good faith.
The point is that Russia didn't just turn around and go home when Macron threatened to send French troops to Ukraine. Because everyone knew they weren't actually going to do it. And they didn't.
No, it’s a very strong indicator that a peace deal will never be signed until unconditional surrender. Because concerns about NATO troops in Ukraine is main reason why Russia started this.
Another and more immediate concern is that anything which contains subcomponents/subsystems or parts from US origin companies runs into ITAR and MTCR [1] issues with the US federal government. There's a number of very complex European origin final aviation/aerospace industry products which are laden with US-origin components. I wonder about exactly how "non-US" this Isar rocket is.
I would put it as a much greater likelihood that the US would decide to mess with export-control permits for various subsystems than a theoretical scenario where they begin intercepting western European flagged cargo ships on the way from Europe to French Guiana.
Agreed, the moment we allowed MBDA to put some american component in our (French) missiles made with european allies (Scalp, Meteor), the US blocked our sales to Egypt because they wanted to sell their own instead, using ITAR, forcing us to fix it for the french version.
The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.
> The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.
I'm actually surprised anyone ever thought it was not a military thing.
Maybe I phrased it wrong, it's not my native language ? I meant it "it's not just a military restriction thing when they think there is military danger, it's an economic thing for when they can take advantage over a seller, and who the buyer is doesn't even matter".
I mean it's expected behaviour in one sense but in another it's becoming a bigger geopolitical risk to rely on the US for defence components/technology in the current world, the risk always existed, it's just shifted more one way.
There are a whole bunch of military suppliers across Europe who are in the same boat as MBDA.
Simply put, the US as an ally is less predictable than previously and that has knock-on effects across every sphere.
I think Canada might recognize that it needs to be a much faster process than anyone expected. Europe is getting some pretty strong signals and should be accelerating the process. Ukraine is obviously already in a full war footing to accelerate as fast as they can. They are pulling Europe along simply because the U.S. has abandoned them and walked away from almost every promise they ever made.
How utterly stupid any individual action is will be a matter of discussion for decades. But the pace has moved towards urgent for at least half a dozen prominent countries.
Regularly, yes. On a lot of these sorts of products, nothing happens without governments making deals first. Mostly because governments have a need to make sure they get weapons too, not just money for the components they make.
Perhaps should be described as "sale is forbidden by default, but deals are common".
This goes 100% for either completed weapons, or components that can be directly used as a weapon, then you have "dual-use", and the less directly it's a weapon, the more free you are to do what you want.
Can you name any examples? European countries and the EU as a whole don't have an equivalent of the US's ITAR 'See-Through' rule, which lets the US control the usage of a system that has any US components.
I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government. It has been done within Europe, but only for major components, such as Germany's blocking at one point of sales to Saudi Arabia.
But this is the one-component-is-the-weapon, with everything going in one direction version of such a rule. An F35 has 300,000 components from 19 countries, so you can imagine what a maze the agreements for that one are.
It's also not just about the weapons and the danger they pose. It's also about jobs. Know-how (both spreading and restricting know-how). And even the traditional "synergy" (you've designed helicopter blah, hence you make radio component so-and-so, so how about you manufacture NATO standard blah radios and antennas) and the occasional monopoly (it's kind of secret but there aren't many companies that can make the obvious alloy needed for the trust vectoring to name one obvious thing)
Our side is NATO, and we make weapons that are designed to push the global integrated worldview and human rights ("America and it's allies") that we espouse as an alliance. And this view permeates all weapons. For NATO guns, one, you'll never get ridiculous ammo stores (that would enable you to eliminate a population for example), we all work on these weapons together, design them together, and if you try to use your own ammo, everything will fail. Most NATO weapons are defensive. You aim a NATO weapon at a (small) target, it finds that target and either kills it or it disables itself and falls to the ground, essentially intact. Russian weapons are the total opposite: they're meant to kill and if they can't kill their target, they'll just kill whatever and whoever's nearby. Sometimes up to the point they kill the weapon's operators. They will fire "cheap ammo" and literally come with instructions on how to make it. They are meant to kill on a very large scale, without precision and they are most definitely not safe to use. This philosophical difference applies to everything from machine guns to nuclear weapons.
A quick Google search will find you plenty of European legislation. And you should look at those laws like the Belgian laws here, like they were a company "Values" document. That is how the EU/Belgium (and other countries) react "by default", but specific treaties explicitly create exceptions to those rules between specific parties.
So like this: exporting guns and ammo is certainly not something any country allows their companies to do, but most/all countries make specific exceptions in treaties.
This just happens to have the advantage that it makes it extremely easy for politicians to deceive voters about weapons. "Belgian law says it's illegal to export weapons". 100% technically true, and totally misdirects people into believing Belgium doesn't export weapons, which is absolutely false.
Meanwhile, Belgium exports ~50 million euros worth of weapons. But Belgium is just an example, it's not like the Netherlands or France or (definitely) UK, or the EU as a whole are different.
You missed the point. The example asked for was this:
"I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government."
That would be something like "Belgium says the USA can't sell F-35s to Israel because the wings are Belgian-made" similar to how the USA prevents ASML from selling their machines to China.
Oh that's what you want. In the clusterfuck with the Turkey involuntary withdrawal from the F35 program half the treaties were renegotiated (you see, can't have any Turk produce weapons unless he's a "genius", that would not be fair. In other news: the Turkish definition of genius is mostly being the son in law of Erdogan [1])
I believe this agreement is part of the restructuring after that cluster... Note that the agreement is both about production and buying. [2]
"Finland has required extensive domestic participation, with industrial cooperation valued at a minimum of 30 percent of the contract price of procuring 64 F-35A fighters. Under the agreement, Finnish firms will produce the F-35’s forward fuselage structures, including components intended for export aircraft. The agreement also includes ..."
As to how the EU is involved: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus... (ie. that's where you go to ask for loans to start a factory for making F35 components, they have a page listing the deals ... somewhere). Note that this is one of the EU institutions that isn't in the budget (well, the loans aren't). They're not spending tax money to make those loans, they're printing money to make those loans.
So the Finnish government is making this deal, including details on export (and this is obviously weapons exports).
Things like Wassenaar Arrangement and MTCR(that applies to a lot of hobby stuffs I'm interested in) are multinational and global. The US implementation is the most painful, but they're like non-Linux unices, sameish in concept and not like first-worlders get free passes.
(And these regs aren't complete nonsense; the technologies regulated by these are useful for guided munitions. It just so happens missile technologies are fully commoditized by now and also happens to be immensely useful for totally peaceful purposes too)
ITAR and EAR were built to keep U.S. military and dual-use technology from strengthening countries that could use it against the United States or its allies, like Europe
In theory the monroe doctrine, as it was originally written, requires the USA to remain neutral on existing colonies. It only prohibits the expansion of European colonies in the Americas.
Indeed. The interpretation that served as a justification for US interventionism came almost a century later (the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904).
In its original form, the Monroe doctrine declared attempts by European monarchies to reconquer the newly independent Spanish states to be an unfriendly act toward the US. It did not declare US domination over them, as it's commonly misunderstood nowadays.
French Guyana is occupied territory. That's pretty clear. And so it should be deoccupied and the locals will decide whether to use their land as "sovereign' launch port by Europeans.
It's a new world. He who has the biggest guns makes the rules.
I don't like it, but in the Caribbean [probably throughout the world] these days, you really are dealing with the raw realities of power in a way you didn't have to previously.
I doubt the EU has the stomach to confront Trump. And French Guiana is not Africa, there will be no China coming to save them.
French people should be occupied by Guyanans who have no historic connection to France. Apparently that makes sense to some people when it's the other way around.
> I understand what is meant here, and of course said company need to push that forward, but French Guyana is full french territory, it's not even a foreign territory.
Does French Guyana have a usable space rocket? Cause if not then you are completely missing the point of what "space access" means here. It's not about a spot from where to start the rockets. It's about being able to build them. No matter French Guyana or Norway or central Berlin.
And that's obvious to everybody including yourself, so why you opened the French-nationalist angle here with lots of angry messages with all sorts of politics is unclear to everybody watching.
1. Who is "they"? Isar Aerospace and Arianespace are distinct entities.
2. Isar Aerospace is the first fully private European company (a startup) to do this. Arianespace and the Ariane rockets have heavy state/ESA involvement.
3. It is the first launch to orbit from geographically European soil. French Guiana is politically part of France, but geographically obviously part of South America.
4. Why would everyone have to launch from the same place, in your esteemed opinion? Why are some US payloads launched from California, some from Florida, and soon some from Texas and Louisiana?
5. Norway is a lot closer to the rest of Europe than French Guiana is.
6. Why was SpaceX newsworthy, particularly on a startup-centric site, when NASA already exists?
If that's correct, then yeah, I struggle to find much to be upset about with this list. $106M federal loan against what they've built feels, I don't know, about correct for a telecom. Light even. The tax abatement stuff sounds gross but not surprising.
(There are other forms of subsidy than this list would show, though! So, yeah, always going to be an argument.)
> Incidentally, the early investment for Isar came from Bülent Altan, the Turkish ex-SpaceX guy who was in charge of the guidance system for Falcon-1, Falcon-9 and Dragon. [0]
It turns out that Altan was an angel investor in Isar, and then co-founded VC firm Alpine Space Ventures [1] and continued to invest in Isar, among other space ventures in Europe.
Congrats to Isar Aerospace. If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans and I hope Isar would get strong support from the Bavarian state to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX.
Agreed, but do you think either of the two federal/state governments would even have enough support material available, whether in the form of capital or otherwise (i.e. contracts), to give to Isar Aerospace that would enable them to compete with (at current valuation) a giant like SpaceX?
Bavaria is one of the most richest (if not the most) state in Germany. By GDP alone it's the 7th largest economy in Europe (https://www.vbw.com/int/About-us/Facts-about-Bavaria/index.j...). Of course they have money to support Isar and they should do it to diversify their economy and break the heavy dependency on auto manufacturers.
(As a Bavarian,) I’m acutely aware of the state’s economy – but my point is that SpaceX has an even bigger economy behind it, if the two were to actually be compared or compete.
Good point re/ depending on auto makers, though. That also applies to all of Germany…
Bigger economy, yes by about 10x. But despite the spectacle, SpaceX's actual expenses have been around 0.3-0.4% of German GDP in recent years.
It's priorities rather than absolute costs that matter here. Germany could absolutely do all of SpaceX as almost a rounding error, but probably has better things for that money to get spent on.
>If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans
If that is true, then only because the company doesn't immediately have to fight Arianespace. It is France that has the strongest existing know-how and longest history in rockets, going further back than Arianespace. The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist.
> The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist.
And yet, all currently existing rocket designs capable of reaching (and staying in) orbit can trace their design back to the Aggregat 4 and the engineers (and slave labour) that built it.
There’s a huge difference between know how and the execution. What has France been doing since WWII? If they have the know how, shouldn’t they be at the same level as US now?
Meanwhile Germany had to deal with partition, reunification and now the biggest economy in Europe and also build an economic empire without firing a single shot. That’s why I said Germans would be the only nation that can actually execute the know how into being a frontier. Maybe France can actually learn a thing or two from the Germans on how to build an empire even after losing two world wars
Congrats to Isar but I think you don't understand the scale difference here and the immensity of what it would take to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX. The orders of magnitude of launch efficiency are... starting to become staggering.
Isar is a good fallback for sovereignty and national defense! But, if Germany wants to compete with SpaceX in earnest, they will need to re-orient a large portion of their national economy around it. They are raising something like $100 billion for their launch complex in LA currently.
The media has been struggling on how to word this. Danish media tried labeling it as "the first orbital launch from Europe. Which is wrong, because the Plesetsk Cosmodrome exists. It's also not the first orbital launch from the EU, because Norway isn't in the EU. Using "from western Europe" sound like your trying to hard to make it special.
"First commercial space company to successfully deliver satellites into orbit, from the European continent" is probably the most correct title while remaining fairly interesting.
That's open question for humanity. I respect both sides of it but I am little more pro to residences in other planets as we are on tech breakthrough on limitation of Earth. Now, surviving means occupying other planets.
However, these are just my thoughts you can have different.
We still have a good few thousand years until we make the Earth anywhere close to as inhospitable as the second best planet in the Solar System - and probably much more than that before we run out of space on Earth.
It makes far more sense to colonize the Arctic, the Gobi desert, the peaks of the tallest mountains, and similar places here on Earth before even contemplating the colonization of Mars. Let's first have a 10M-strong self-sustaining megacity at the South Pole before contemplating absurd projects like a Mars colony.
I have different take on this. We already shown significant decline in Fertility rate of whole world. Its right now 2.2 against nearly 5 in 1950s till 1970. 2.1 is replacement only. So, we are sorted there from occupying Glaciers,Mountains, etc.
Moreover, Average age of many countries are increasing. That might need support in near future. Migration is filling up that gap in Western world.
As per current prediction world population will peak around 2080s and then decline.
Problem is that decline. Since, Governments are working on selling futures (e.g. Bonds). We need new frontier to make things exciting for new generations up ahead.
People aren't making more children because they largely can't afford to, either in actual resources, or in time spent. And, unlike in a rural community, children don't have any "return on investment" - plus, you generally have to raise them alone even when they're no longer toddlers, rather than relying on an entire community to do it together.
There's no great mystery, and a colony on Mars will not change this even one iota.
> because they largely can't afford to, either in actual resources, or in time spent
But that's absolutely not true. People are so wealthy right now that they can afford practically an unlimited amount of children. The avoidance of having children is almost entirely shaped by the cultural environment and not economic environment.
> relying on an entire community to do it together
I am not sure that it ever was a case. "Relying on an entire community" to raise children generally meant that children were raised mostly by themselves.
> The avoidance of having children is almost entirely shaped by the cultural environment and not economic environment.
Cultural factors are certainly a part of it, but probably mostly in the sense that we are (rightfully, I believe) far less willing to let children die young or get maimed. But economic factors are a huge thing; I don't know where you live that you thing young people "can afford practically an unlimited number of children", but in most of Europe and the USA it is in fact impossible for the bottom 50+% of young couples to even support themselves, not to mention a child, on a single income. And it's also very hard to raise a child 0-4 in a city while working full time+.
> "Relying on an entire community" to raise children generally meant that children were raised mostly by themselves.
No. Children, historically, after they became capable of roaming around, were raised by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings etc. Even when they were away from adults, they'd be roaming near the village in groups with older children.
> we are (rightfully, I believe) far less willing to let children die young or get maimed.
I don't think it matters at all. Of course, we are, but there is a huge gap between "not let children die young or get maimed" and what is happening with child raising now.
> but in most of Europe and the USA
bottom 50+% of young couples would have zero problems to support even 20 children per couple. How do I know it? Because in other parts of the world other people easily support like 5+ kids on 10+ times less amount of resources than this bottom 50% of young couples in the Europe and the USA have. So it is purely cultural phenomenon.
> were raised by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings etc.
No, they (generally) weren't raised that way. Historically, "raised by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings etc" mean that they were like 5% of the time "raising by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings", and other 95% of the time raising by themselves (and maybe by neighbor's dog, best case scenario)
> Even when they were away from adults, they'd be roaming near the village in groups with older children.
I mean right now there is zero problems to raise 20 children per couple this way in the cities. Except for the cultural perception.
Apart from a gamma-ray burst, what do you imagine could happen to the Earth to make it as inhospitable as Mars?
Asteroid hits wouldn't come even close. The worse disease imaginable would not make the air as permanently dangerous to life as Mars' atmosphere is. So what exactly would motivate this move?
> These milestones are necessary to advancement of human race as we need new planets to occupy.
We can't even positively terraform Earth to stop the climate crisis here. Why does anyone think we need to be terraforming elsewhere? Just terraform here!!! Make the planet we are on more hospitable to human life!
It's not like we're running out of space, and the global population is about to start dropping.
I tend to share that position, but there's one counter argument that's not without merit at all: too much to lose. Even the worst climate change outcome would be less bad than the outcome of climate change plus some botched radical fix attempt could be.
Mars on the other hand, what's the worst that could happen? Someone writing the Coca Cola logotype across the red?
Thank you for your correction. That has been a nice addition to my German geography. It looks like the people of Munich really enjoy their river in a way we can't enjoy ours in the UK, due to pollution.
For anyone interested in private space flight: Wild Wild Space documentary. Also a commentary about startups in general.
Separately, I've been wondering how uneven human progress is. I think we have come a long way in electronics (relays to vacuum tubes to transistor to … to an M5 chip) but in some other domains, like moving objects through space, we are basically mostly reliant on thrust generated by burning fuel (EV's are a genuine advance, but mostly due to battery tech).
Congratulations to those who have worked so hard to make this happen. I wish you continued success. It is great that they have realized both mission targets on their second flight attempt.
I think the more options there are for access to space, the more likely we are as a species to launch useful payloads that will help us understand how we fit in and how we can better manage our own situation. It is disconcerting to see the night sky fill with constellations of satellites but there is hope that they will be used for productive purposes.
Many Americans are in the middle of the death throes of empire the world is moving on and as an American. That’s fine with me Lake Ontario forever ha.ha.ha…
As an American, would say more than half our country actually agrees with you. Trumps approval rating has fallen to 39% while 58% disapprove. Yeah, a lot of us in the US are in just as much amazement as the rest of the world at the crazy and petty actions he takes.
So we’re just bidding our time, waiting until the midterm elections to weaken the right, and then afterwards, we’ll just be counting the days until he’s out of office. Hopefully he’ll be replaced with someone who is at least halfway competent - it amazes us how almost everything the touches gets completely screwed up
And i as an average European just want to say - we feel with you and all the others that are suffering through this. I don't know either what I could or would do if my own government went this route. I hope your institutions and the people's resilience will overcome this dark chapter of American history and build a better foundation on top.
>I hope your institutions and the people's resilience will overcome this dark chapter of American history and build a better foundation on top.
I hope we can scrape it all back to the bedrock foundations of our country before we rebuild anything. I don't want any foundation built on top of this festering layer of bullshit. I'm afraid we will still have foundation problems in the future if we don't examine the reasons why it failed this time and set the rebuilt country up with one less failure mode.
Let's do this once. As they say where I'm from "There's only two ways to do anything - do it right or do it over."
Thanks, it’s been a real trial, but we can feel the momentum shifting - when Trump is truly let loose, he’s his own worst enemy. And agreed, hope our institutions hold up too:)
> Trumps approval rating has fallen to 39% while 58% disapprove.
> Hopefully he’ll be replaced with someone who is at least halfway competent
That's the point. You've vote for this guy TWICE. So probably when we talk about 58% disapprove, those 58% disapprove him not because of what he's doing, but because he's doing it to little and to incompetently.
It is scary that you want to replace him with another Trump, but "at least halfway competent". Oh boy!
?
Don’t think I was implying I wanted to replace him with another far-right candidate, just someone who is competent in general.
But do agree that we did all voted for him twice, so saying that maybe this is actually what it means to be an American could hold some truth. Still, don’t think so, he’s clearly one of, or the most divisive person in modern American history. It seems like most people here either love him or hate him with every fiber of their being.
Literally every campaign promise he's went back on. So, "Saying that maybe this is actually what it means to be an American could hold some truth" I don't really think is accurate lol
I know a lot of folks who voted for the man, almost all of them would love for a competent alternative. Unfortunately, in the last election, neither were competent, so a lot of it was a coin toss.
Ah this is true too (seeing as I didn’t vote for him, it doesn’t bother me that he’s done the opposite of his campaign promises).
But as for competent alternatives during last election, would think a young, vibrant, thoughtful Kamala Harris would have done a better job - Still, if I’m being honest, I was not a big fan of hers even though I would have voted for her (was out of state during the last election and voting got too complicated). So, I can understand if this turned off voters.
… although, if you were referring to Biden, then yeah, truly neither were competent choices.
> Don’t think I was implying I wanted to replace him with another far-right candidate, just someone who is competent in general.
Maybe you are not. But what about other 58%? In the end, you have elected him twice, and it's not like the guy was pretending to be the other person. Trump did exactly what everyone have expected him to do, if only incompetently and ineffectively.
more than half is pretty unlikely. about a third is. the rest dont care or actively support trump
the election results speak for themselves. Trump got more votes than he did in 2016 - americans by and large saw his shitshow and decided they wanted more
But the impact of an AFD win in that Bundesland would be terrible for the whole country. A bit long (45min) but this video from Simplicissimus goes into it in details: https://youtu.be/N2b1y9GAF48?si=1_L80z1PTXENkXy2
Why would it influence the voters in Saxony-Anhalt? The voters are mainly voting AfD because all the other old parties have failed them miserably since the reunification and they don't have any other alternative, because voting for the same parties expecting a different result/future would be insanity.
The east has never been economically very strong, it used to be huge feudal-style farms and a bit of high-tech industry (planes, optics, trains, electronics in the 1930s). Not too different from now. Then there was the GDR which made things much worse.
It's not really West Germany that caused the weak economy of the East Germany. The handling of reunification did suck, but you can't just will a strong industrial base into existence neither.
I would say they never got the stability to build a strong economic foundation. During Prussian times the port cities like Danzig and Köngisberg flourished and attracted the capital of eastern Prussia and after the WWII, they had to deal with the oppression from the soviets. The Soviets took whatever they can from the Eastern Germany and they just had to build everything from the scratch, unlike the west that got help from the other western countries like US/Marshal plan. Also when the Germany was partitioned whatever industrial base remained in the east moved to west or southern Germany because they didn’t wanted to be under socialism.
Even to this day the western German, especially the older ones considers the Eastern Germans as a second class citizens and there hasn’t been any significant investment in Eastern part to build an industrial base (except for in Berlin and its suburbs) by any government even though the west payed a tax (solidarity) especially for that.
> there hasn’t been any significant investment in Eastern part to build an industrial base (except for in Berlin and its suburbs)
Dresden is not a Berlin suburb. When it comes to investment in semiconductor industry, Dresden has likely seen more than the entire rest of Germany together.
Congratulation and great news ! For Europe, but also the world, space access is one of those frontiers we can (and I believe will) see truly opened in my lifetime and I find that truly awesome.
Interestingly there still seems to be a difference in approach between "few launch, expected to go well" in europe and "many launch as trial and error" in the US, with other countries falling somewhere in between those two limits, it's often seen as a threat here of "if we don't do more more often we won't make any progress" but ignoring the economical side (and I think it's fair, given than even with massive subsidies SpaceX is not financially viable until it feed itself through Starlink) it's been a remarkable series of years for new European vehicules launch success.
Also one thing I have to point:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space.
I understand what is meant here, and of course said company need to push that forward, but French Guyana is full french territory, it's not even a foreign territory. It's part of the EU (known as the outermost region of the European Union), EU law applies, it's citizens are EU citizens, EU citizens from other countries can freely move and work and live there ... It's technicaly more EU than Norway.
But less Europe than Norway, sure. Still, on the context of "sovereign access", I would argue both side of that coin have their attributes, and for long term sovereignty I would prefer EU territory instead of "inside-europe-Belarus" for exemple.
French Guyana is in South America and our Burger friends have reinstated the Monroe doctrine.
Yeah but although the crazies in charge have been very negative toward our continent and my country (Frace), they've also steered very clear away from any seizing claim about any of our territory, despite going against anyone from Canada to Denmark to Spain to UK, to ...
Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).
I'm not saying this in a "we're awesome" way, more like a hard case of the TACO, bullies avoid the ones who punch back. Nothing would be happening in Iran right now if they had not believed in advance Iran would lie down like Venezuela did after losing its leader, though most would say confusing the two situation makes no sense.
Ultimately this is so much lost time and resources for nothing of value, it's so utterly disappointing...
Who is "(Frace)" and what are you talking about?
You all need to watch actions more than what people say.
> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).
And the rest of Europe loves you for that! But we're also very worried if that'll all remain so if Le Pen or Mélenchon win next year.
Believe me, I'm even more worried than you. I think Melanchon would actually do more damage, as crazy as it seems, Le Pen is incompetent and a sellout, Melanchon actually believes the BS he vomits.
Macron finished the traditionnal left and right wing parties, which were too large and rotten to the core, but it's left us with a large center and two extremes, it's high time we have the normies left and right come back.
If the extremes are unelectable, the center party should split eventually. They'll find something to disagree about.
As long as they are more terrified of losing to the extremists they'll try to keep it together as long as they can. I hope they don't become too corrupt in the process.
If Mélenchon wins it will evolve to an even stronger stance against imperialism. He is labeled "anti-american"
...Against US imperialism anyway. His credentials when it comes to other empires isn't spotless.
The imperialism Europe suffers from in reality is not American and he's entirely on board with that.
> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur ...
The problem is France used to be the world's superpower, with an economy bigger than the one of the UK. Literally number one.
Then the monarchy fell and all it took was a mere 15 years for that little arrogant man that Napoleon was to get its arse (and France's arse) handed to him in Waterloo in 1815.
15 years to throw away centuries of greatness: what an amazing success the revolutionaries managed to pull. They fucked up so bad they realized it and tried to, peacefully, re-instate monarchy, but it was too late. Charles X was king of France after the Waterloo SNAFU (1824 to 1830) but it was too late to fix things.
It's nice and all, on paper, to want no king. But France is considered to have lost, forever, its place as the world's n 1 superpower when Napoleon lost in Waterloo.
I'm not saying monarchy is better: what I'm saying is that the french revolution coincides with France losing its status as the world's 1st super power.
And France has been arrogant ever since but it went from 2nd to 3rd to 4th to 5th to 6th to now 7th place.
It's a never ending fall.
With the biggest public deficit and the biggest public debt in the entire EU, and the level of primary education going down the drain (university is still doing OK), I fear it's only ever more pain ahead for France.
The country is literally crumbling left and right and communists, siding with islamists (the party of Melenchon are downright commies, who understood that if they were cozy with islamists, they'd get a chance a winning the elections), are planning to destroy the little that's left of France's past grandeur.
If you think those in charge now are negative towards their own country, you haven't seen anything should either the communists (Melenchon) or the national-socialists (Le Pen / Bardella: which are for a national preference with a deeply socialist program) win the next elections.
Besides an aching aircraft carrier France still has the atom bomb and that's it.
No more money. No more education.
France is toast.
P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)
I have no idea what's your point but I have to say I find "The country is [...] siding with islamists" when we were literally the only country willing to defend the freedom to speech and caricature religion a couple years ago against islamism, with Quebec the outlier that sided with us (even though Canada did not).
Overall: I don't think any country should be on top. I'm glad France is not number one, and I hope it remains strong but never get in that position again. Part of why I love the EU is that no one, not even us or germany, is strong enough to fully impose its will without concession. Some would disagree with that, but they clearly don't know their history. So ... I'm not sure what your point is, but I think I disagree with it.
People who think everything is a zero sum game are mathematically destined to lose. Trump is finding that out in record time.
> Trump is finding that out in record time.
Given his age, I think any record would be in slowness, not quickness.
> P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)
I wander how "national-socialist" sounds in other European languages, and whether it might have some history of referring to fascist movements. Say, what would the Germans call someone like that? Nationalsozialistische? I don't remember if there is any history about someone who called themselves that being a fascist...
Yeah, "when have national-socialists ever been fascist!" is all I read in GP's post after I got to that part. It's just a brain crash for me (I'm German)
I think it's ridiculous to write that much without realizing the most obvious thing that happened, that France had its birth rate drop first and very quickly, meaning that they lost their demographic advantage against the rest of Europe.
> 15 years to throw away centuries of greatness
Great for whom, exactly?
Am no expert at French history, but this feels like cherry-picking to me of what happened to France. From what I read, one of the biggest reasons (besides the defeat at Waterloo) for the downfall of France to Britain was that in the 1700’s, France had wild speculation in the colonies in the Americas, specifically, in the Mississippi Company. When the bubble started collapsing, the Prime Minister at the time (John Law), put a lot of the French treasury into trying to support that bubble, but it collapsed anyway. Now the French government was relatively cash poor, which eventually led to losing a lot of its colonies to Britain, a great deal of unrest in France and the French Revolution.
And I am no history expert, so am unsure of this myself, but in my humble opinion, the idea that monarchy is why France lost its place in the world doesn’t seem like a major factor.
> salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start
No offense to France, I don't really care one way or another, but didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine? Where are those troops? Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).
France says a lot of things.
> didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine?
No he did not, he said he refused to rule it out: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/french-preside...
So I would recommend making sure to inform yourself properly rather than assuming what you read (or thought you read) is correct
> Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).
But as you said, they're NOT EU, not in an official military alliance with France. If you cannot see the difference between the two situation, I can't make it any clearer for you.
If you're saying "we should do the same for those that are out that for those that are in", what you are saying is "being in has no purpose, why take the commitment". I believe your point of view is as wrong as can be.
> The situation in Ukraine, which has been under invasion by Russian troops for the past two years, was deteriorating. The war was getting bogged down. "In any case, in the coming year, I'm going to have to send guys to Odesa," said the president before a handful of guests. [1]
This was 2+ years ago and in the years since Russia has captured even more territory and is now bombarding Kyiv. And still no French troops.
Again, France says a lot of things.
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/03/14/war-in...
Read up on game theory. This was just tit for tat. At that time Russia openly contemplated invading EU countries.
Well, you'll notice how Russia just ignored what Macron said and proceeded with their attempted conquest of Ukraine anyway. Because it's just "game theory". It's just "tit for tat".
Everyone knows France says a lot of things.
You have events completly backward, Russia was already invading when Macron said it. If you can't even get years in the right order you're not really arguing in good faith.
The point is that Russia didn't just turn around and go home when Macron threatened to send French troops to Ukraine. Because everyone knew they weren't actually going to do it. And they didn't.
Did you notice they also haven't invaded other countries so far? And that France now supports Ukraine's long range strikes?
You're bad at noticing the tits for each tat.
> didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine?
AFAIK, he said he didn’t rule out doing that while the war was ongoing (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/27/europe/france-macron-troo...), and he signed a declaration of intent to do that if a peace deal with Russia is made (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17zee20qpzo)
Neither are what you imply he said.
> he signed a declaration of intent to do that if a peace deal with Russia is made
Interesting. Thanks for letting me know a Ukraine-Russia peace deal will never be signed.
That’s a pretty childish take on a serious subject.
No, it’s a very strong indicator that a peace deal will never be signed until unconditional surrender. Because concerns about NATO troops in Ukraine is main reason why Russia started this.
Claimed reason.
If Russia is so afraid, perhaps they would be open to a peace deal guaranteed by NATO troops stationed on their ground?
That's literally what they don't want... so how does what you said make sense?
Putin said this, but he says a lot of things which are not true.
Regardless, his sucessor may be more relaxed. Especially considering how badly it went even without Ukraine having NATO membership.
Another and more immediate concern is that anything which contains subcomponents/subsystems or parts from US origin companies runs into ITAR and MTCR [1] issues with the US federal government. There's a number of very complex European origin final aviation/aerospace industry products which are laden with US-origin components. I wonder about exactly how "non-US" this Isar rocket is.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Reg...
I would put it as a much greater likelihood that the US would decide to mess with export-control permits for various subsystems than a theoretical scenario where they begin intercepting western European flagged cargo ships on the way from Europe to French Guiana.
Agreed, the moment we allowed MBDA to put some american component in our (French) missiles made with european allies (Scalp, Meteor), the US blocked our sales to Egypt because they wanted to sell their own instead, using ITAR, forcing us to fix it for the french version.
The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.
> The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.
I'm actually surprised anyone ever thought it was not a military thing.
Maybe I phrased it wrong, it's not my native language ? I meant it "it's not just a military restriction thing when they think there is military danger, it's an economic thing for when they can take advantage over a seller, and who the buyer is doesn't even matter".
I mean it's expected behaviour in one sense but in another it's becoming a bigger geopolitical risk to rely on the US for defence components/technology in the current world, the risk always existed, it's just shifted more one way.
There are a whole bunch of military suppliers across Europe who are in the same boat as MBDA.
Simply put, the US as an ally is less predictable than previously and that has knock-on effects across every sphere.
The European and US weapons industry is heavily intertwined because of the cold war.
In hindsight the whole world should have planned for the "what if America goes Nazi" eventuality.
It's going to take time to unwind that and it's going to be a slow process (unless they do something so utterly stupid they make it a fast process).
I think Canada might recognize that it needs to be a much faster process than anyone expected. Europe is getting some pretty strong signals and should be accelerating the process. Ukraine is obviously already in a full war footing to accelerate as fast as they can. They are pulling Europe along simply because the U.S. has abandoned them and walked away from almost every promise they ever made.
How utterly stupid any individual action is will be a matter of discussion for decades. But the pace has moved towards urgent for at least half a dozen prominent countries.
US military products are also full of European parts.
Does Europe prevent the sale of US products based on that though?
We could if we wanted to. We just don’t have to behave like the biggest bully in the world in every geopolitical context.
Regularly, yes. On a lot of these sorts of products, nothing happens without governments making deals first. Mostly because governments have a need to make sure they get weapons too, not just money for the components they make.
Perhaps should be described as "sale is forbidden by default, but deals are common".
This goes 100% for either completed weapons, or components that can be directly used as a weapon, then you have "dual-use", and the less directly it's a weapon, the more free you are to do what you want.
Can you name any examples? European countries and the EU as a whole don't have an equivalent of the US's ITAR 'See-Through' rule, which lets the US control the usage of a system that has any US components.
I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government. It has been done within Europe, but only for major components, such as Germany's blocking at one point of sales to Saudi Arabia.
The trivial example is the rules about selling weapons directly, so as a very simple example of this you could take:
https://www.brusselstimes.com/153970/wallonia-faces-new-chal...
But this is the one-component-is-the-weapon, with everything going in one direction version of such a rule. An F35 has 300,000 components from 19 countries, so you can imagine what a maze the agreements for that one are.
It's also not just about the weapons and the danger they pose. It's also about jobs. Know-how (both spreading and restricting know-how). And even the traditional "synergy" (you've designed helicopter blah, hence you make radio component so-and-so, so how about you manufacture NATO standard blah radios and antennas) and the occasional monopoly (it's kind of secret but there aren't many companies that can make the obvious alloy needed for the trust vectoring to name one obvious thing)
Our side is NATO, and we make weapons that are designed to push the global integrated worldview and human rights ("America and it's allies") that we espouse as an alliance. And this view permeates all weapons. For NATO guns, one, you'll never get ridiculous ammo stores (that would enable you to eliminate a population for example), we all work on these weapons together, design them together, and if you try to use your own ammo, everything will fail. Most NATO weapons are defensive. You aim a NATO weapon at a (small) target, it finds that target and either kills it or it disables itself and falls to the ground, essentially intact. Russian weapons are the total opposite: they're meant to kill and if they can't kill their target, they'll just kill whatever and whoever's nearby. Sometimes up to the point they kill the weapon's operators. They will fire "cheap ammo" and literally come with instructions on how to make it. They are meant to kill on a very large scale, without precision and they are most definitely not safe to use. This philosophical difference applies to everything from machine guns to nuclear weapons.
Your link is about limiting the sales of Belgian weapons on the basis of Belgian legislation.
A quick Google search will find you plenty of European legislation. And you should look at those laws like the Belgian laws here, like they were a company "Values" document. That is how the EU/Belgium (and other countries) react "by default", but specific treaties explicitly create exceptions to those rules between specific parties.
So like this: exporting guns and ammo is certainly not something any country allows their companies to do, but most/all countries make specific exceptions in treaties.
This just happens to have the advantage that it makes it extremely easy for politicians to deceive voters about weapons. "Belgian law says it's illegal to export weapons". 100% technically true, and totally misdirects people into believing Belgium doesn't export weapons, which is absolutely false.
Meanwhile, Belgium exports ~50 million euros worth of weapons. But Belgium is just an example, it's not like the Netherlands or France or (definitely) UK, or the EU as a whole are different.
You missed the point. The example asked for was this:
"I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government."
That would be something like "Belgium says the USA can't sell F-35s to Israel because the wings are Belgian-made" similar to how the USA prevents ASML from selling their machines to China.
Oh that's what you want. In the clusterfuck with the Turkey involuntary withdrawal from the F35 program half the treaties were renegotiated (you see, can't have any Turk produce weapons unless he's a "genius", that would not be fair. In other news: the Turkish definition of genius is mostly being the son in law of Erdogan [1])
I believe this agreement is part of the restructuring after that cluster... Note that the agreement is both about production and buying. [2]
"Finland has required extensive domestic participation, with industrial cooperation valued at a minimum of 30 percent of the contract price of procuring 64 F-35A fighters. Under the agreement, Finnish firms will produce the F-35’s forward fuselage structures, including components intended for export aircraft. The agreement also includes ..."
As to how the EU is involved: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus... (ie. that's where you go to ask for loans to start a factory for making F35 components, they have a page listing the deals ... somewhere). Note that this is one of the EU institutions that isn't in the budget (well, the loans aren't). They're not spending tax money to make those loans, they're printing money to make those loans.
So the Finnish government is making this deal, including details on export (and this is obviously weapons exports).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel%C3%A7uk_Bayraktar
[2] https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/finland-leading-ma...
Things like Wassenaar Arrangement and MTCR(that applies to a lot of hobby stuffs I'm interested in) are multinational and global. The US implementation is the most painful, but they're like non-Linux unices, sameish in concept and not like first-worlders get free passes.
(And these regs aren't complete nonsense; the technologies regulated by these are useful for guided munitions. It just so happens missile technologies are fully commoditized by now and also happens to be immensely useful for totally peaceful purposes too)
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassenaar_Arrangement
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Reg...
ITAR and EAR were built to keep U.S. military and dual-use technology from strengthening countries that could use it against the United States or its allies, like Europe
In theory the monroe doctrine, as it was originally written, requires the USA to remain neutral on existing colonies. It only prohibits the expansion of European colonies in the Americas.
Indeed. The interpretation that served as a justification for US interventionism came almost a century later (the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904).
In its original form, the Monroe doctrine declared attempts by European monarchies to reconquer the newly independent Spanish states to be an unfriendly act toward the US. It did not declare US domination over them, as it's commonly misunderstood nowadays.
Did you just compare Belarus and Norway now?
Is Inside-Europe-Norway not better then Belarus? I would consider us (norway) a stable and good partner to the EU.
Give us 25 years and we will join EU if it still exists:)
No, what you say is quite literally my argument; that the "Europe" is not the argument I value by itself for sovereignty
French Guyana is occupied territory. That's pretty clear. And so it should be deoccupied and the locals will decide whether to use their land as "sovereign' launch port by Europeans.
The population rejected more autonomy with a large majority (>70 %) in the last referundum.
It's not France. The locals like that France gives them goodies so they vote for more goodies and France gives more goodies so they vote accordingly.
So you are opposed to self-determination. Glad we cleared that up.
Who then gets to decide? You?
>Who then gets to decide? You?
It's a new world. He who has the biggest guns makes the rules.
I don't like it, but in the Caribbean [probably throughout the world] these days, you really are dealing with the raw realities of power in a way you didn't have to previously.
I doubt the EU has the stomach to confront Trump. And French Guiana is not Africa, there will be no China coming to save them.
I doubt that HN user yostrovs is Trump.
> I doubt the EU has the stomach to confront Trump.
Given what we did on short notice for Greenland, I think we would be willing (not eager, but willing) to have a hot war.
Says who ? Not the people who live there and not the people of France and not the UN, so who cares about your random opinion on the internet
Should Europe also be controlled only by its indigenous population then?
(Don't actually answer that I don't want to start a big off topic discussion, just saying if we want to be logically consistent...)
French people should be occupied by Guyanans who have no historic connection to France. Apparently that makes sense to some people when it's the other way around.
Isn't Europe controlled by indigenous population already?
> > Europe now has sovereign access to space.
> I understand what is meant here, and of course said company need to push that forward, but French Guyana is full french territory, it's not even a foreign territory.
Does French Guyana have a usable space rocket? Cause if not then you are completely missing the point of what "space access" means here. It's not about a spot from where to start the rockets. It's about being able to build them. No matter French Guyana or Norway or central Berlin.
And that's obvious to everybody including yourself, so why you opened the French-nationalist angle here with lots of angry messages with all sorts of politics is unclear to everybody watching.
> Does French Guyana have a usable space rocket?
Yes: the Ariane rockets. "French Guyana" is part of France, which is part of the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Guiana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_(rocket_family)
Ok, then why don't they launch from Norway and why is the article considered news even though the whole European package already exists?
1. Who is "they"? Isar Aerospace and Arianespace are distinct entities.
2. Isar Aerospace is the first fully private European company (a startup) to do this. Arianespace and the Ariane rockets have heavy state/ESA involvement.
3. It is the first launch to orbit from geographically European soil. French Guiana is politically part of France, but geographically obviously part of South America.
4. Why would everyone have to launch from the same place, in your esteemed opinion? Why are some US payloads launched from California, some from Florida, and soon some from Texas and Louisiana?
5. Norway is a lot closer to the rest of Europe than French Guiana is.
6. Why was SpaceX newsworthy, particularly on a startup-centric site, when NASA already exists?
>massive subsidies
Misinformation
I was curious, so I checked. I don't know if this is a reputable source: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/space-explor...
If that's correct, then yeah, I struggle to find much to be upset about with this list. $106M federal loan against what they've built feels, I don't know, about correct for a telecom. Light even. The tax abatement stuff sounds gross but not surprising.
(There are other forms of subsidy than this list would show, though! So, yeah, always going to be an argument.)
SpaceX has hadn’t any subsidies in a long time and has had less in subsidies than Ariane or Isra, so what are you criticizing?
>"I would prefer EU territory instead of "inside-europe-Belarus" for exemple."
Unless Great Orange or his successor/s would start having ideas
It might interest folks to learn:
> Incidentally, the early investment for Isar came from Bülent Altan, the Turkish ex-SpaceX guy who was in charge of the guidance system for Falcon-1, Falcon-9 and Dragon. [0]
It turns out that Altan was an angel investor in Isar, and then co-founded VC firm Alpine Space Ventures [1] and continued to invest in Isar, among other space ventures in Europe.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49583528
[1] https://alpinespace.vc/
Congrats to Isar Aerospace. If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans and I hope Isar would get strong support from the Bavarian state to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX.
Agreed, but do you think either of the two federal/state governments would even have enough support material available, whether in the form of capital or otherwise (i.e. contracts), to give to Isar Aerospace that would enable them to compete with (at current valuation) a giant like SpaceX?
Bavaria is one of the most richest (if not the most) state in Germany. By GDP alone it's the 7th largest economy in Europe (https://www.vbw.com/int/About-us/Facts-about-Bavaria/index.j...). Of course they have money to support Isar and they should do it to diversify their economy and break the heavy dependency on auto manufacturers.
(As a Bavarian,) I’m acutely aware of the state’s economy – but my point is that SpaceX has an even bigger economy behind it, if the two were to actually be compared or compete.
Good point re/ depending on auto makers, though. That also applies to all of Germany…
Bigger economy, yes by about 10x. But despite the spectacle, SpaceX's actual expenses have been around 0.3-0.4% of German GDP in recent years.
It's priorities rather than absolute costs that matter here. Germany could absolutely do all of SpaceX as almost a rounding error, but probably has better things for that money to get spent on.
> Isar Aerospace that would enable them to compete with (at current valuation) a giant like SpaceX?
Compete, sure. But disregard SpaceX's valuation, that's driven by Musk's cult of personality rather than business fundamentals.
> If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans
I apologise for the tactlessness, but it just made me think of Tom Lehrer's lyrics about Wernher von Braun:
> "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun.
>If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans
If that is true, then only because the company doesn't immediately have to fight Arianespace. It is France that has the strongest existing know-how and longest history in rockets, going further back than Arianespace. The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist.
> The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist.
And yet, all currently existing rocket designs capable of reaching (and staying in) orbit can trace their design back to the Aggregat 4 and the engineers (and slave labour) that built it.
There’s a huge difference between know how and the execution. What has France been doing since WWII? If they have the know how, shouldn’t they be at the same level as US now?
Meanwhile Germany had to deal with partition, reunification and now the biggest economy in Europe and also build an economic empire without firing a single shot. That’s why I said Germans would be the only nation that can actually execute the know how into being a frontier. Maybe France can actually learn a thing or two from the Germans on how to build an empire even after losing two world wars
There are ignorant takes and then there is this. A country that can build the Rafale independently is not to be trifled with.
"The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist."
well they exist in both US and Soviet at the time
Yeah, but my point is that it doesn't help current German space companies.
As seen in the US and by Ariane’s moves in the last few decades, that history is more of a millstone around their neck than an advantage.
Congrats to Isar but I think you don't understand the scale difference here and the immensity of what it would take to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX. The orders of magnitude of launch efficiency are... starting to become staggering.
Isar is a good fallback for sovereignty and national defense! But, if Germany wants to compete with SpaceX in earnest, they will need to re-orient a large portion of their national economy around it. They are raising something like $100 billion for their launch complex in LA currently.
Their press release seems to center on:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space. [...] Customers around the world now have a sovereign launch option at their disposal.
They apparently try very hard to ignore Arianespace.
I think the missing word there might be "private", because there's also Esrange (for smaller satellites as of now).
Arianspace launches from French Guiana while a French commune is not really close to the actual continent of Europe.
The media has been struggling on how to word this. Danish media tried labeling it as "the first orbital launch from Europe. Which is wrong, because the Plesetsk Cosmodrome exists. It's also not the first orbital launch from the EU, because Norway isn't in the EU. Using "from western Europe" sound like your trying to hard to make it special.
"First commercial space company to successfully deliver satellites into orbit, from the European continent" is probably the most correct title while remaining fairly interesting.
Geographic Qualifiers https://m.xkcd.com/2901/
There will be some chain reaction up there in near future, in our lifetime only.
Congratulation to the team.
These milestones are necessary to advancement of human race as we need new planets to occupy.
But, we needed clear path going forward. I am both pro to advancement but with caution kind of guy.
Let's first be a competitor to Musk's short term commercial plans.
It's a race but who will bell the cat and be impartial? That should be the question.
Well, Musk will not be belling any cat, he hasn't even been to space himself. This makes me think he's really just performing an act for investors.
I am worry about number of satellites above our head by him.
>we need new planets to occupy
We absolutely do not
That's open question for humanity. I respect both sides of it but I am little more pro to residences in other planets as we are on tech breakthrough on limitation of Earth. Now, surviving means occupying other planets.
However, these are just my thoughts you can have different.
We still have a good few thousand years until we make the Earth anywhere close to as inhospitable as the second best planet in the Solar System - and probably much more than that before we run out of space on Earth.
It makes far more sense to colonize the Arctic, the Gobi desert, the peaks of the tallest mountains, and similar places here on Earth before even contemplating the colonization of Mars. Let's first have a 10M-strong self-sustaining megacity at the South Pole before contemplating absurd projects like a Mars colony.
> space on Earth.
I have different take on this. We already shown significant decline in Fertility rate of whole world. Its right now 2.2 against nearly 5 in 1950s till 1970. 2.1 is replacement only. So, we are sorted there from occupying Glaciers,Mountains, etc.
Moreover, Average age of many countries are increasing. That might need support in near future. Migration is filling up that gap in Western world.
As per current prediction world population will peak around 2080s and then decline.
Problem is that decline. Since, Governments are working on selling futures (e.g. Bonds). We need new frontier to make things exciting for new generations up ahead.
People aren't making more children because they largely can't afford to, either in actual resources, or in time spent. And, unlike in a rural community, children don't have any "return on investment" - plus, you generally have to raise them alone even when they're no longer toddlers, rather than relying on an entire community to do it together.
There's no great mystery, and a colony on Mars will not change this even one iota.
> because they largely can't afford to, either in actual resources, or in time spent
But that's absolutely not true. People are so wealthy right now that they can afford practically an unlimited amount of children. The avoidance of having children is almost entirely shaped by the cultural environment and not economic environment.
> relying on an entire community to do it together
I am not sure that it ever was a case. "Relying on an entire community" to raise children generally meant that children were raised mostly by themselves.
> The avoidance of having children is almost entirely shaped by the cultural environment and not economic environment.
Cultural factors are certainly a part of it, but probably mostly in the sense that we are (rightfully, I believe) far less willing to let children die young or get maimed. But economic factors are a huge thing; I don't know where you live that you thing young people "can afford practically an unlimited number of children", but in most of Europe and the USA it is in fact impossible for the bottom 50+% of young couples to even support themselves, not to mention a child, on a single income. And it's also very hard to raise a child 0-4 in a city while working full time+.
> "Relying on an entire community" to raise children generally meant that children were raised mostly by themselves.
No. Children, historically, after they became capable of roaming around, were raised by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings etc. Even when they were away from adults, they'd be roaming near the village in groups with older children.
> we are (rightfully, I believe) far less willing to let children die young or get maimed.
I don't think it matters at all. Of course, we are, but there is a huge gap between "not let children die young or get maimed" and what is happening with child raising now.
> but in most of Europe and the USA
bottom 50+% of young couples would have zero problems to support even 20 children per couple. How do I know it? Because in other parts of the world other people easily support like 5+ kids on 10+ times less amount of resources than this bottom 50% of young couples in the Europe and the USA have. So it is purely cultural phenomenon.
> were raised by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings etc.
No, they (generally) weren't raised that way. Historically, "raised by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings etc" mean that they were like 5% of the time "raising by grandparents, neighbors, their older siblings", and other 95% of the time raising by themselves (and maybe by neighbor's dog, best case scenario)
> Even when they were away from adults, they'd be roaming near the village in groups with older children.
I mean right now there is zero problems to raise 20 children per couple this way in the cities. Except for the cultural perception.
The issue there is we aren’t the only force for possible extinction on Earth.
Apart from a gamma-ray burst, what do you imagine could happen to the Earth to make it as inhospitable as Mars?
Asteroid hits wouldn't come even close. The worse disease imaginable would not make the air as permanently dangerous to life as Mars' atmosphere is. So what exactly would motivate this move?
The alleged “need [for] new planets to occupy” would only demonstrate failure of the human race, not advancement.
> These milestones are necessary to advancement of human race as we need new planets to occupy.
We can't even positively terraform Earth to stop the climate crisis here. Why does anyone think we need to be terraforming elsewhere? Just terraform here!!! Make the planet we are on more hospitable to human life!
It's not like we're running out of space, and the global population is about to start dropping.
I tend to share that position, but there's one counter argument that's not without merit at all: too much to lose. Even the worst climate change outcome would be less bad than the outcome of climate change plus some botched radical fix attempt could be.
Mars on the other hand, what's the worst that could happen? Someone writing the Coca Cola logotype across the red?
> Just terraform here!!! Make the planet we are on more hospitable to human life!
We are doing it right now. It just for some reason some people call it "climate crisis".
From a scientific perspective in case of the Earth "more hospitable to human life" = "warmer".
Congratulations ISAR
Edit: it should be Isar not ISAR
This is a huge achievement and every person involved should be very proud.
Please oblige me by not writing anything political in reply, let's just celebrate!
It’s Isar, not ISAR. It’s the name of the river that crosses Munich (which I love) :)
Thank you for your correction. That has been a nice addition to my German geography. It looks like the people of Munich really enjoy their river in a way we can't enjoy ours in the UK, due to pollution.
They could make their name an acronym in the future: “International Space Agency for Rockets” ;)
That is bad. How can they collect important data if the rocket doesn't explode at launch? Space-X does it better.
I really like seeing new aerospace companies, and i really hope humans go interstellar by 2050
LOL
Lmao even. Interstellar in <30 years? come on.
I agree. There's a nice list of humans that I would love to see go interstellar.
this seems a bit ambitious, considering that Voyager just left the solar system
a permanent self sufficient colony on antarctica is a bit more like it, but still pretty ambitious
For anyone interested in private space flight: Wild Wild Space documentary. Also a commentary about startups in general.
Separately, I've been wondering how uneven human progress is. I think we have come a long way in electronics (relays to vacuum tubes to transistor to … to an M5 chip) but in some other domains, like moving objects through space, we are basically mostly reliant on thrust generated by burning fuel (EV's are a genuine advance, but mostly due to battery tech).
Ion thrusters say “hi!”
Germany having its own sovereign launch capability will eventually sink ESA.
Awesome
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580369
The restraint here is admirable
Congratulations to those who have worked so hard to make this happen. I wish you continued success. It is great that they have realized both mission targets on their second flight attempt.
I think the more options there are for access to space, the more likely we are as a species to launch useful payloads that will help us understand how we fit in and how we can better manage our own situation. It is disconcerting to see the night sky fill with constellations of satellites but there is hope that they will be used for productive purposes.
congrats - this is massive. created in 2018 and already delivering payloads to space in 2026 - less than 10 years.
Does someone know if they are planning to do a reusable rocket?
Amazing achievement!
Elon on the phone to Donald this morning demanding more protection.
What the fuck is wrong with Americans? There's so many ignorant, racist, and all around shit takes in this thread.
Many Americans are in the middle of the death throes of empire the world is moving on and as an American. That’s fine with me Lake Ontario forever ha.ha.ha…
As an American, would say more than half our country actually agrees with you. Trumps approval rating has fallen to 39% while 58% disapprove. Yeah, a lot of us in the US are in just as much amazement as the rest of the world at the crazy and petty actions he takes.
So we’re just bidding our time, waiting until the midterm elections to weaken the right, and then afterwards, we’ll just be counting the days until he’s out of office. Hopefully he’ll be replaced with someone who is at least halfway competent - it amazes us how almost everything the touches gets completely screwed up
And i as an average European just want to say - we feel with you and all the others that are suffering through this. I don't know either what I could or would do if my own government went this route. I hope your institutions and the people's resilience will overcome this dark chapter of American history and build a better foundation on top.
>I hope your institutions and the people's resilience will overcome this dark chapter of American history and build a better foundation on top.
I hope we can scrape it all back to the bedrock foundations of our country before we rebuild anything. I don't want any foundation built on top of this festering layer of bullshit. I'm afraid we will still have foundation problems in the future if we don't examine the reasons why it failed this time and set the rebuilt country up with one less failure mode.
Let's do this once. As they say where I'm from "There's only two ways to do anything - do it right or do it over."
Thanks, it’s been a real trial, but we can feel the momentum shifting - when Trump is truly let loose, he’s his own worst enemy. And agreed, hope our institutions hold up too:)
> Trumps approval rating has fallen to 39% while 58% disapprove.
> Hopefully he’ll be replaced with someone who is at least halfway competent
That's the point. You've vote for this guy TWICE. So probably when we talk about 58% disapprove, those 58% disapprove him not because of what he's doing, but because he's doing it to little and to incompetently.
It is scary that you want to replace him with another Trump, but "at least halfway competent". Oh boy!
? Don’t think I was implying I wanted to replace him with another far-right candidate, just someone who is competent in general.
But do agree that we did all voted for him twice, so saying that maybe this is actually what it means to be an American could hold some truth. Still, don’t think so, he’s clearly one of, or the most divisive person in modern American history. It seems like most people here either love him or hate him with every fiber of their being.
Literally every campaign promise he's went back on. So, "Saying that maybe this is actually what it means to be an American could hold some truth" I don't really think is accurate lol
I know a lot of folks who voted for the man, almost all of them would love for a competent alternative. Unfortunately, in the last election, neither were competent, so a lot of it was a coin toss.
Ah this is true too (seeing as I didn’t vote for him, it doesn’t bother me that he’s done the opposite of his campaign promises).
But as for competent alternatives during last election, would think a young, vibrant, thoughtful Kamala Harris would have done a better job - Still, if I’m being honest, I was not a big fan of hers even though I would have voted for her (was out of state during the last election and voting got too complicated). So, I can understand if this turned off voters.
… although, if you were referring to Biden, then yeah, truly neither were competent choices.
> Don’t think I was implying I wanted to replace him with another far-right candidate, just someone who is competent in general.
Maybe you are not. But what about other 58%? In the end, you have elected him twice, and it's not like the guy was pretending to be the other person. Trump did exactly what everyone have expected him to do, if only incompetently and ineffectively.
Me and the friends of mine who didn’t vote for him feel the same way. What did the Trump supports expect when they voted for him?
… although, even we didn’t expect him to be as unhinged and impulsive as he has been. It’s been crazy here.
more than half is pretty unlikely. about a third is. the rest dont care or actively support trump
the election results speak for themselves. Trump got more votes than he did in 2016 - americans by and large saw his shitshow and decided they wanted more
This might even influence today's election in Sachsen. With a bit of luck, it could turn a few voters to a more optimistic world view.
Sachsen-Anhalt != Sachsen . And I think voters there are too far gone…
Also, they have roughly 1/2 of Berlin's population in the entire state.
But the impact of an AFD win in that Bundesland would be terrible for the whole country. A bit long (45min) but this video from Simplicissimus goes into it in details: https://youtu.be/N2b1y9GAF48?si=1_L80z1PTXENkXy2
Sorry, I knew the full name, but overlooked the fact that shortening it turned it into another state's name.
Why would it influence the voters in Saxony-Anhalt? The voters are mainly voting AfD because all the other old parties have failed them miserably since the reunification and they don't have any other alternative, because voting for the same parties expecting a different result/future would be insanity.
The east has never been economically very strong, it used to be huge feudal-style farms and a bit of high-tech industry (planes, optics, trains, electronics in the 1930s). Not too different from now. Then there was the GDR which made things much worse.
It's not really West Germany that caused the weak economy of the East Germany. The handling of reunification did suck, but you can't just will a strong industrial base into existence neither.
I would say they never got the stability to build a strong economic foundation. During Prussian times the port cities like Danzig and Köngisberg flourished and attracted the capital of eastern Prussia and after the WWII, they had to deal with the oppression from the soviets. The Soviets took whatever they can from the Eastern Germany and they just had to build everything from the scratch, unlike the west that got help from the other western countries like US/Marshal plan. Also when the Germany was partitioned whatever industrial base remained in the east moved to west or southern Germany because they didn’t wanted to be under socialism.
Even to this day the western German, especially the older ones considers the Eastern Germans as a second class citizens and there hasn’t been any significant investment in Eastern part to build an industrial base (except for in Berlin and its suburbs) by any government even though the west payed a tax (solidarity) especially for that.
> there hasn’t been any significant investment in Eastern part to build an industrial base (except for in Berlin and its suburbs)
Dresden is not a Berlin suburb. When it comes to investment in semiconductor industry, Dresden has likely seen more than the entire rest of Germany together.
I remember the previous Green government giving tax relief for Intel to build a factory in Dresden, but I don’t think it worked out.
Also Dresden is only one city and what about the rest of the former East German states?