[HN Gopher] After successfully entering Earth's atmosphere, a Eu...
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After successfully entering Earth's atmosphere, a European
spacecraft is lost
Author : rbanffy
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-06-25 12:23 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| anovikov wrote:
| Surprisingly good result on a surprisingly low budget. I totally
| didn't expect a European company to make it. If it phoned home
| after reentry it means the hard part is done.
| notahacker wrote:
| The Exploration Company know what they're doing and execute
| fast. Contrary to popular belief on here this is possible from
| Europe...
| tekla wrote:
| Of course, they rely on SpaceX because Europe doesn't have
| enough launch capacity to support their launch rate (1/year
| at best)
| pfdietz wrote:
| Europe decided that the priority purpose of their launch
| industry was to provide jobs, not competitive launches.
| boricj wrote:
| The primary purpose of the traditional European launch
| industry is to provide an independent launch capability
| for government payloads. Cost is irrelevant because the
| French government in particular wants to be able to
| launch payloads into orbit without depending on anyone
| else to do so.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's failing at that too, in the same sense that
| maintaining a sailing ship fleet would have failed to
| provide independent seafaring capability in the latter
| half of the 19th century.
|
| SpaceX has greatly raised the bar on what can be
| considered an "independent launch capability." Europe
| under the current system is greatly limited on what they
| can imagine doing in space. The equivalent of Starlink is
| not feasible, for example.
|
| Underlying all this was a failure of vision, an
| assumption that use of space would be static and change
| only slowly, if at all, and that launch cost could not be
| significantly reduced.
| mjevans wrote:
| Wouldn't it be nice if buying a space launch vehicle were
| like purchasing a car, instead of (a military) aircraft?
|
| For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went
| wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in
| America. The market really should not have been allowed
| to consolidate that much; to the point where incentives
| aligned to financial and regulatory capture / stasis (and
| pilots only certified on one type of flight vehicle),
| rather than someone skilled to operate a general aviation
| vehicle. Though with cars we do have a fairly
| standardized control scheme, at least for the most
| important parts. Steering wheel, go and stop foot levers.
| metalman wrote:
| heres a gaggle og MIGS, but name your flavor
|
| https://www.barnstormers.com/cat_search.php?headline=MIG&
| bod...
| cpgxiii wrote:
| > For that same matter, maybe that's part of what went
| wrong with the aircraft manufacturing business in
| America. The market really should not have been allowed
| to consolidate that much ...
|
| Consolidation was an inevitable result of the end of the
| Cold War and massive cuts to defense spending. The
| defense industry was _encouraged_ to consolidate because
| the alternative would have been bankruptcy. Obviously,
| time has shown that this consolidation was bad for the
| industry and the government, but a lot has happened in
| the last 35 years that would not have been foreseen then.
|
| > to the point where incentives aligned to financial and
| regulatory capture / stasis (and pilots only certified on
| one type of flight vehicle), rather than someone skilled
| to operate a general aviation vehicle
|
| The type rating structure really has quite little to do
| with aerospace industry consolidation (if anything, the
| industry is too fractured to allow for more generic type
| ratings). Aircraft, their systems, and their flight
| dynamics are different enough that trying to create a
| more general type rating would really be impossible. What
| you do see are families of aircraft which either
| completely share a type rating or require very limited
| additional training to maintain a rating for multiple
| family types (e.g. all 737s, 757/767, 777/787,
| A32x/A33x/A35x).
|
| Single piston GA aircraft are really the exception, not
| because they all share the same behavior (there is a
| truly wild range of flight dynamics and avionics), but
| because the GA community (particularly in the US) is so
| large and established that requiring more
| training/experience is politically impossible. So long as
| GA accidents don't kill too many bystanders, this will
| remain the case.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yep. Two things the space industry and airline industry
| have in common is that (i) you need to spend an enormous
| amounts of money to have a remotely viable product,
| because the physics is hard even without regulation (ii)
| you don't get that money back unless the product you've
| spent all that money developing has better unit economics
| than your competitors for a sufficiently large number of
| target customers (or your national government steps in to
| protect you) because there aren't many buyers and the
| market isn't buying aircraft or payload space because
| they like the vibe or the aesthetics. That naturally
| tends towards monopoly (or oligopolies with carefully
| defined differences in capabilities, some of which turn
| out to be unprofitable segments...)
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > Cost is irrelevant
|
| I agree with your overall point, but I think the person
| you replied to has a point as well. The cost of
| developing F9 is ridiculously low (considering the
| industry), so it should have been possible to do by any
| country / group of countries if the cost was the only
| problem...
|
| > "According to NASA's own independently verified
| numbers, SpaceX's development costs of both the Falcon 1
| and Falcon 9 rockets were estimated at approximately $390
| million in total."
| lupusreal wrote:
| This seems like revisionist cope. Ariane 4 and 5 were
| _extremely_ successful in the commercial launch market in
| the 90s and 00s before SpaceX trounced them. Now that
| they 're floundering, it's not because they failed to
| keep up but because they never meant to be successful in
| the first place? That's just not true.
| notahacker wrote:
| And? So does everyone else, because Transporter rideshares
| are cheap and incubating your own rocket programme isn't.
|
| SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its semiconductors.
| Does the fact SpaceX can't be adequately served by domestic
| capacity and their in-house semiconductor programme is just
| getting started mean they don't execute?! Or is it just a
| little thing called trade that Americans used to believe
| in?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _SpaceX relies on Europe and Taiwan for its
| semiconductors_
|
| Used and relies on aren't interchangeable. (To the extent
| there is reliance, it's more on Taiwan than Europe.)
| gsibble wrote:
| European spacecraft......launched in the US by SpaceX.
|
| Hilarious.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Why is that hilarious?
|
| 1. The Exploration Company builds shuttles, not launchers
|
| 2. The US had to rely on Russian shuttles for decades after the
| Challenger drama
|
| Space is hard and sarcasm not useful.
| pcardoso wrote:
| Don't forget the JWST was launched by an Arianne rocket...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| In my opinion, the key information:
|
| "SpaceX required [..] nearly $3 billion [..] The Exploration
| Company would require a similar amount [..] It is not possible to
| raise that money from private capital markets right now by
| promising a great return a decade from now."
|
| In other words: All the investors are looking for a quick buck.
| Nobody is willing to invest into the longer-term future anymore.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Nobody is willing to invest into the longer-term future
| anymore_
|
| SpaceX raised private capital. It continues to raise private
| capital. (It still tapped into public coffers for Crew Dragon,
| though, because the demand side of that market remains entirely
| public.)
|
| It could do this because NASA had committed to the Artemis
| programme. That's the demand. ESA has no similar promise of
| returns for a private backer; giving money to these guys
| strikes closer to a grant or donation than investment.
| agos wrote:
| Right now you can't say much about NASA long time commitment
| either
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you can't say much about NASA long time commitment
| either_
|
| Of course one can. Those plans could change. But they were
| set and funded and that inertia appears to be saving them
| [1].
|
| ESA has nothing similar planned. (Beyond collaboration
| [2].)
|
| [1] https://yellowhammernews.com/u-s-senate-directive-
| would-revi...
|
| [2] https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-european-space-
| agency...
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(page generated 2025-06-28 23:01 UTC)