Mr-Tucker t1_ixf0b3u wrote
Reply to comment by ferrel_hadley in Bruno Le Maire: Europe needs ‘unwavering unity’ against China, US in space by Soupjoe5
> its technical skills are on a par
Proof? Show me an SSTO. Or a reusable. Corner the market. 'Cos the US has Silicon Valley, and Europe doesn't.
LaunchTransient t1_ixf4831 wrote
>Show me an SSTO.
You may as well ask "show me a Unicorn" because an functional SSTO doesn't exist.
>Or a reusable.
One South African guy sets up a company in the US to light the fire on the concept of reusables and you guys are immediately "Oh yeah, we came up with that". Its a very recent development in aerospace, and launch vehicles take years to design, and years more to get funding to progress beyond the drawing board.
>Cos the US has Silicon Valley, and Europe doesn't
Europe has ASML and the US electronics manufacturers would be dropped back to the 80s without them.
Mr-Tucker t1_ixf7m5v wrote
> Its a very recent development in aerospace
DC-X? SASSTO? Beta? Phoenix? C'mon, the idea has been there for decades, and building something like the SASSTO is cheap compared to the Ariane 6.
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>drawing board
All the drawing boards' showing is the Ariane 6 and Vega. Ariane NEXT is due for the 2030s, by which point that architecture will be obsolete due to Starship (we can hope it's ONLY Starship and not the New Shepard, New Armstrong and Neutron and as well).
LaunchTransient t1_ixf9e56 wrote
>the idea has been there for decades
The idea of fully reusable LVs has been around for ages, but no one has managed to come up with a working concept until SpaceX. (And STS and Buran are only partially reusable, and neither delivered on their supposed savings).
I don't disagree that Europe has dragged its feet on the space front for a while, but commercial space has kind of emerged as a happy accident - the Boeing/Lockheed monster was as fat and bloated as European bureacracy until SpaceX suddenly started showing them up.
Mr-Tucker t1_ixglgzx wrote
How long has it been since the first F9 booster landed? 7 years? What has Ariane done in the meantime to not transform into Motorola?
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