Ariane 6 is still one of the most impressive feats that came out of ESA in a long time, but I keep circling back to the fundamental issue. Why not reusable?
It feels like Europe fell asleep when it comes to space innovation, but at this point reusable launches are not even an innovation, they're just how the business is done. And until we manage to build reusable infrastructure and rockets, the costs are going to be astronomical compared to the competitors.
Perhaps with the situation now, Europe could snag some rockstars from US?
They did not see the use case for reusable rockets. There just was no need, no plan to launch so much so often as spacex does.
It's probably that Europeans just don't have such intractable problem to pull fiber everywhere the electrical grid already is. So providing the internet with megaconstellations is seen as superfluous and wasteful.
Ariane 6 is still one of the most impressive feats that came out of ESA in a long time, but I keep circling back to the fundamental issue. Why not reusable?
It feels like Europe fell asleep when it comes to space innovation, but at this point reusable launches are not even an innovation, they're just how the business is done. And until we manage to build reusable infrastructure and rockets, the costs are going to be astronomical compared to the competitors.
Perhaps with the situation now, Europe could snag some rockstars from US?
They did not see the use case for reusable rockets. There just was no need, no plan to launch so much so often as spacex does.
It's probably that Europeans just don't have such intractable problem to pull fiber everywhere the electrical grid already is. So providing the internet with megaconstellations is seen as superfluous and wasteful.