> 14:42: It's a shame—it's obviously historic as the first attempt at an orbital rocket launch from Europe. And I pointed out, yeah, Germany was pretty much the first to build big liquid-fueled rockets, yet somehow, Western Europe has never launched a rocket to orbit. They've been beaten by Asia, Russia, North America, South America, Africa, and Australasia. Rockets have been launched from all those continents, but Western Europe has not had an orbital rocket launch in all its glorious history.
This is such an interesting point. Europe has thrived, and yet also stagnated in some ways, in the post-WWII story arc. I am biased as a fan of of space launch and Europe, but this feels like a positive moment.
Europe launches lots of rockets. Just not _from_ (geographical) Europe, because Europe is a bad place to launch equatorial orbit rockets from; it's too high latitude, and there's too much stuff for bits of the rocket to fall on (most launches are equatorial/equatorial-ish, and for those launching east is desireable, but obviously not practical in most of Europe). European rockets are launched from French Guiana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiana_Space_Centre), which is part of France, and politically in Europe (it's in the EU), but not geographically in Europe.
The Norway site is reasonable for polar orbit rockets, but this company appear to plan to use the existing ESA spaceport in Guiana for equatorial launches.
Orbital launches in 2024:
USA: 158
China: 68
Russia: 17
Japan: 7
India: 5
Iran: 4
Europe: 3
North Korea: 1
- "Europe: 3"
It's worse than it looks: two of those were mini-rockets (Vega), and the Ariane 6 was an R&D test launch with no payload (mass simulator only).
> mass simulator
I had to laugh at this. I assume a chunk of concrete was used, but that actually is mass, not a mass "simulator".
> the Ariane 6 was an R&D test launch with no payload
The cubesats do not count as payloads?
This is just another of many examples of Europe's decline in global relevance. It's what happens when your chief innovation is regulation.
I don't know if it's regulation, or a combination of the other business factors HN brings up in the discussions about European startups. But the symptoms are alarming. Forget the graphs of past launches—look towards the future: check up how many newspace startups are being founded in each region, and how many are in the reusable launcher race.
The EU has zero. (Isar isn't working towards reusable rockets). There are, as far as I find, fat-0 European startups working on it.
USA has, by my subjective count, five—SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Labs, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space. That's just the big ones.
China has—I'm too lazy to count right now, there are seriously too many search results. Deep Blue and Landspace seem to be the most talked-about ones (at least in the West). And—not only are they in serious competition to replicate Starlink, they have two groups in a race competing on that (Guowang, and Thousand Sails).
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-ra...
The 27 countries of the EU put together have 0.
What the heck is failing in the EU?
What you shoot up is much more important than how you shoot it up.
We shot up the most powerful space telescope, capturing a third of the entire sky in never seen before detail [0].
We're also currently busy deploying our starlink alternative that works via regular 5G instead of specialized terminals. [1]
Being the cheapest Space Truckers isn't of much interest to us. We're more interested in making sure the stuff we put up there is cool.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/19/scientists-h...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/eutelsat-succeeds-w...
EU is definitely behind. It's at least an entire generation (perhaps 1.5) behind.
ESA does have grants for funding reusable rocket development (ArianeGroup and Isar both got funding for that). Uhh... who knows how successful those programs will be.
To be fair to both Isar and RFA (which are both much more in the 2010s New Space mold), the equivalent rockets (Falcon 1, Electron, etc) weren't reusable either. EU firms are playing catch up, I think its fair that they take some amount of incremental steps through.
As people have generally noted, the market for stuff that Isar and RFA are building (1-2 ton to LEO) is actually really small. I think both companies are banking on building expertise and confidence and then trying to iterate relatively quickly to something Falcon 9 class with re-use.
The American competitors like Relativity and Stoke get to bootstrap off of all the work that SpaceX (especially) and Blue Origin (less so) have done to give a more credible path to immediate re-use.
Alright. But even if I concede that (that Americans startups are benefiting unfairly from SpaceX), at least two Chinese startups are on schedule for booster-recovery launches this year,
https://spacenews.com/deep-blue-aerospace-raises-new-funds-t...
https://spacenews.com/landspace-launches-third-methane-zhuqu...
In the case of Deep Blue, they're attempting recovery on their very first orbital launch (they're been hover-testing that booster up to 1 km already). Newspace startups don't have the luxury of competing against 2006-era Falcon 1; they're competing against 2025-era startups like Deep Blue—a dozen very aggressive competitors, all speedrunning towards the same goal. I don't feel the EU is even in the running.
In the case of Landspace, it's their 6th launch attempt (I think). This launch is competing against SpaceX and Blue Origin both, for the first recovered-booster, orbital methane launch. It's possible they might come in first—that's how rapidly certain technological gaps have narrowed.
(They already got the crown for the first orbital methane launch—Zhuque-2 in 2024. Meaning the first in history. No one in the West has heard of the word "Zhuque". That worries me. They beat even SpaceX to this milestone—our media ecosystem is completely sleeping on remarkably capable competition).
The Chinese ecosystem is very impressive. They both have tremendous cash and resources flowing into their government owned agencies, and specific funding and competition in their private new space companies. I understand there's tremendous talent and knowledge transfer sloshing around the Chinese ecosystem, say nothing about funding and resources.
But let's be real - EU new space is not competing against the Chinese launch market right now. There's time and room for them to mature.
One major reason why EU capabilities are lagging is because they hitched their geopolitical wagon to the US and assumed that the US launch providers would be sufficient for commercial purposes, and that ESA/Arianespace only had to preserve enough capability to meet truly strategic requirements.
Now the EU is scrambling because they realized that there are unsavoury downsides. Just deciding to cede all European launches to the Chinese is literally just putting themselves in the same shit soup.
And even practically, the EU-USA decoupling is going to take time. And until the EU gets enough strategic autonomy in space, I think the EU is largely going to play nice with the US rules against collaborating with China in space (that means almost no EU payloads are going to be launched by China).
> One major reason why EU capabilities are lagging is because they hitched their geopolitical wagon to the US and assumed that the US launch providers would be sufficient for commercial purposes, and that ESA/Arianespace only had to preserve enough capability to meet truly strategic requirements.
This is just not true.
Ariane Group was a market leader in space launch when SpaceX started launching rockets, and Ariane 6 was designed specifically to help Ariane Group maintain commercial competitiveness with Falcon 9. They just did a bad job of it[1].
The story line of Ariane 5/6 only being there to preserve independent access to space only appeared on the scene after SpaceX conclusively trounced them in the market.
---
1. The reasons why this happened are complicated by some of them are:
* For a long time Ariane Group leadership maintained a belief that SpaceX was selling F9 launches below cost and that the USG was subsidizing them with higher cost government launches.
* Ariane Group publicly claimed that reuse was not economically feasible and that that capability in F9 didn't matter.
* Ariane Group has long maintained (and continues to do so) a policy of "economic return" where countries get contracts for subcomponents in rough proportion to the amount of money they contribute to the program. This necessitates a "big design up front" approach, and makes iteration very slow and difficult.
* SpaceX was able to improve Falcon 9's performance far more than anyone probably expected through aggressive iteration, more than doubling its payload to LEO over its lifetime. This was, in large part, due to the Merlin 1D engine doubling the thrust of the Merlin 1C. For context, over 30 years, the Space Shuttle's RS-25 engines increased in thrust by only ~10%.
- "They both have tremendous cash and resources flowing into their government owned agencies, and specific funding and competition in their private new space companies."
Yeah, this gets to the heart of what I raised at the root comment: "What's failing in the EU?" Why aren't there torrents of cash and resources, talent and knowledge, flowing into European tech startups?
> that Americans startups are benefiting unfairly from SpaceX
Why is that unfair?
> Deep Blue, they're attempting recovery on their very first orbital launch
This shouldn't be a surprise. One would want to test as much as possible in each expensive launch. If the recovery failed, it would not impact(!) any other tests, so it is a very sensible idea to add it to the early tests.
- "Why is that unfair?"
Poor phrasing by me. "It's to be expected that European newspace will move slower than American startups, because their industry environment and institutional knowledge is poorer (than Americans')".
Isar is working towards reusability, albeit not as a priority. Even Arianespace has reusability in its roadmap. The UK alone has three small launch startups with reusability in their roadmap, from Skyrora (first stage with parachute only) to the more speculative Space Engine Systems spaceplane. The economics of reusability favour large rockets with regular launch cadences though, and that takes a lot of capital, which is why European newspace companies tend to focus on components, satellites and tugs...
In 1995, World War III almost broke out after a rocket launch from the exact same location [1]. It was only a coincidence that stopped the Russians from doing retaliatory nuclear rocket launches. So, indeed, launching to the east is not a good idea from this latitude.
ESA has had loads of orbital launches. Arianespace is a French company and the world's first commercial space launch co. Not sure it's reasonable to discount EU as stagnated.
There are few places in EU that make sense to launch from - the ideal launch site is from the equator, from land, with an empty ocean to the East to launch over. Look at the EU geographically and you can see why the European launches would chose a non EU site.
Now with the US and Russia both becoming poor candidates geopolitically, I suppose it makes sense to explore local options, even if they're less efficient/safe/convenient.
> Now with the US and Russia both becoming poor candidates geopolitically, I suppose it makes sense to explore local options, even if they're less efficient/safe/convenient.
I don't think that's the reason. The ESA exclusively uses a spaceport in French Guiana, which is politically in France and in the EU, but is not geographically in Europe. This company plans to use the Guiana spaceport, too, for equatorial launches (using the old Diamant launch facility). But the Norway site is fine for _polar_ launches.
> it's reasonable to discount EU as stagnated
In this case it is. It peaked in the 1990s with resurgency after Ariane 5 came out but it hasn't been competitive for many years now.
Arianespace was kind of the SpaceX of the 80s and 90s and IIRC they had the majority of the market for a few years.
Unfortunately Europe got permanently got stuck in the early 2000s in quite a few ways.
I'm surprised they don't see more activity for polar orbits. You want to launch north-west or south-west and into ocean, northern scandanavia seems perfect for that.
Going westwards means going against Earth's rotation, requiring extra fuel and what not. That's why almost every rocket goes eastwards.
Polar orbits have to go west, because they have to counter the earth's rotation if they aim to cross over the pole. Further north means less rotation to counter.
It's not that Europe has never developed the tech... the UK developed and launched an orbital rocket in the 60s/70s but it had to be shipped to Australia to be launched. I can't remember the specifics but I recall reading that Europe just isn't a geographically optimal place to launch rockets.
> has never developed the tech
Well... an European company controlled > 50% of the commercial orbital launch market back in the late 80s and 80s.
That might have been tricky to achieve without developing the tech first.
It's more than suitable if you don't care where the debris lands.
There was another famous rocket crash where it just tipped over, I think it had an overflow problem
Oh yeh it's Ariane flight V88
This was launched from the continent of Europe, but there's a little slice of France (it has the most surprising shape of any country) in South America where the ESA normally launches from
Another notable Norwegian rocket launch:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-russian-radar...
In that situation, assuming the worst possible scenario, who would have Russia retaliated against? Would they have just assumed it was America? It seems hard to attribute a missile fired from a submarine near you -- I think? It's a question that I never had even consider would factor into that decision.
What's going on here? I swear I read a few days ago the exact same comments that were apparently posted here a few minutes ago. Is there some kind of strange duplication going on?
That's the second-chance pool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998309
Apparently HN also rewrites comment timestamps, but can't find the relevant post.
It does. It also has a rare race condition you can occasionally notice, where the fake-timestamp of the parent comment is in the future of that of the child comments.
Technically Russia's Plesetsk is in Europe. With hundreds of launches over the last 60 years.
Also here,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43524784 ("Isar Aerospace launches Spectrum, fails early in first stage flight (nasaspaceflight.com)", 57 comments)
Why is the launch site so much in the north? I thought the closer to the equator the better. Anyone able to clarify why?
High latitude launch sites are better for polar or highly inclined orbits.
Consider a launch from the equator targeting a pure polar orbit (i.e. going over the poles). You not only have to reach orbit, but also cancel out the "equatorial direction" component of your initial velocity to zero, which takes extra delta-v.
Polar orbits are good for a single satellite to see the entire Earth's surface (basically scanning over a different part each orbit), which is often desirable depending on the purpose. For example something that wants to measure the entire atmosphere or photograph the entire surface, etc.
This isn't true. Because it's a vector addition of velocity vectors—not scalars.
The orbit you want to reach is a delta-v of about 9.0 km/s in the polar direction,
↑ 9.0 km/s
The speed of the Earth's rotation, that you would want to cancel, is maximally 0.46 km/s on the equator, in the azimuthal direction,
→ 0.46 km/s
So your delta-v vector is ↑ 9.0 km/s pointing north, plus ← 0.46 km/s pointing west (cancelling the Earth's rotation), for a vector sum of magnitude
sqrt( (9.0 km/s)^2 + (0.46 km/s)^2 )
= 9.01 km/s
Launching into a polar orbit is equally easy, from any latitude!
⁂
The converse isn't true. If you're trying to reach an equatorial orbit, the delta-v into that orbit is co-linear with the earth's rotation,
(→ 9.0 km/s), (→ 0.46 km/s)
That's a scalar sum! An azimuthal launch is 460 m/s cheaper on the equator—you inherit the full speed of the Earth's rotation. Latitude is a significant factor here: it's easier to launch, the closer to you are to the equator.
(More profoundly, the orbit you're trying to reach might not even pass through the point you're trying to launch from. This happens if the target orbit inclination is smaller than your launch site's latitude (in absolute value)).
And they can time it so they get the sun at the same relative location for each photo pass.
I think it's just the best available location in Europe for it. Previously, the same company were doing launches from European territory (French Guiana), but not on continental Europe, which seems to be the new direction.
https://isaraerospace.com/press/andoya-spaceport-future-laun...
I really have to wonder why Spain isn’t a viable launch site .. anyone know?
If you're wondering because Spain is southerly and hence closer to the Equator, consider this: the extreme southernmost point of continental Spain (latitude 36° N) is still farther north than most of North Carolina in the USA [0].
Only the Canary Islands have comparable latitudes to Cape Canaveral. While on the one hand a Canarian launch site could perhaps be a huge economic and productive boon for the Islands, I think that it might conflict with their unique ecosystems, tourism, and even (maybe?) with their current use as a base for telescopes, which is useful thanks to their high mountains and low pollution.
I wonder if its because (1) theres no space left on the Med coast in Spain for this or (2) if a Spanish launch site does not offer enough angle for moderately inclined orbits because (3) they would still be dropping hardware on central Europe for nearly all common orbit profiles.
I suppose they're not launching eastward from West Europe in current political climate. Polar sites are ok for spy sats.
Polar-to-equatorial plane changes aren't impossible either, I remember Russia occasionally doing for commercial launches, before the invasion.
Very cool. Looks pretty cold there in fact. I wonder if that makes the cryogenic prop handling any more efficient.