> We are looking for an EVA suit design presented in A3 format, with an accompanying text of up to 400 words explaining how your design represents European identity.
What is this European Identity? I was under the impression this was a technical contest but I suppose they will simply customize the branding on the American made and engineered EVA suits?
> Proposals have to be submitted in English
Ironic to impose a non-European language for this contest.
English, French, and German are the three working languages of the EU. Many non-UK tech companies use English as their working language like in Sweden. Regardless of this, the UK is a member of the ESA working group.
Bad news? From an outsider looking in, all the hullabaloo and doomsday talk seems to have not become reality. What was actually bad about leaving, other than the optics of it at the time?
> a 4% shrinkage in long-run productivity relative to remaining in the EU, expects the Office for Budget Responsibility, inflation is higher than in the EU, trade has fallen by almost a fifth, while the government itself says the much-trumpeted Australian deal will raise GDP by less than 0.1% a year by 2035. Brexit has raised food prices by 6% says the LSE, while draining the workforce. Eurostar also deliberately leaves a third of seats empty due to crippling EU/UK border delays.
> According to figures from the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis – which tracks trends in global trade – UK goods export volumes remained 3.3% below their 2018 average in October, in contrast to an average 4.4% increase seen across all advanced economies.
How much of this can be attributed to the pandemic and shutdowns, and not directly to simply not being an EU country anymore? After all, there are plenty of non-EU countries in the general region - is the UK doing worse, average, or better than those nations?
The comparison is against peer countries in the EU, like France.
The government failed at every level of due dilligence, like it exited EURATOM without agreeing any replacement. It has nothing to do with EU /single market, but they quit it anyway. 99.99% of brexiters didn't know Euratom even exists.
UK exited customs union (despite this not being asked at referendun) but to this date has no customs checks because it has not hired officers or built facilities to carry out checks.
It has failed to provide France with custom checking facilities at dover, and there were queues for hundreds of miles this summer with truck drivers defecating out in the open.
Like some of this is so mad its hard to believe.
My cost of sending parcels to EU has tripled overnight.
Be glad you are an outsider looking in. The UK governments own analysis says there will be a 15% drop in trade with the EU over 5 years (this was in 2022) [1].
New trade deals already "done" with countries outside the EU are either a copy and paste of the existing EU deal (Japan) or very limited and rushed (Australia) so they will have almost no impact in offsetting the 15% drop. Actual replacement trade deals (with the US for example) will take many years of negotiation and may not ever happen.
Small/medium size businesses have to deal with EU customs as a 3rd country now. So the cost of selling into the the largest free-trade single market in the world, right on your doorstep, is too high for direct sales to be in any way competitive. Any company serious about selling goods into the EU has to pay for warehousing in the EU somewhere, and sell from an EU subsidiary to avoid the massive admin overhead and delayed shipments.
Larger businesses can soak up the costs of warehousing (or they had them already), so the main affect of Brexit is to cripple small UK businesses that are now expected to sell to south-east Asia, or something.
This is many billions of lost tax revenue due to the reduced economic growth.
The social cost is what most "remainers" are annoyed about. Having EU citizenship stolen away from you and your children, now only the rich can easily work, study or retire abroad again, just like it should be i guess...
And the matter is not even settled, support for remaining in the EU has risen significantly, that's what a 48/52 result in a fudged referendum does, divide a country.
One has to think, the drop is trade must be temporary and out of spite (from the EU side), since if the UK had goods other EU nations wanted to import just a few years ago, then they surely still want to import them today.
> now only the rich can work or retire abroad again
This is the same for almost all countries though, isn't it? As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either (without visas and what-not).
Perhaps time will tell if this ultimately was good or not. I can understand both sides of the issue - remaining an independent nation and suffering the costs an independent nation must endure, or join a federated government and effectively become a State (in US speak) within the EU.
It could be interpreted as spite, but the real reason is that the EU is not going to make an exception to single market access for the UK. All the EU member states had to agree to the deal negotiated so it becomes very bureaucratic, this can be good and bad.
The goods that the UK has that other EU nations wanted are being replaced by other EU nations. They are now more competitive than UK businesses that have to deal with EU customs checks and other bureaucracy/taxes on a per-country basis. You can say it is "protectionist", which is what certain politicians in the UK like to cast the single market as now, but this is how every economy in the world is run. The US market is protected too.
> As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either.
True, but as a UK citizen i COULD before 2019. As a US citizen you can work/study/retire in any US state. Would you be happy if that was taken away?
The member states of the EU are still independent nations, they are not controlled by a federal government like the US. Getting into EU lawmaking is a rabbit hole, but my feeling is there is a give and take that overall benefits the member states. At the end of they day each country still controls it's own destiny, as the UK felt it needed to prove.
From an outside perspective, it feels like we're witnessing a slow formation of a new super-nation, called the EU, with many member states, such as Germany, France, etc.
It likely would not take a whole lot for member nations to cede enough power to the EU and make that a reality - either intentionally or unintentionally, gradually or all at once. Within the US, State's rights and powers have been slowly eroded over the years as well - with a surprising number of people supporting increased centralized power within the US federal government.
People already refer to the EU like it's a singular entity. I wonder if this will become a reality in the not-so-distance future.
There's pro's and con's to that, of course, much like States within the US.
> It likely would not take a whole lot for member nations to cede enough power to the EU and make that a reality
Its currently impossible and would take decades - each country has seperate army that speaks a different language, has vigorous national identity. It has sovereign government and paliaments.
There is nothing EU can do to compell a member state to do anything it doesnt want to do. EU is like a big mega-trade deal more than a government.
Currently Hingary and Poland are flouting EU laws on democracy, the executive jas seized control of the courts and EU can do nothing about it.
Yes, the EU allows member states to punch above their weight when negotiating treaties with foreign nations and the harmonized single market is economically benefitial for many people and Industries.
Especially after Brexit people start to realize that. (Thank you UK?)
But there isn't a EU national identity to speak of.
Mostly no one would say "I'm a citizen of the EU" but "I'm a citizen of France/Germany/Poland which is a member of the EU".
The "in group" vs "out group" distinction runs along national borders when it comes to language, laws, news, government and culture.
At best there are "even-more-out groups"
when it comes to EU-foreign topics such as economic treaties and refugees.
Disagree there as declared identity depends on context. In the US or Asia I am a European. In France I am a German. In Germany I am Bavarian. There are layers to identities.
> One has to think, the drop is trade must be temporary and out of spite (from the EU side)
This is a seriously wild accusation.
My cost of sending parcels to Europe, to my family, has almost tripled - what effect do you think that had on me? Am I spitefull towards my family If i send them less parcels now?
Do people in poland sit around thinking how to spite Britain, and have nothing better to do?
All the brexiteera I meet are really full of anger at the EU, they are the ones that have cut off your own nose out of spite
Jusy like most Russians are spitefull towards US/Nato for perceived wrongs, mostly divorsed from reality. They engage in self harm just to harm the supposed object of their spite.
Nothing will even hypothetically ever be gained out of eyiher excersise.
>As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either (without visas and what-not).
As a citizen of a retarded country I cannot freely travel anywhere and have spent over $50,000 on Visas for me and mu family. My entire life is dictated by visa conditions, I have missed many opportunities and it's a source of major anxiety. It really sucks.
You do seem to have a very outside view on things and haven‘t followed the news from the UK much lately if you come to that conclusion. Maybe read some UK newspapers from time to time.
I'm baffled... would you also prefer if all US states would be their own independent countries without free trade and travel? Are there "Texit" or "Calexit" movements in the US? Would you see this as a good thing? Do you think the US would be remotely where they are if it would be 50 tiny countries bickering among each other instead of acting as one?
> As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either (without visas and what-not).
Actually you can:
"Citizens of the United States with a valid US passport can travel to 27 European member countries of the Schengen Area for a maximum of 90 days without having to apply for or obtain a Schengen visa for short-term tourism or a business trip."
Australia was a member of one of ESA’s predecessor organisations, ELDO (European Launcher Development Organisation). When, in the mid-1970s, ELDO merged with ESRO to form ESA, Australia was offered associate membership in ESA; Australia declined under pressure from the US. Some try to paint that as yet another example of American malfeasance, but I think the Americans actually had a good point-given Australia’s notorious stinginess in space funding, the only way we’d have been able to pay for the kind of deep cooperation with ESA that associate membership would entail, would be by downgrading the relationship with NASA. If Australia had committed to a significant increase in space funding, I don’t think the US would have felt threatened by Australia joining ESA-but, of course, we wouldn’t do that.
To add, Australia is a big contributor to the space industry, and now works with ESA and NASA. It contributes to the ESA and NASA ground station network (antennas to talk to spacecraft), has a radio telescope array and JAXA (Japan) has landed two asteroid sample-returns in the outback! And as of a few years ago, Australia has its own space agency, too.
> To add, Australia is a big contributor to the space industry
I'm sorry but I just can't agree with you there. The fact is that Australia still punches well beneath its weight in the space field.
In 2019, Australia came equal second-last (tied with Turkey and ahead of Mexico) in the G20 in terms of government space budgets as a percent of GDP. [0] The top five countries (in order) were the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, and Japan. On a percentage of GDP basis, Australia's national space budget is a fifth of Canada's and an eighth of the UK's; Argentina's is three times Australia's, Brazil's is double, Indonesia and South Arica are ahead of Australia too.
But yeah, we've always been more than happy to host NASA and ESA facilities–provided we don't have to spend much money to do so.
To quote Donald Horne's 1964 book The Lucky Country (whose title so many people have misinterpreted to mean something rather opposite from its author):
> Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise
As an Australian, it makes me kind of sad to say that Horne's words are as true today as when he wrote them almost 60 years ago.
The article is about the ESA though, not the EU. UK is still a member of ESA. Not everyone in the ESA is in the EU (Norway, Switzerland and the UK are non-EU but full members of ESA, Canada is an associate member) and some EU countries aren’t in ESA (Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia are full members of the EU but only associate members of the ESA; Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Malta are full members of the EU but not even associate members of ESA)
ESA, EU and Europe are all different things. The UK left the EU, but they are still ESA member. And unless they declare their island as its own continent, they also remain a part of Europe ;)
> I was under the impression this was a technical contest
What gave you that impression? The big bold "Remember, this competition places the emphasis on the look of the space suit rather than the technical elements" text?
ESA have their own astronauts, one of whom is due to be the first captain of a US spacecraft next year (the rest join Soyuz missions normally). In terms of launches, ESA's first launch was Ariane 1 in 1979.
All right, but apart from the astronauts, the rocket launches, the deep space probes, the Mars orbiter and Spacelab, what have the Europeans ever done for us in space?
Why? Either ML entries will be crap and will be dismissed as crap, or they are good and deserve their place.
It takes skill to craft a good prompt for something like Stable Diffusion. And the competition is not about abstract art, there are many specific requirements because they want artists to come up with a design that is technically feasible. Just try it, all I got was either copies of existing spacesuits, or at best totally impractical or even physically impossible designs. Getting something acceptable requires decent skills with the AI, and probably manual tweaking too.
And they want 3 different angles of the same suit, this pretty much makes it impossible to just use your favorite diffusion model. These models have no idea about how a spacesuit functions, just how to build aesthetically pleasant images that match the keywords. For example it may include a flashlight on the front view, and a different flashlight on the back view, because while it may know how a the front of a flashlight looks, and how the back of a flashlight looks, it can't connect the two unless it has been specially trained for that (for example by showing it a large database of flashlights seen from different angles). And the flashlight is just a detail, there are many of these on the finished picture.
So if you really want to use AI, you may be able to get an initial design, but you'll most likely need an actual human artist to do the 3 views and fix the "bugs". You also need to write some text that explains your design ChatGPT may help you there, but you have to make sure it is consistent with the image.
In fact, the more I think of it, the more deserving I think ML submissions would be. If the winner used AI, it would be an achievement way more important than winning a spacesuit design contest. AIs have already won art competitions, but to my knowledge, never with something realistic. AIs sometimes hallucinate cool things, but it won't cut it here.
Without atmosphere, capes wouldn't billow aesthetically. I'm not sure what they'd end up looking like, but I imagine they'd awkwardly just sort of hang there at a weird angle, and swing with the wearer's rotational movements like a flexible pendulum, getting in the way while looking dorky.
> ESA employees, ESA associated members and jury members are prohibited from entering the competition
Why would one want to exclude them? Maybe one of them has a pretty good idea because the environment makes him/her think a lot about it, for years.
I know it may be due to some rules which are typical when there's some prize to win like when collecting some supermarket points or whatever, but in this case? There's more to win for ESA than just a good design.
Because this is outreach. The goal is not to get space suit designs. The goal is to put the name and existence of the organisation into the head of as many people as possible.
To avoid collusion, or the perception of collusion.
You already paid for the ideas of your own employees. You don't want to pay twice or have the appearance of paying twice.
Your ideas will be evaluated according to the follow evaluation criteria:
Representation of the European identity - both visually and within the accompanying text
Creative but realistic
Quality of the image
Innovative, inspiring design
This isn't about the engineering design of the space suit.
Perhaps this is a bit childish, but I can't help laughing at the lazy pasting of the ESA logo on top of the suits in the drawings with no attempt to match art style or lighting. Feels like I'm shopping on AliExpress.
As an European, I have a hard time trying to come up with what is "European Identity" as there really isn't such a thing. It's dozens of countries with different languages and cultures, occupying the same continental landmass and being economically and politically (somewhat) united.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadWhat is this European Identity? I was under the impression this was a technical contest but I suppose they will simply customize the branding on the American made and engineered EVA suits?
> Proposals have to be submitted in English
Ironic to impose a non-European language for this contest.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that's grand.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English has 5+ million L1 speakers)
> a 4% shrinkage in long-run productivity relative to remaining in the EU, expects the Office for Budget Responsibility, inflation is higher than in the EU, trade has fallen by almost a fifth, while the government itself says the much-trumpeted Australian deal will raise GDP by less than 0.1% a year by 2035. Brexit has raised food prices by 6% says the LSE, while draining the workforce. Eurostar also deliberately leaves a third of seats empty due to crippling EU/UK border delays.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/31/three-...
> According to figures from the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis – which tracks trends in global trade – UK goods export volumes remained 3.3% below their 2018 average in October, in contrast to an average 4.4% increase seen across all advanced economies.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/31/why-the-uk-...
The government failed at every level of due dilligence, like it exited EURATOM without agreeing any replacement. It has nothing to do with EU /single market, but they quit it anyway. 99.99% of brexiters didn't know Euratom even exists.
UK exited customs union (despite this not being asked at referendun) but to this date has no customs checks because it has not hired officers or built facilities to carry out checks.
It has failed to provide France with custom checking facilities at dover, and there were queues for hundreds of miles this summer with truck drivers defecating out in the open.
Like some of this is so mad its hard to believe.
My cost of sending parcels to EU has tripled overnight.
New trade deals already "done" with countries outside the EU are either a copy and paste of the existing EU deal (Japan) or very limited and rushed (Australia) so they will have almost no impact in offsetting the 15% drop. Actual replacement trade deals (with the US for example) will take many years of negotiation and may not ever happen.
Small/medium size businesses have to deal with EU customs as a 3rd country now. So the cost of selling into the the largest free-trade single market in the world, right on your doorstep, is too high for direct sales to be in any way competitive. Any company serious about selling goods into the EU has to pay for warehousing in the EU somewhere, and sell from an EU subsidiary to avoid the massive admin overhead and delayed shipments.
Larger businesses can soak up the costs of warehousing (or they had them already), so the main affect of Brexit is to cripple small UK businesses that are now expected to sell to south-east Asia, or something.
This is many billions of lost tax revenue due to the reduced economic growth.
The social cost is what most "remainers" are annoyed about. Having EU citizenship stolen away from you and your children, now only the rich can easily work, study or retire abroad again, just like it should be i guess...
And the matter is not even settled, support for remaining in the EU has risen significantly, that's what a 48/52 result in a fudged referendum does, divide a country.
[1] https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexi...
> now only the rich can work or retire abroad again
This is the same for almost all countries though, isn't it? As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either (without visas and what-not).
Perhaps time will tell if this ultimately was good or not. I can understand both sides of the issue - remaining an independent nation and suffering the costs an independent nation must endure, or join a federated government and effectively become a State (in US speak) within the EU.
The goods that the UK has that other EU nations wanted are being replaced by other EU nations. They are now more competitive than UK businesses that have to deal with EU customs checks and other bureaucracy/taxes on a per-country basis. You can say it is "protectionist", which is what certain politicians in the UK like to cast the single market as now, but this is how every economy in the world is run. The US market is protected too.
> As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either.
True, but as a UK citizen i COULD before 2019. As a US citizen you can work/study/retire in any US state. Would you be happy if that was taken away?
The member states of the EU are still independent nations, they are not controlled by a federal government like the US. Getting into EU lawmaking is a rabbit hole, but my feeling is there is a give and take that overall benefits the member states. At the end of they day each country still controls it's own destiny, as the UK felt it needed to prove.
It likely would not take a whole lot for member nations to cede enough power to the EU and make that a reality - either intentionally or unintentionally, gradually or all at once. Within the US, State's rights and powers have been slowly eroded over the years as well - with a surprising number of people supporting increased centralized power within the US federal government.
People already refer to the EU like it's a singular entity. I wonder if this will become a reality in the not-so-distance future.
There's pro's and con's to that, of course, much like States within the US.
Its currently impossible and would take decades - each country has seperate army that speaks a different language, has vigorous national identity. It has sovereign government and paliaments.
There is nothing EU can do to compell a member state to do anything it doesnt want to do. EU is like a big mega-trade deal more than a government.
Currently Hingary and Poland are flouting EU laws on democracy, the executive jas seized control of the courts and EU can do nothing about it.
Especially after Brexit people start to realize that. (Thank you UK?)
But there isn't a EU national identity to speak of.
Mostly no one would say "I'm a citizen of the EU" but "I'm a citizen of France/Germany/Poland which is a member of the EU".
The "in group" vs "out group" distinction runs along national borders when it comes to language, laws, news, government and culture.
At best there are "even-more-out groups" when it comes to EU-foreign topics such as economic treaties and refugees.
This is a seriously wild accusation.
My cost of sending parcels to Europe, to my family, has almost tripled - what effect do you think that had on me? Am I spitefull towards my family If i send them less parcels now?
Do people in poland sit around thinking how to spite Britain, and have nothing better to do?
All the brexiteera I meet are really full of anger at the EU, they are the ones that have cut off your own nose out of spite
Jusy like most Russians are spitefull towards US/Nato for perceived wrongs, mostly divorsed from reality. They engage in self harm just to harm the supposed object of their spite.
Nothing will even hypothetically ever be gained out of eyiher excersise.
>As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either (without visas and what-not).
As a citizen of a retarded country I cannot freely travel anywhere and have spent over $50,000 on Visas for me and mu family. My entire life is dictated by visa conditions, I have missed many opportunities and it's a source of major anxiety. It really sucks.
I'm baffled... would you also prefer if all US states would be their own independent countries without free trade and travel? Are there "Texit" or "Calexit" movements in the US? Would you see this as a good thing? Do you think the US would be remotely where they are if it would be 50 tiny countries bickering among each other instead of acting as one?
> As a US citizen, I cannot freely just travel across the EU either (without visas and what-not).
Actually you can:
"Citizens of the United States with a valid US passport can travel to 27 European member countries of the Schengen Area for a maximum of 90 days without having to apply for or obtain a Schengen visa for short-term tourism or a business trip."
(from: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/us-citizens/)
...same for UK, except you can even stay for 6 months instead of 3.
As a "non-full member", sure, but I'm still surprised. Fancy that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency?wprov=sf...
I'm sorry but I just can't agree with you there. The fact is that Australia still punches well beneath its weight in the space field.
In 2019, Australia came equal second-last (tied with Turkey and ahead of Mexico) in the G20 in terms of government space budgets as a percent of GDP. [0] The top five countries (in order) were the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, and Japan. On a percentage of GDP basis, Australia's national space budget is a fifth of Canada's and an eighth of the UK's; Argentina's is three times Australia's, Brazil's is double, Indonesia and South Arica are ahead of Australia too.
But yeah, we've always been more than happy to host NASA and ESA facilities–provided we don't have to spend much money to do so.
To quote Donald Horne's 1964 book The Lucky Country (whose title so many people have misinterpreted to mean something rather opposite from its author):
> Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise
As an Australian, it makes me kind of sad to say that Horne's words are as true today as when he wrote them almost 60 years ago.
[0] https://www.oecd.org/sti/inno/space-forum/measuring-economic... page 4
How is English non-European?
Indo-European -> West Germanic -> Anglo-Frisian -> English
What gave you that impression? The big bold "Remember, this competition places the emphasis on the look of the space suit rather than the technical elements" text?
Last launch: 21 December, 2022
Ever heard of the James Webb Space Telescope? Many consider it the most expensive, most complicated, most important single object launched into space.
It was launched to space aboard the 256th Ariane launch from French Guiana and the launch "was described by NASA as "flawless" and "perfect".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_VA256
It takes skill to craft a good prompt for something like Stable Diffusion. And the competition is not about abstract art, there are many specific requirements because they want artists to come up with a design that is technically feasible. Just try it, all I got was either copies of existing spacesuits, or at best totally impractical or even physically impossible designs. Getting something acceptable requires decent skills with the AI, and probably manual tweaking too.
And they want 3 different angles of the same suit, this pretty much makes it impossible to just use your favorite diffusion model. These models have no idea about how a spacesuit functions, just how to build aesthetically pleasant images that match the keywords. For example it may include a flashlight on the front view, and a different flashlight on the back view, because while it may know how a the front of a flashlight looks, and how the back of a flashlight looks, it can't connect the two unless it has been specially trained for that (for example by showing it a large database of flashlights seen from different angles). And the flashlight is just a detail, there are many of these on the finished picture.
So if you really want to use AI, you may be able to get an initial design, but you'll most likely need an actual human artist to do the 3 views and fix the "bugs". You also need to write some text that explains your design ChatGPT may help you there, but you have to make sure it is consistent with the image.
In fact, the more I think of it, the more deserving I think ML submissions would be. If the winner used AI, it would be an achievement way more important than winning a spacesuit design contest. AIs have already won art competitions, but to my knowledge, never with something realistic. AIs sometimes hallucinate cool things, but it won't cut it here.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z_GF0KAAkg
Why would one want to exclude them? Maybe one of them has a pretty good idea because the environment makes him/her think a lot about it, for years.
I know it may be due to some rules which are typical when there's some prize to win like when collecting some supermarket points or whatever, but in this case? There's more to win for ESA than just a good design.
Because this is outreach. The goal is not to get space suit designs. The goal is to put the name and existence of the organisation into the head of as many people as possible.
To avoid collusion, or the perception of collusion.
You already paid for the ideas of your own employees. You don't want to pay twice or have the appearance of paying twice.
You don't do that by asking people for spacesuit designs, you do it by landing on comets.
They are stylish and practical, and best of all, they are already mass-produced in Chy-nah. Waste not, want not.
That's so incredible stupid....
EU isn't like the US.