Airbus has significant (at least 25% last I looked) state ownership by various European governments. They did the development, the launching is done by Arianespace which is half owned by Safran (which is also part owned by France). That combined with the Ariane programs themselves being initiated and funded by the ESA makes it a much weaker claim to be a commercial rocket launch.
It's going to be hard to find a space rocket company which has 0% state involvement (e.g. Isar Aerospace and SpaceX have also accepted some amount of funding through venture rounds or contracts one way or the other at some point which can be traced back to governments, or purchased use of government launch facilities) by nature of "why wouldn't you accept a government launch at some point if you've already built a cost efficient rocket" or the like... but I think it's fair for Isar to claim to be launching the first commercial European space rocket since the program to build the rocket wasn't initiated by a state space agency or fulfilling a state agency contract by doing the initial flight.
Russia launches from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, which is in Asia (per the traditional Europe-Asia boundary of the Ural river).
Also, most EU launches are from French Guiana, which is a part of France and therefore a part of the EU, so there have been commercial space launches from the EU(the polity), just not from Europe(the landmass).
The nice thing is that even today, some American astronauts are flying to the ISS from Russia on Russian rockets, and some Russian astronauts are flying from the USA on American rockets. They're doing that for redundancy of getting their people to space, and for the general cooperation.
The place was originally selected because of the combination of several factors:
- Closeness to the equator.
- Ease of access by rail.
- Lack of populated/foreign areas at the path of falling booster stages.
- Relative closeness to production centers.
- Far enough from borders and small population around the site to make spying harder (remember that in the early days it was also an ICBM launch site).
Other central Asian Soviet republics were farther south, but much worse on the other factors.
Russia simply continues to use it because of the existing infrastructure and tries to gradually move its civilian space program to the new Vostochny Cosmodrome.
The article talks about the first orbital rocket, while Miura 1 was a suborbital rocket, not capable of reaching orbit (but capable of "reaching space" which means going up and then immediately falling down to Earth, like any suborbital rocket). There's a big difference between reaching orbit and "reaching space" with a suborbital flight. For example, suborbital New Shepard reaches a max speed of 3568 km/h, while to get to orbit, a rocket must accelerate to something around 25000 km/h.
Miura 1 was not only suborbital, it even failed to pass the Karman line (by a wide margin) to reach space in any capacity at all in the previous launch attempt. It only made it 46 km, the design capacity is for up to 150 km, and space is generally considered 100 km.
This (new) rocket may get to claim to be the first commercial European rocket to reach space at all on top of the same for an orbital rocket in one go.
The article talks about the first orbital rocket to be launched from Europe. The title is not very precise, but orbital rockets are the only ones that matter anyway.
It is expected that this rocket will explode and reaching orbit is not planned. The company said getting at least 30 seconds of flight time would be nice. Their only goal is to collect as much data as they can in this first flight.
>Whats the cost per kg into space? How does that compare to something like Space X?
It is a test , so there are no prices we could use to compare.
Also Europe will need to continue to invest in local rocket companies since it is important for defence and also not depend on the whims of a self declared enemy and should I dare say it here ... yeah, a fascist that controls the USA president
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[ 214 ms ] story [ 1011 ms ] threadIt's going to be hard to find a space rocket company which has 0% state involvement (e.g. Isar Aerospace and SpaceX have also accepted some amount of funding through venture rounds or contracts one way or the other at some point which can be traced back to governments, or purchased use of government launch facilities) by nature of "why wouldn't you accept a government launch at some point if you've already built a cost efficient rocket" or the like... but I think it's fair for Isar to claim to be launching the first commercial European space rocket since the program to build the rocket wasn't initiated by a state space agency or fulfilling a state agency contract by doing the initial flight.
Also, most EU launches are from French Guiana, which is a part of France and therefore a part of the EU, so there have been commercial space launches from the EU(the polity), just not from Europe(the landmass).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_at_the_Guiana_Space_Cent...
Was nice having world peace from a NATO's point of view in 2011-2013.
Russian launches continued till third wave of Ukraine territory conflicts in 2022, says wikipedia.
- Closeness to the equator.
- Ease of access by rail.
- Lack of populated/foreign areas at the path of falling booster stages.
- Relative closeness to production centers.
- Far enough from borders and small population around the site to make spying harder (remember that in the early days it was also an ICBM launch site).
Other central Asian Soviet republics were farther south, but much worse on the other factors.
Russia simply continues to use it because of the existing infrastructure and tries to gradually move its civilian space program to the new Vostochny Cosmodrome.
although their next launches will be from french guiana
This (new) rocket may get to claim to be the first commercial European rocket to reach space at all on top of the same for an orbital rocket in one go.
https://sscspace.com/esrange/
> Esrange, owned and operated by Swedish Space Corporation (...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Space_Corporation
> Company type: Government-owned
So, Esrange is government-owned, but the company that makes the rocket is private.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014
As others have explained, the news here is a rocket reaching orbit
It is expected that this rocket will explode and reaching orbit is not planned. The company said getting at least 30 seconds of flight time would be nice. Their only goal is to collect as much data as they can in this first flight.
(German) https://www.heise.de/news/Vor-Isar-Aerospace-Testflug-Die-Ra...
As far as I understand, reaching orbit is actually planned, it's just not expected to get it right on the first try.
It is a test , so there are no prices we could use to compare. Also Europe will need to continue to invest in local rocket companies since it is important for defence and also not depend on the whims of a self declared enemy and should I dare say it here ... yeah, a fascist that controls the USA president
2010-2020s: Competition and pricing pressure Launch Vehicle Payload cost per kg Ariane 5G $9,167 Long March 3B $4,412 Proton $4,320 Falcon 9 $2,720
looks like it would have to hit at least 1/2 price to be competitive with the non-reuse rockets from other countries.