This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily.
Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.
A good historical nugget is that the Americans got a huge leg up in the space race by importing the Germans who worked on the V-2 program.
Germans killed Soviets by the millions. If you were a German of value (like a rocket scientist) you were eager to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could get their hands on you.
If you were the Americans, you distrusted the Soviets already, so it was a win-win.
They got a leg up and still the Russians with Sputnik got into space first, on top of splitting Korea and winning in Vietnam and having the nuclear bomb fall into their lap and to top it off they appear to have the Manchurian candidate in the White House.
Take a deep breath.
Sorry you had to import nazis to get into orbit :shrug:
If you can't see those points, you need to take several deep breaths.
With fairness to the Soviets, the USSR's reputation for rocket artillery was nearly as impressive as Germany's in WWII. The Allies had less experience scaling and deploying the technology, so they had more to gain by taking in the Peenemünde researchers.
This is such a gross comment. 'nugget', 'win-win', 'Germans of value'.
Paperclip didn't grab random 'Germans', it pulled in Nazi mass murders and rewarded them for their crimes.
> "Rudolph was barely able to produce four rockets that were later returned from Peenemünde as defective. There are estimates that approximately 20,000 laborers died while building the V-2 rockets at Mittelwerk, more than the V-2 killed in bombardments."
> According to fellow scientists in Paperclip, Rickhey had bragged about killing slave laborers at Mittelwerk.
> Camp inmates, mostly Polish and Soviet POWs, were locked inside of a portable pressure chamber built by the Luftwaffe in which the interior air pressure could be altered to simulate the effects of freefalling from a high-altitude without oxygen. Of the 200 test subjects employed in the experiment 80 were killed by the tests outright, with the remainder subsequently being executed by the SS. ... several Luftwaffe officials associated with Strughold's Institute for Aviation Medicine, including his former research assistant Dr. Hermann Becker-Freyseng and his ex-commanding officer Oskar Schröder, were convicted of crimes against humanity in connection with the Dachau experiments at the 1946–1947 Nuremberg Doctor's Trial. During these proceedings, Strughold contributed several affidavits for the defense on behalf of his accused colleagues.
> When shown a picture of himself standing behind Himmler, von Braun said that he had only worn the SS uniform that one time, but in 2002 a former SS officer at Peenemünde told the BBC that von Braun had regularly worn the SS uniform to official meetings. He began as an Untersturmführer (Second lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Major). Von Braun later stated that these were simply technical promotions received each year regularly by mail.
> The V-2 was a quantum leap of technological change. We got to the Moon using V-2 technology but this was technology that was developed with massive resources, including some particularly grim ones. The V-2 programme was hugely expensive in terms of lives, with the Nazis using slave labour to manufacture these rockets.
It seems you are misreading my comment and the cold realism in which it is articulated (and which the relevant historical actors in this moment operated under) as some sort of endorsement of the act or an ignorance of the accompanying atrocities.
Rest assured I only sought to comment in that manner because I find generally on a forum such as this, leading with a sense of outrage (regardless of how justified) is typically unhelpful. I share your sentiments, though I sort of take it as a given on this forum that these aspects of WWII are known. I would guess far less people know about Operation Paperclip, thus the "nugget".
If upon learning about this someone needs me to connect the dots to your sentiments, well frankly I would suggest such a person is likely beyond my reach given the nature of the venue we find ourselves in (pseudonymous forum).
I would encourage you to not so readily cast aspersions upon your fellow interlocutors here based on turn of phrase alone. Have a nice day.
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This went both ways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim
Yes a good thing to point out, however the American initiative was more successful, was it not?
Largely because raw numbers aside, most of the top talent wanted to avoid the Soviets and thus the US was the only logical option. That is, part of what made the American job on this easier is top German talent anticipated some "Operation Osoaviakhim" (or worse) scenario and thus sought out the US as the only way to get out ahead of it.
von Braun made major contributions to NASA. My understanding is relatively speaking, the Soviets got the scraps. Not that it made no impact, but just to say the impact of the Germans on the American space program should not be understated, and I don't think it would be accurate to assess the fruits of these two competing operations as equivalent.
von Braun and others had a major hand in the Saturn V. Who did the Soviets manage to seize of equal caliber?
Would you say von Braun is your favorite SS officer? Or are there other contenders for your most favorite high 'caliber'!? Nazi?
For any unfamiliar with the history, Russia was a mass murdering machine in this era, vaporizing tens of millions of people, including Russians, in very short spans of time without even a second thought.
We all know Germans was. And some people would fling fecal allegations that “so was the US!”. No. German and Russian actions were categorically different than wartime casualties (even brutal, possibly criminal, wartime casualties like fire bombing heavily civilian enemy areas like Dresden)
Criminals, the Soviet troops were unleashed and brutal. They murdered civilians indiscriminately and raped women and kids massively.
(raped nearly two million German women during the occupation, plus Soviet and Polish women liberated from concentration camps, it was the norm in every country they went. Hungary, Poland, Germany, China, Korea, and so on).
You're right, America didn't intentionally engineer the death of millions until after the war, when it became the undisputed global superpower.
...If you choose to intentionally ignore slavery in the American South, Convict Leasing, and Jim Crow.
see also what the CIA got up to in Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19...
And in your living memory: Vietnam, Korea, the vile shit we did to Haiti and Chile, the 'Banana Republics', Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, unconditionally supporting Israel and the Gulf States various war crimes and genocides, etc...
And of course, most recently, the sudden and complete excision of life-saving aid to children in Africa, leaving the world's most vulnerable to starve.
And also the total embargo on Cuba, to ensure starvation, with the intention of conquest, resource extraction, and collective punishment.
but God forbid someone on a message board tarnish the US's sterling reputation (relative to some of history's worst) during WWII.
> If you were a German of value (like a rocket scientist) you were eager to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could...
Misleading. Pretty much all Germans were eager to surrender to the Western Allies - US/UK/France. That became the German government's official top priority in the closing days of the war, and Eisenhower threatened to seal the Western Front (to German soldiers and civilians fleeing the Soviets) when the Germans dragged their heels on his terms of surrender.
A relatively brief treatment can be found here - https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/cat...
True, I just meant that if you had something of value (like rocket expertise) you would be more likely to get favorable terms. And you knew the Soviets would be extra interested in you. Thus the added "eagerness".
But yes the point is on the whole, Germans did not want to surrender to the Soviets. Germans didn't kill millions of American civilians. They didn't level American cities.
So, it was perfectly logical as Germany collapsed for any German to fear the retribution of the Soviet armed forces, who they had every reason to see as filled with a rage and a sense of purpose no American would have been able to contemplate.
> "The findings identified an unintended opening of the vent valve
How do they figure things like this out, after a rocket goes "boom"?
Plesetsk is also european soil.
Yeah, just like Toronto is American soil
Europe is a vibe based concept, a place can be European or not depending on the vibes. Even the east west central etc. are completely vibe based. Portugal for example is Eastern European country, meanwhile Romania is central according to some textbooks.
Portugal is not Eastern European and it would be incredibly rare for Europeans to identify it as such. Have you been to Europe in your life?
It's mostly a meme https://old.reddit.com/r/PortugalIsEastEurope/
They're using "Europe" as political shorthand for Western Europe
Kourou as well, although maybe a different definition of European.
Would maybe call it European territory but not soil. But yeah, as you say it's how you define it.
Yeah in general it’s good advice to not existentially challenge the Germans.
I wonder whether the Sámi people have been consulted or compensated for the use of their traditional lands as a rocket launch site. Given Norway’s long history of suppressing Sámi people and their land rights, I'd be interested to know how that was handled.
In this house we believe the first Neanderthal did not consent
Interesting:
Just south of the launchpad lies Bukkekjerka, a protected Sami cultural monument. Prior to Christianity, sacrifices were made within a cave facing the sea. In most recent times, for the past half-century, there has been an annual open-air church service, which attracts many from across Andøya – perhaps even some who remember or even resided in the disappeared town of Haugnes.
One can hope they can repurpose this to a shield for Ukraine
This is such a breath of fresh air
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Not for the Sami people who have to inhale the rocket exhaust blast.
Istar's Spectrum rocket does not use RP-1 (kerosene), like Falcon 9 and Electron, which burns very dirty.
They are using liquid propane, which burns extremely cleanly, especially when combined with their liquid oxygen.
There is a lot of noise, but that should be the only pollution generated by this launch.
Isar Aerospace launch into orbit [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1DUqLjecc (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580325)
Thanks for that video. Super cool that they got pro streamers NSF involved.
Really interesting that they will be launching from Canada as well.
Really beautiful with the rocket shining brightly upon the mountains as it lifts off
Made with imipolex g?
How can it be the first European rocket? There’s the ESA! Are you telling me we have all these organisations and none of them have ever launched from their own continent?
Europe isn't on or remotely near the equator, which is somewhat favorable for launches.
> The German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space Center in northern Norway today
To speculate, they could be targeting a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
ESA launches French Guiana. Since it is cheaper to launch closer to the equator with the extra speed provided by the earth's rotation.
For satellites that should be in Sun-synchronous orbit Andøy is a great place to launch from
Really comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator.
It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.
French Guiana is not a colony, it is a region of France. People who live there have the same constitutional rights as anyone living in mainland France.
It has the same status in France as Alaska does in the US.
While I agree with your analysis, would you think is the best to use the same generic term "colonialism" for both the situations in French Guyana and let's say Venezuela in the last year? I would prefer more words to differentiate a bit, but maybe that's just me.
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Ireland is not part of Schengen as well for example, it is because that is much harder to practically achieve for folks living on islands.
Guianans tend to get pissed off if outsiders suggest in any way that they are any different as a French region from l'Hexagone (the French mainland). Your banging on about colonies would not be well received there.
For what it's worth, Metropolitan France used to claim Algeria wasn't a colony either.
>Really comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator.
>It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.
That's the dumbest comment i read since a long time, thanks.
> How can it be the first European rocket?
Not at all. You've missed the "Private" in the headline. And that it apparently is.
Article says Western Europe, but Norway is in Northern Europe.
“First rocket to launch from Europe outside Russia” would have been perfectly correct.
In the political sense, «Western Europe» is typically taken to be «NATO Europe», and «Eastern Europe» is «Warsaw Pact Europe». Which is different from a strict geographic definition.
That is also not correct anymore as Northern countries were reallocated to include the Baltics in UN as an example.
They launch from Guiana afaik
French Guiana to be exact, which is a different country
Edit: Misread
They meant French Guiana is a different country to Guyana... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guianas
The French used to launch their rockets from Algeria. Their first satellite was launched from there. Since then they moved to (French) Guiana.
The UK launched from Australia.
And Russia launches some rockets from Plesetsk, in Europe.
It isn't. Plesetsk is in European Russia and was built to prevent overreliance on Baikonur
You are thinking about Vostochny in Russian Far East. Plesetsk was an early ICBM launch site that started doing orbital launches in 1966. It was the busiest spaceport in Soviet times, and the cumulative number of orbital launches from Plesetsk still probably exceeds those from Florida.
i was under the impression that the closer you launch from the equator, the less sustained force you need. wrong?
Right. You get a free ~1000mph from the equator.
The Germans also launched the first rocket to make it to space on June 20th 1944, though it wasn't privately made.
Fantastic job!
The sooner Europe cuts itself off from the US crazy billionaires, the better - on all levels (software and manufacture processes are the two biggest issues). Today we already could see the US surrender team crawling up to dictator Putin. Enough is enough - agent Krasnov needs to be isolated.
I don’t think America is so far gone. We have issues sure, but I for one still believe that we can be better.
Trump be damned, Europe and America are stronger when they work together.
Americans have to hope that the US will move past trumo and not repeat that mistake, but for europeans its most prudent to prepare for a world where such a corrupt wannabe distator doesnt have have that much leverage over them.
The US and europe would be stronger together if the US acted in good faith. Absent that, decoupling is the right choice
Or maybe Europe just thinks if you can't beat 'em, join 'em:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/world/europe/germany-afd-...
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The Germans will now distance themselves from ArianeSpace and go their own way. Let the infighting begin!!
Does it mean that?
Europe has had a space agency for a while now. So this story isn't "Europeans finally started to launch for space" but a private European company chose to launch from a continental location.
It's funny how we can't be celebrate a European achievement without trying to interpret it into relationship to the US.
Yes, they've had a space agency, but the only launchers are expensive legacy vehicles.
This launch is a move towards lower cost and more frequent launches, that in the US are provided by SpaceX.
It's not even the US in general, it's SpaceX specifically. Only the US and China have demonstrated reusable rockets, and only SpaceX demonstrated the actual reuse, the cadence and the economy of scale that it brings.
> Does it mean that?
When the US government funded SpaceX, it was motivated in no small degree by a desire to not be permanently reliant on a geopolitical wildcard (Russia) for getting astronauts into orbit. Now that the US itself has become a geopolitical wildcard, savvy countries know that they need to seek out alternatives to SpaceX under more stable regimes.
Have there been other rocket launches from continental Europe?
From a sovereignty perspective, does a launch from continental Europe actually matter when Arianespace/CNES/ESA has been launching from France for decades?
I do not think so, but anyway, it is definitely not a proof that we are further decoupling ourselves from the US, which is the claim made in the root comment. France has launched rockets from France for decades. Being an ocean away does not make Kourou reliant on the US.
There is no sovereignty perspective because Europe isn't even sovereign to begin with. For starters it doesn't even have a common army
Orbital? Maybe not. Sub-orbital and ballistic? Absolutely.
hehe, yes but if it wasnt for german rocket scientists the americans and russians would not have had space agencies (at least not that early)
> It's funny how we can't be celebrate a European achievement without trying to interpret it into relationship to the US.
It's because Europe is absolutely obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.
Yeah, in the same way that as a home owner I’d be “obsessed” with my neighbour if he was showing a predilection towards arson.
I’d love to be able to go a day without having to see whatever the latest stupidity we’ll have to deal with the fallout from is, I really would.
You folks over the pond really do think we think about you that much don’t you, prior to Trump I didn’t give much of a shit what the US did (except when you were destabilising the Middle East but I guess everyone needs a hobby), was literally none of my business and I didn’t have to live there (fortunately).
Now we have to pay attention because what you always where in part is in full control and it’s essentially impossible to ignore.
I long for the days when we can go back to the happy place of ignoring your government day to day until it’s time for another Middle East intervention.
Til then and for the avoidance of any doubt, I loathe Trump, I don’t like the people in his government, I don’t like the people who voted for him and the ones who didn’t vote and could have, the only people in America I have any sympathy for is the ones who voted for anyone but him/this shit show, the rest of you got what you deserved and will continue to do so.
So with that as your president if you still believe in American Exceptionalism you can shove it.
Hope that was clear enough.
> It's funny how we can't be celebrate a European achievement without trying to interpret it into relationship to the US.
It really isn’t funny. The US shat the bed and for now the repercussions are mainly being felt outside the US. When the US realises what it’s lost it’s going to be too late.
Oh we (the non idiots here) know full well what we lost. If Europe has a larger and more substantial science / technology community, that will just mean more trips/job offers in EU for me, so go Europe !
As an American, I welcome a multi-polar world where Europe pulls its weight when it comes to science, technology and engineering! More so in geopolitical matters. It’s always been very draining for one empire or nation to maintain world peace. The 19th century was Pax Britannica, the 20th, after WW2, was Pax Americana, we can now hope that Pax AmEuropana can offer a counter to the crazy rapid growth of Asia and also find common ground with those nations.
They started developing this rocket in the late 2010s, way before the current US craziness (or the current level of craziness anyway). Independent access to space is always desirable for countries that can muster the resources, but this is just one of many companies that appeared back then as a response to SpaceX's initial success.
Yeah this is just the effect of SpaceX showcasing "space launch is no longer the realm of government efforts only".
They kicked off the wave of commercial space launch - and now, it reached the EU too.
Eh, you can split us Europeans up into two camps; those who do not want to see the problem and those who couldn't look away.
The second camp saw the craziness when the later Bush was elected a second time.
one of those bush votes was to ensure he could clean up his own mess.
lmao what
I’m curious what you mean by this. At face value it seems like a weird rationalization but I get the sense I’m not reading this correctly.
I'd split it into 2 camps. Elites who realize Europe isn't a unified group or has a military strong enough for defense..
And people who get wet when France says they are going to send soldiers to Ukraine and it never materializes.
The general population has 0 understanding of international relations. It's the United States and China right now. Any other belief comes from someone who has read 0 international relations Realism books.
I would bet any amount that if you go to a random European city and stop 100 random people on the street you'd be lucky if one person has even heard of Mearsheimer. I think you're also overthinking how the EU got created. I don't think pre-EU Europe was on the brink of violence either. It was more IMO simplistic (but possibly correct, who knows) thinking that it's stronger (economically) as a block. A lot of present day Europe issues that might lead to bigger problems are potentially worse because of the EU.
Even the "educated" people on HN have literal incorrect understanding.
It's a difficult problem to solve.
One would think that ze germans would be among the first to be conquering space with all that german engineering.
They are - but in cooperation with others. Parts of the Orion capsule of the current Artemis mission program are based on the German ATV, which is a capsule which was developed to supply ISS. On ISS there are German modules like Galileo. German Spacelab was a major component of many Space Shuttle missions. German companies like Zeiss provided optics and laser components for Apollo. To name a few, besides lots of satellites and other things. However after WW2 there were different political decisions, so that Germany won't build its own rockets, but German technology was key to Saturn V and Ariane rockets.
Aside from technology, Germany also got major control centers and mission planning capability in Cologne and Oberpfaffenhofen.
Most components are there, but not the political will to go on a national mission.
I mean, Operation Paperclip and Von Braun were central to the success of the Apollo program. The Soviets had a similar postwar-German-capture program, if I remember correctly.
Coupled or uncoupled, an equal relationship between the US and the EU is much healthier. Europe should have an economy, military and industrial capacity similar to the US.
While in the current case I agree it is the path that should be taken, ideally I would prefer efficient relations, where people cooperate rather than having to duplicate everything because they don't trust their neighbor (should I make my bread because the baker might decide to poison me?!).
But having educated people everywhere is hard, so some people, because they don't get how some stuff works, they try to abuse friends and allies and make things worse (inefficient) for everybody in the process.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”. A Europe that is internally powerful can conduct trade in the fair and liberal way that matches its ideals.
I think having more distribution in launch locations and more provider options will ultimately be a net positive in the long run.
The EU already had quite a bit of non-EU spaceflight capability, both in terms of rockets and launch sites.
I think you meant non-US?
Although Ariane's rockets are wildly expensive and uncompetitive compared to SpaceX.
They are right now, but if Japan can do it, and China can do it so can Europe and by the way, so can Australia, New Zealand and Canada they have the abilities they just have to have the will and if they haven’t learned anything recently, they better develop the will. Once again congratulations.
None of the countries you name is even close to SpaceX. Not even close. Their most ambitious prototypes are on par or behind the rocket SpaceX has been flying for a decade commercially.
They are more expensive but the figures I have seen are 3x for Ariane 5 and 2x for Ariane 6 (source : https://spacenexus.us/guide/space-launch-cost-comparison).
Then, it depends on what you need to do. A 3x cost if you deploy a strategic constellation is fine. A 3x cost if you want to launch huge payloads for a Mars trip (I know costs were for LEO, just giving an example) is probably uncompetitive.
No, counterintuitively Ariane is non-EU. It launches from South America
Curious fact: France's longest border is with Brazil.
EU outermost region to be exact.
If I drive my German-made VW sedan on American roads - how many people consider it an American car, and wonder if Germany has a real car industry or not?
Last time I checked, France was part of the EU
Cost decreases with scale. Spacex was also wildly expensive, it grew up thanks to government assistance
This is an inaccurate simplification
No because of reduction of bureaucracy. ESA is the prime example of 1 engineer to 50 managers culture.
Except for the fact that SpaceX had a hard time getting any contracts at first because they were all going to Boeing and Lockheed Martin since the 1990s and even when SpaceX came to the market they had to compete at first with ULA and fact that they made it cheaper by orders by magnitude. Except for the fact that Musk almost went personally bankrupt trying to get SpaceX off the ground. Except for all those facts yea sure maybe... haha nope you're still wrong.
Yeah, I really hate this revisionism of Elon as an extremely wealthy apartheid emerald mine heir who was a dumb guy who happened to get lucky at paypal and then stole all his money from the government while operating a car and rocket company. There is plenty to criticize about him, but SpaceX dramatically decreased cost to orbit which had reliance on Russian technology at the time.
Are we forgetting about Ariane?
Launched from South America, not Europe.
Ariane is from the ESA, which is an organization under EU. The claim was that "EU is finally decoupling itself from the USA". My point is: the EU already has Ariane, for instance. It decoupled a long time ago.
ESA is a separate entity to the EU.
(When the UK left the EU it was able to remain in ESA because of this separation.)
It's from the European part of South America.
I think being a competitor in a market doesn't mean you're 'decoupling' from it, rather you're on equal footing.
I think we are stronger together. European technology has been critical to many important American space missions, and that should continue to be the case.
An ecosystem where we develop things independently is one where everyone loses.
Yes, definitely, but being together by choice instead of by necessity is vastly preferable.
Especially given that recent history has shown us that we're back to "power" being the only language spoken.
__
Rel: The ecosystem thing.
I would challenge that, because if there's one thing where the US has had absurd leverage over the EU (and world, for that matter), then it's tech ecosystems.
A healthy ecosystem would not be owned by SV/US alone.
So right now, we're not really "strong together" but rather weakly dependent. That should be remediated, and decoupling like this is exactly the tool for that.
>Especially given that recent history has shown us that we're back to "power" being the only language spoken.
"Power being the only language spoken", never left in the first place in order to get back to it, it's how the world always worked and will always work.
Granted, power wasn't actually the "language spoken", but more accurately it was the stick ensuring the enforcement of the terms agreed within the "language spoken", a lesson as old as time that many in EU forgot after post-USSR collapse and now have to re-learn it, but at a heavy cost and with added interest.
"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", couldn't be more true.
Always is such a strong word.
> I think we are stronger together
That's pretty damn obvious to everyone with a half of brain, yet here we are being pulled apart.
I dont think the EU is stronger when they get bullied and undermined by trump, or whichever american president decides to dust off trump's playbook in the future
I think the stronger together argument implies good faith co-operation on both sides
The opinion of american billionaires is driving this.
Multiple European nations gaining their own independent launch capabilities will merely result in the sinking of ESA and ArianeSpace. Look forward to lots of infighting in the near future.
ESA is going to remain on the mission/payload side. ArianeSpace makes sense as a launch services provider handling everything that's not the rocket. ArianeGroup (the company that actually builds the rockets) will just become the French rocket company that will end up competing with the Italian and German ones.
Like most "small rocket companies" they'll come to the conclusion that they need bigger rockets to launch bigger payloads. Rockets that compete directly with Ariane 6. With some luck these will be reusable to, making Ariane 6 and ArianeSpace obsolete.
ESA and ArianeSpace will slowly but surely decay into obsolescence.
If they haven’t gotten the message yet, they never will congratulations, plan on doing more because you’re gonna have to.
The french always had Ariane??
The Ariane is as much German as it is French. It is considerably Italian too.
This is incorrect, ArianeGroup is mostly french, it's a joint venture between Airbus and Safran.
It is indeed a huge success but it also underlines how far ahead the rest of the world is.
So what should they do nothing? They have to get started somehow if Japan and China can do it so can Europe, and I think long-term once again, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand won’t be far behind…
That's essentially what they have done for military/defense.
The United States saves the day. France pretends they are in charge with grand speeches.
I was close to a European immigrant and 2 things she was shocked about:
How rich the United States was. Even our poor had more than her upper middle class family had.
How people in the United States do not take 2 hour coffee and cigarette breaks.
Utter bullshit.
Is this the joke section of the comments?
I think New Zealand is ahead. RocketLab was the second company in the world after SpaceX to get a privately developed launch vehicle to orbit, back in 2017. They've now had 86 successful launches from their NZ launch site.
I'd honestly rather like to use this opportunity to talk about that this is a success than returning to our regularly scheduled doomer loop.
A rocket launched into orbit from Norway. That's insane progress and worth celebrating.
I'd prefer to use this opportunity to talk about this as a success as well without this America decoupling nonsense doomer loop too.
Does anyone know if folks in Germany are posting about the huge ego and phallus shaped memes for this company doing something that SpaceX and Blue Origin were also doing? I'm guessing not, because the lens is "decoupling" and not "America bad" like so many felt inclined to report when our private companies were successfully launching rockets.
Anyway, congrats to the team at Isar. I like to celebrate these successes around the world as further space exploration, colonization, science, and economic development benefit us as a species and there is a lot of room for a lot of competitors.
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only four countries in the world have private/commercial space launch capacity, and SpaceX towers over everyone else so I'd say this is doing pretty alright compared to the rest of the world
As EV’s have shown, I don’t think they’re gonna be ahead for long and long-term the current technology is just a steppingstone because damaging the ozone layer can’t go on forever with the current technique being used something else. Better has to come forward.
Why is this a sign of decoupling? Is any EU technological development decoupling?
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> Just look at how today the USA tried to hand over land of Ukraine to Putin
Was it the land that Russia currently controls and Ukraine is very unlikely to retake? There's a spectrum between ideological behavior and pragmatic behavior. If Ukraine gives up this land and achieves peace, maybe it's worth it. I'm not suggesting it definitely is but at least the US is trying to negotiate or find some sort of solution, even if it's not going well.
In retrospect the US should have prepared for war and been willing to fight to uphold what was agreed to with Russia but that would have been a hard sell.
> So, no more support to that crazy country.
Nah Europe will still support it. Nothing will change there. But if you want things to change, we can completely withdraw from NATO, move bases back from Europe where we see fit, and un-sanction Russia while no longer providing support to Ukraine in any fashion and no longer sell weapons to Europe. That would be a disaster for Europe, which is why I tend to think comments like this are either ignorant, or pro-Russia/Iran/China with the intent to further inflame whatever tensions exist.
> Was it the land that Russia currently controls and Ukraine is very unlikely to retake? There's a spectrum between ideological behavior and pragmatic behavior. If Ukraine gives up this land and achieves peace, maybe it's worth it. I'm not suggesting it definitely is but at least the US is trying to negotiate or find some sort of solution, even if it's not going well.
It wasn't the US's decision to make, certainly not without having talked to Ukraine.
And right now, well, this war will continue until one of them runs out of money. The EU currently appears to consider Ukrainian sovereignty in this war to be in their own national interests, so they will keep funding it. Who will support the Russian economy in the same way?
> Nah Europe will still support it. Nothing will change there. But if you want things to change, we can completely withdraw from NATO, move bases back from Europe where we see fit, and un-sanction Russia while no longer providing support to Ukraine in any fashion and no longer sell weapons to Europe. That would be a disaster for Europe, which is why I tend to think comments like this are either ignorant, or pro-Russia/Iran/China with the intent to further inflame whatever tensions exist.
You, and many like you, really need to stop thinking Trump's behaviour is something that can be easily undone. You write to suggest dissenting voices are pro-China: Trump's actions have already forced many in the EU to consider the USA to be a bigger threat than China.
This isn't us liking China, we think poorly of their human rights record etc., it's just that the USA has fallen that far in our eyes.
Just to make it specific: Which city do you live in? I want you to imagine it getting actually, literally, nuked by French or British missiles in response to the USA doing what Trump keeps saying he'll do to Canada or Greenland.
Actual nukes.
I hope that will stay imagination.
Trump has a lot of levers he could pull that would be de facto acts of war besides annexing allies like he says he wants to. Ordering all the tech companies to stop providing services overnight, even that might do it given current dependencies.
The Ukraine is not gonna give up because that taco in the White House says so. And if he has any levers, he certainly doing a terrible job one distraction after another.
> Didn’t suggest it was, but at the end of the day it’s the US who is the partner at the table who can make the biggest difference and bringing Ukraine in to the room with Russia will just result in conflict and no hope of figuring things out diplomatically.
How? The US no longer supplies military aid to Ukraine. They're not a partner at all, let alone the one "who can make the biggest difference".
> Ok then we should do what I mentioned. It’s over. Is the EU ready to abandon Taiwan? Because if not, and let’s not ignore the G20 statement nor Germany hemorrhaging jobs and pretend the EU is cozying up to China. The US can just do the same and partner with China if it decided to.
That's not even a coherent argument.
> It won’t because it’s hyperbole that can be casually discarded.
If you don't take it seriously enough to prevent it, your city gets nuked.
> Nah he can’t do that.
Legally, or de-facto? Because legally he shouldn't be currently exchanging missiles with Iran. Legally the White House should be intact. Legally the Epstein files should've been release. Legally he's got 34 felony convictions for things he wasn't allowed to do. Legally he couldn't do the big tariffs he announced. Legally they had no right to go after Anthropic when the company refused to let their software get used for military stuff. Legally, his "I declassified them with my mind" claim was nonsense and he should've had a ten year sentence for that alone.
Not only do we not trust him, we don't trust you, and I mean personally you but also collectively you, to hold him back.
You, personally, are an avatar of the problem us Europeans see with America, because you don't seem to understand how seriously we take this.
Please, for the love of wherever you call home, take this seriously. You write as if this will all blow over and things will return to normal, but this can only happen if you recognise fault.
Russia's word has been ironclad each time it's been given to Ukraine previously. It surely would be the same this time.
At this point there is no diplomatic solution, it certainly isn’t gonna come from taco. He’s just looking for a distraction from the Iran debacle and everything else that has gone on or has gone wrong with his administration.
This is Russia's second violation of the Budapest Memorandum. We know Putin will simply ignore another treaty when he feels like. We also know the US under the current administration is "negotiating" in bad faith (via the president's son-in-law) and will do even less when the next treaty violation occurs.