Europe is lost in space. Ever since the Soviets orbited Yuri Gagarin and America landed men on the moon, Europe has proclaimed the ambition to compete on the final frontier.
More than half a century later, Europe is unable to compete even with India, as in October it became incapable of launching its own payloads into space.
Europe’s space agency is an example of European chauvinism at its absolute worst
Protected by political and bureaucratic omertà, and with little curiosity on the part of politicians and journalists, Europe’s clumsy space exploration efforts have forced it to turn for launch services to the Twitter and Tesla tycoon, the anarchist squillionaire Elon Musk.
Europe’s space agency (the UK remains a member) is an example of European chauvinism at its absolute worst, its failures a masterclass in how not to be globally competitive, while spending billions on institutional grandiosity.
As with the internet, where Europe has failed to produce a single global player on the scale of Amazon, Apple, Google, TikTok or Netflix, so it is in space. Europe has some talented rocket scientists, but has lost any claim to be a serious technical innovator or wealth creator. Europe and its spacemen have completely misjudged the market for commercial space applications and are years late and wildly over budget. Europe has itself never launched anyone into orbit, depending on the Americans and Russians to convey its occasional astronauts to the space station.
Each of these failures is a story unto itself and here is not the place to consider them seriatim. But let’s start with the sine qua non of space activity – transportation. Europe’s ability to launch its own payloads into orbit and beyond is currently absolutely zero.
The European Space Agency, the insanely obsolete organisation of 22 nations able to agree only on the most ill-conceived plans, divvies up projects driven by politically favoured laboratories and contractors. But it can’t get much off the ground.
With a budget of €7.2 billion and a staff of 2,200, the ESA, which was founded 50 years ago, has admitted that it cannot launch its forthcoming space telescope and an asteroid mission. It’s had to beg Elon Musk for his reusable Falcon rockets. It has also lost access to Russian Soyuz vehicles (yes, they’re in bed with the Russians) and because of long delays in the introduction of the replacement Ariane 6 launch vehicle, it is wildly over budget and years late. The humiliation is galactic.
Kourou, in French Guiana is where Arianespace, the ESA’s European launch contractor, operates the pads that are now silent. Ariane 5 was not reusable and neither is the proposed successor rocket, Ariane 6. The reusable Themis, which will supposedly follow, is years away.
Meanwhile, Musk’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have launched 187 times, with the first-stage boosters landing successfully 151 times. Activity includes manned missions to the International Space Station, spy satellites for the American National Reconnaissance Office and communications satellites for European telecommunication companies.
SpaceX, Musk’s privately held space company, is building even larger reusable rockets capable of lunar and Martian payloads that will transport satellites at one tenth the cost per kilogram to orbit of its competitors (with a big fat margin for Musk). The company is profoundly commercially ambitious, also launching on its own account thousands of low-orbiting internet satellites, with connections to existing mobile phones, which will make it the largest player in satellite communication.
Meanwhile, in Europe, ESA and its launch contractor Arianespace are exemplars of bureaucratic immobilism and prioritisation of bureaucracy over technical ambition.
Not only has Europe failed to equal the Americans and Russians, but the Chinese and Indians have both achieved success in space transport while ESA can’t even get off the launch pad. Yet all are all years behind SpaceX, driven by the ambitions of the singular genius of Musk, whose greatest talent appears to be annoying the woke.
In the interest of fairness, it must be acknowledged that the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration is also now revealed to be as bureaucratically self-obsessed, delivering less and less while spending more and more on failed, overdue projects, not least the Boeing Artemis moon rocket. The Russian space agency is rotting away. Britain is basically a joke. Richard Branson’s efforts have veered from tragic to comic. Virgin Galactic, his space tourism venture, is grounded. Virgin Orbit is a feeble effort to launch lightweight satellites using a rocket and a Boeing 747. The Johnson government invested bizarrely in a satellite scheme that is still years away from delivering promised functionality.
There are wider implications here for those who believe that the answer to everything is more and deeper Europe. Having been out to French Amazonia a couple of times, I can report that at least the food is good at the satellite base in Kourou, near Devil’s Island, where the French imprisoned Dreyfus. The speciality is luscious local prawns spiced with local cayenne pepper, washed down with the local rum, which resembles rocket fuel. You must be careful of the poisonous butterflies that emerge from the rain forest of French Amazonia but give them credit. At least they can fly.
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