Why Can't Europe Into Space?

So when is the space launch system going to launch people?

2022

Falcon 9 has as many failures as the shuttle in 1/5 the launches

I'm an SLS fan but I agree that Orion is pointless unless they are seriously going to build a moon base or something. So far all i've heard NASA talk about is buzzing the moon and a couple asteroids with it to have the astronauts take pretty pictures. LEO shuttle? Launch vehicle is way overpowered

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Nowhere in that article does it say EM-1 is delayed. Nowhere in that article does it say ESM is the only thing behind. Try the facts next time.

Orion can't make it to the moons surface
its too heavy
There was supposed to be a seperate lander for that

In half a century of space travel only three countries have even managed to take a man to LEO.

Other 193 countries, what are you faggots even doing?

So help me if they crash the James Webb.

ESA lacks money

Why? I thought you guys believed in bigger, better funded government programs.

Falcon 9 has payloads.

Universal healthcare

ESA's outer space program is just tiny, it's merely a political/economic decision to focus on EO (Copernicus/Sentinels, Gaia, ..) instead. The scientific benefit of missions like New Horizons and Rosetta are questionable, whereas missions like the Sentinels can be fed back into business rather easily.

No question, hi-res images of Pluto make great headlines, and it's piss-easy to get publications into Science and Nature with that sort of material, but the science is very sparse - oh look, there's an atmosphere on Pluto, amazing...

There is no vehicle in service or currently in production that can make it to the Lunar surface.

Yes, that includes the "ITS ship" or whatever, which can't do it unless it refuels in orbit of the Moon.

hm? A Dragon could go to the moon with modification
And an ITS will be able to go to the moon out of the box.

Dnno what your saying

Also ISRU would be just as easy on the moon as on mars.

You're a retard.

??
its like 6km/s delta-v to go to the moon. 8km/s to go there and back.
the ITS can handle that easily

What's your source on that delta-v famalam?

and I mean for the spaceship

...

And only Russians continue...

Why does everyone pretend that Ariane doesn't exist? That stuff works way better than spaceX firecrackers. Europe just wasn't in the space race so has had no interest in manned flight

Simple: no military-industrial complex to piggy back off of. The last major public aerospace project europe did was the Concorde in the late 1960s and was retired in 2003.

For comparison, all three major US aerospace firms (Lockmart, Boeing, Northrop) have steadily gotten major contracts for (among other things) supersonic bombers (B-1 Lancer), stealth bombers (B-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider), stealth fighter jets (F-22, F-35), autonomous drones (MQ-1 Predator, X-47) and their own space vehicles (the X-37). This is a huge amount of money, and more importantly training and experience, they are given that their european counterparts simply do not have.

For all the issues NASA has with being a decade behind schedule, they have the resources for what they want to do (Moon, later Mars plausibly Venus missions). European countries won't spend the tax money on it.

And ultimately it's manned flight which matters. But even then NASA's probe program is unmatched, except perhaps by JAXA.

Lol no, JAXA's science unmanned program is far behind ESA. ESA has a fantastic science program with landmark missions like Planck, Herschel and XMM to name just a few. JAXA hasn't even reached that scale yet and their success rate is not good.

Hayabusa barely got back to Earth after ion engine failures, it's sample collection mechanism failed and it's "rover" missed the asteroid. Akatsuki missed it's Venus insertion due to a failed engine. ASTRO-E was lost on launch, it was then replaced by ASTRO-EII which became Suzaku, it's microcalormeter failued shortly after launch. That instrument was reflown on ASTRO-H which became Hitomi and that made a single observation before it was destroyed. Suzuku never really became a big instrument like XMM or Chandra.

JAXA are just now planning the first big astronomy mission with Spica, ESA is a crucial partner in that because of their experience with Herschel. It's not clear if it will actually go ahead.

>Yes, that includes the "ITS ship" or whatever, which can't do it unless it refuels in orbit of the Moon.
an ITS ship refueled in orbit could probably go to the moon and back without refueling

well i hope either them the russians or the chinese pick up the ball now

because now the orange menace will probably use demagogue arguments to slice nasa funding to shit

>tiny budget compared to nasa
>doesnt have military background like nasa
>scattered over many countries, with a clusterfuck of languages inbetween
>playing it safe by going slow as fuck with everything they do.
>17 years younger then nasa
>less expierence unlike nasa who had the space race to puch them forward.
>etc....

Sure, they are slow and inexperienced
But ESA still manages to accomplish several projects and is slow but steady catching up.

>But ESA still manages to accomplish several projects and is slow but steady catching up.
yes but the average /sci is like
>huuurrr le duuuurrr even if we only started yesterday and have 1/100000000 of the budget anything other than puting a man on alpha centauri is complete utter failure