SpaceX has put Europe to shame

The flawless launch of SpaceX’s 5,000-ton Starship and its Super Heavy Booster, and the precision recovery of the booster on its launch pad, has opened the way to a manned mission to the moon next year and perhaps to Mars as soon as 2030. One giant leap for Elon Musk’s company on Sunday was one more reminder that Europe’s space programme is a colossal failure.

Europe is currently unable to launch even its own weather satellites, and India, which managed a soft landing on the Moon last year, now has a more credible space program. Twenty years ago, before SpaceX had launched a single rocket, Richard Bowles, a sales director of the European Arianespace launch consortium, said SpaceX’s ambition to launch, recover and reuse rockets, cutting the price of launches in half, was a dream.

‘SpaceX primarily sems to be selling a dream. Which is good, we should all dream,’ he said. ‘I think reusability is a dream… How am I going to respond to a dream?… First of all you don’t wake people up. They have to wake up on their own…  They’re not supermen. Whatever they can do, we can do.’

Elon’s Musk’s dream has become Europe’s nightmare. France’s Arianespace has this year managed to launch just one of the new Ariane 6 rockets made by its ArianeGroup umbrella company. It came four years late and hundreds of millions of euros over budget. SpaceX has already completed 96 launches this year, recovered and reused almost all of them, and expects to reach 148 launches by the end of December. Even if Arianespace can get the new rocket to work properly, it has planned to launch no more than nine missions a year, of which four will be institutional missions, such as reconnaissance satellites, and only five commercial missions. 

European failure to embrace reusable rockets has made it completely uncompetitive. The estimated cost of a launch using the already obsolete Ariane 6, when it becomes operational, perhaps next year, is more than £83 million. The cost of a comparable launch on SpaceX is around £54 million. And Europe has nothing in the pipeline to match the SpaceX Starship, which will be able to launch payloads of 100 tons or more.

Access to space is the sine qua non of a credible space program. Without it, the scientific and commercial applications of space technology are impossible. 

The Galileo global satellite system created by the European Union through the European Space Agency to compete with the Americans has so far launched 32 satellites and has failed to deliver a robust system. Many the satellites were launched using Russian rockets, no longer available due to the war in Ukraine. Further launches are on hold, pending the availability of Ariane 6.

OneWeb, the private European communications satellite project designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, has launched its own limited constellation using SpaceX and Indian rockets. Even the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is now buying launches from SpaceX.

‘This decision was driven by exceptional circumstances’ said EUMETSAT’s Director General Phil Evans. The exceptional circumstance being that Arianespace had no capability. SpaceX has meanwhile launched 7,000 Starlink communications satellites offering high-speed internet access and text messaging to mobile phones.

Europe’s space agency (the UK remains a member) is an example of European hubris at its absolute worst, its failures a masterclass in how not to be globally competitive, while spending billions on institutional grandiosity. The European Space Agency, which presides over Europe’s failed efforts, has a budget of €7.8 billion and a staff of around 2,500. ArianeGroup, which is subsidised by ESA, employs 8,300 people. Between them, they are unlikely to produce a reusable rocket before 2030.

It’s been a while since I was at the European launch base in Kourou, French Guiana, but I’m not missing much because nothing is happening there. The last launch of the small European Vega rocket was last month. Perhaps four launches of the new Vega C rocket might be attempted next year. Fewer missions in a year than SpaceX completes in a fortnight. Europe’s space programme is all show and no-go.