The ESA has a decent budget. Not NASA-level, but several billion per year. Looking at their budget, it’s pretty heavily tilted toward Earth activities–observation and navigation. Only 11% total (<$1B) goes toward human and robotic exploration.
You may be right, but if the EU is to be taken seriously as time goes on, they need to take space more seriously.
That’s basically just repeating the question. Why don’t they care as much? It’s not like there isn’t real science to be done on the Moon.
Though there is another factor, which is why their private space industry is in such poor shape. Even China has a much more robust private space sector.
Maybe they don’t prioritize rocket science as much as you’d like, but not everyone thinks it’s the most important thing to devote resources toward. Maybe science fiction isn’t as big in Europe anymore?
My complaint isn’t just about the EU vs. the US. They’re also behind China, Japan, and India, at least when it comes to lunar programs. Their private sector space programs are virtually nonexistent. And the ESA seems to get much less done with a given amount of money than others.
I suppose @Zoobi’s point was that space is politically popular in the US because SF is literarily popular. The EU might be otherwise.
My own take is the EU / ESA is stuck in the ultimate Old Space mindset. The ESA budget is seen by the pols as simply a pork barrel jobs program, not an actual research project leading to an actually useful space capability. The point of the effort is to retain the ability to make the tech so that they can retain the ability to make the tech.
The EU also has their workshare issues.
If the USA’s entire aerospace industrial complex was located in e.g. Florida or Texas, you’d find 1 state eager to launch lots of high cost projects at a high cadence and 49 other states asking why they should vote to have their taxpayers pay for something from which they derive no direct jobs-and-infrastructure benefit.
The EU has that problem far worse than the pre-trump USA did.
The scientific findings from space exploration are made public, so why not let someone else pay for doing it? Especially if you believe actual practical economic uses of human space travel are just a pie in the sky?
Or, if there really are practical economic uses of human space travel, God forbid that they should be exploited by Capitalists; space should be firmly controlled by the appropriate Ministry.
Exaclty this. Going to the Moon is pointless, mostly. Europe has the best Earth Observation program in the world, has a very credible Astronomy programme, has a competitive satellite communication sector, its own launchers on a par with all other institutional actors. If there is science to be done on the moon, we will do it after a peer review that shows that such a mission would give the most science bang for the buck. Calling Europe an also-ran is thankfully true for the Moon race (and if it were up to me, a no-run) and nonsense in all other aspects.
You don’t get the credit if you don’t do the thing. Maybe the EU doesn’t care, but I don’t think that’s really true. They fund other high-visibility scientific programs like the LHC and ITER (fusion).
Of the 87 active earth observation missions launched by government agencies, NASA has 27 while the ESA 12 (I’m counting collaborations as well). Count isn’t everything, but these are all credible satellites. The ESA isn’t doing badly here but “best” is a stretch.
The EU had a competitive satellite communications sector. But it’s a dead man walking with Starlink and soon Project Kuiper. EU plans for LEO constellations are not impressive at the moment.
The EU does not have launchers on par with competitors. The Ariane 6 launched once (!) in 2024. The US has seven distinct rockets that launched in 2024. One of them launched 134 times. Second place launched 14 times.
QFT. The ESA is badly behind in launch capability. They have two active rockets, the Vega-C and the Ariane 6. Both are fully expended vehicles with no reusability. The Vega-C can launch approximately half the mass of a Falcon 9 and has flown a grand total of 3 times over 2 years. F9 launched more than that in the last two weeks. Hell, Vega-C’s entire 2025 planned schedule is less than F9’s launches to date (17 to 25).
Ariane 6 is even worse. It has flown exactly once in a test flight and has yet to launch a working payload. Again, no reusability (and no plans for it - the SRBs alone make it impractical) and it’s payload to LEO is less than half the Falcon Heavy, even when in max reusability configuration (47Klb vs 110Klb).
Look, any thoughts about Elon aside (and I have many, none of them good), he was/is the face of a private space company that is kicking the rest of the world’s ass in lift capacity, reusability, reliability, and cadence. That includes NASA, Russia, China, India, and the ESA.
Regarding SRB’s: why did the Shuttle do (mostly ) okay with them, but plans to launch Europa Clipper on SLS were cancelled in part due to concern about excessive vibration? Why wasn’t that an issue on the Shuttle?
I/'ll point out that @Wincerind specified “institutional actors”. IOW governments & their contractors, not private outfits like SpaceX. Comparing Ariane to Delta or EELV is not that different.
Other than that, your point is well-taken. Private space is crushing Old Space.
A good question for which I don’t have a direct answer. One answer is just that the two rockets are pretty different, with the Shuttle being side-mounted and the SLS being in-line. Also the SLS boosters, while derived from the Shuttle SRBs, aren’t the same and are more powerful.
Some of this may relate to the payload itself. The Shuttle did not leave LEO, so high-energy missions were out. But Eric Berger said this about the SLS problems:
The shaking is less pronounced for heavier missions, and therefore is not as much of a factor for large payloads like the Orion spacecraft stack. But for a relatively small payload like Clipper, the torsional loads were about three times higher than comparable rockets.
So perhaps the difference is that the Shuttle only ever carried fairly heavy payloads to low-energy orbits. SLS was capable of high-energy trajectories, which imply lighter payloads. But those are more sensitive.
A couple post-landing pics (the small circle is Earth):
The landing legs don’t have any suspension per-se, and it looks like it landed on a hill. So only three legs in contact is not surprising. The legs do have crush cores however in case of a harder landing. Arguably, the very smooth landing is the reason for the one leg not contacting. Otherwise, they’d have crushed down to conform to the terrain.
Launch rate, cost per kilo, reliability, time from contract to launch, pretty much any metric you want.
Essentially the only advantage to government-run rockets is that you control it. But that’s not so great if the rocket is so unreliable that it’s not ready when you need it.
ESA/the EC have a stable program (Copernicus) that provides data continuity for a number of essential measurements for decades and freely to the world, in addition to the scientific EO missions of ESA and the meteorological satellites of EUMETSAT. While I admit that “the best” is subjective, that is not only a European qualification. Anyhow, for a fraction of the NASA budget, ESA is not doing so poorly. If only we would stop human exploration where we are indeed an also-ran, we would do even better….
) okay with them, but plans to launch Europa Clipper on SLS were cancelled in part due to concern about excessive vibration? Why wasn’t that an issue on the Shuttle?
