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- Hacker News
- Germany having its own sovereign launch capability will eventually sink ESA.by hn_submit
- Awesomeby mnewme
- For anyone interested in private space flight: Wild Wild Space documentary. Also a commentary about startups in general.
Separately, I've been wondering how uneven human progress is. I think we have come a long way in electronics (relays to vacuum tubes to transistor to … to an M5 chip) but in some other domains, like moving objects through space, we are basically mostly reliant on thrust generated by burning fuel (EV's are a genuine advance, but mostly due to battery tech).
by psadri - Ion thrusters say “hi!”by NetMageSCW
- I really like seeing new aerospace companies, and i really hope humans go interstellar by 2050by Vishal_Max
- LOLby NetMageSCW
- this seems a bit ambitious, considering that Voyager just left the solar system
a permanent self sufficient colony on antarctica is a bit more like it, but still pretty ambitious
by 8note - I agree. There's a nice list of humans that I would love to see go interstellar.
- That is bad. How can they collect important data if the rocket doesn't explode at launch? Space-X does it better.by amai
- Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580369
- Congratulations ISAR
Edit: it should be Isar not ISAR
This is a huge achievement and every person involved should be very proud.
Please oblige me by not writing anything political in reply, let's just celebrate!
by jimnotgym - It’s Isar, not ISAR. It’s the name of the river that crosses Munich (which I love) :)by nullderef
- There will be some chain reaction up there in near future, in our lifetime only.
Congratulation to the team.
These milestones are necessary to advancement of human race as we need new planets to occupy.
But, we needed clear path going forward. I am both pro to advancement but with caution kind of guy.
by gagan2020 - > These milestones are necessary to advancement of human race as we need new planets to occupy.
We can't even positively terraform Earth to stop the climate crisis here. Why does anyone think we need to be terraforming elsewhere? Just terraform here!!! Make the planet we are on more hospitable to human life!
It's not like we're running out of space, and the global population is about to start dropping.
by KPGv2 - >we need new planets to occupy
We absolutely do not
by LM358 - Let's first be a competitor to Musk's short term commercial plans.by amelius
- The alleged “need [for] new planets to occupy” would only demonstrate failure of the human race, not advancement.by layer8
- Their press release seems to center on:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space. [...] Customers around the world now have a sovereign launch option at their disposal.
They apparently try very hard to ignore Arianespace.
by pyrale - I think the missing word there might be "private", because there's also Esrange (for smaller satellites as of now).by moogly
- Arianspace launches from French Guiana while a French commune is not really close to the actual continent of Europe.by ph4rsikal
- The media has been struggling on how to word this. Danish media tried labeling it as "the first orbital launch from Europe. Which is wrong, because the Plesetsk Cosmodrome exists. It's also not the first orbital launch from the EU, because Norway isn't in the EU. Using "from western Europe" sound like your trying to hard to make it special.
"First commercial space company to successfully deliver satellites into orbit, from the European continent" is probably the most correct title while remaining fairly interesting.
by mrweasel - Congrats to Isar Aerospace. If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans and I hope Isar would get strong support from the Bavarian state to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX.
- Congrats to Isar but I think you don't understand the scale difference here and the immensity of what it would take to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX. The orders of magnitude of launch efficiency are... starting to become staggering.
Isar is a good fallback for sovereignty and national defense! But, if Germany wants to compete with SpaceX in earnest, they will need to re-orient a large portion of their national economy around it. They are raising something like $100 billion for their launch complex in LA currently.
by bpodgursky - >If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans
If that is true, then only because the company doesn't immediately have to fight Arianespace. It is France that has the strongest existing know-how and longest history in rockets, going further back than Arianespace. The gap between WW2 rocket development and now is so long that German history with rockets may as well not exist.
by ahartmetz - > If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans
I apologise for the tactlessness, but it just made me think of Tom Lehrer's lyrics about Wernher von Braun:
> "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun.
by falcor84 - Agreed, but do you think either of the two federal/state governments would even have enough support material available, whether in the form of capital or otherwise (i.e. contracts), to give to Isar Aerospace that would enable them to compete with (at current valuation) a giant like SpaceX?by msdz
- It might interest folks to learn:
> Incidentally, the early investment for Isar came from Bülent Altan, the Turkish ex-SpaceX guy who was in charge of the guidance system for Falcon-1, Falcon-9 and Dragon. [0]
It turns out that Altan was an angel investor in Isar, and then co-founded VC firm Alpine Space Ventures [1] and continued to invest in Isar, among other space ventures in Europe.
by consumer451 - Congratulation and great news ! For Europe, but also the world, space access is one of those frontiers we can (and I believe will) see truly opened in my lifetime and I find that truly awesome.
Interestingly there still seems to be a difference in approach between "few launch, expected to go well" in europe and "many launch as trial and error" in the US, with other countries falling somewhere in between those two limits, it's often seen as a threat here of "if we don't do more more often we won't make any progress" but ignoring the economical side (and I think it's fair, given than even with massive subsidies SpaceX is not financially viable until it feed itself through Starlink) it's been a remarkable series of years for new European vehicules launch success.
Also one thing I have to point:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space.
I understand what is meant here, and of course said company need to push that forward, but French Guyana is full french territory, it's not even a foreign territory. It's part of the EU (known as the outermost region of the European Union), EU law applies, it's citizens are EU citizens, EU citizens from other countries can freely move and work and live there ... It's technicaly more EU than Norway.
But less Europe than Norway, sure. Still, on the context of "sovereign access", I would argue both side of that coin have their attributes, and for long term sovereignty I would prefer EU territory instead of "inside-europe-Belarus" for exemple.
by nolok - French Guyana is occupied territory. That's pretty clear. And so it should be deoccupied and the locals will decide whether to use their land as "sovereign' launch port by Europeans.by yostrovs
- >"I would prefer EU territory instead of "inside-europe-Belarus" for exemple."
Unless Great Orange or his successor/s would start having ideas
by FpUser