The paradox of Europe's space efforts is that it has the money and technical expertise to be number 1, but is always playing runner-up, and is now third behind the US and China. ESA – Europe's equivalent of NASA & China's CNSA, has 23 member states – most of which have their own national space agencies too.
This fragmentation and diffusion has always been a huge problem, now ESA has another. NASA is abandoning it's biggest joint NASA/ESA project. The ill-fated SLS/Gateway/Artemis Moon landing program is up for the axe in the latest NASA budget. Taking its place (and money) will be plans to pivot to Mars, led by – you guessed it – a certain South African's space company.
Will ESA do something decisive as it readjusts? If past performance is any guide, don't hold your breath. Then again, maybe this time might be different.
NASA's pivot from the Moon to Mars, leaves European space efforts adrift.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
13 Comments
If they pivot to mars it’s just a money hole play.
It’s never going to happen, all this is aimed to do is keep Elon rich.
Elon couldn’t even get his fucking stupid moon rocket when empty out of the atmosphere without exploding, after depleting the whole budget.
To mars? the moon isn’t realistic with Elon involved, why say mars might as well shoot for the stars and plan a settlement on the sun, just as likely.
We cannot go to Mars without a moon base
yeah it’ll never happen. Either we build a big enough station to launch from or we build a lunar base to platform and provision from, or we don’t leave our planet.
Maybe walk before you run, rather than suck Elons dick before you walk?
I get wanting to go to Mars. But wouldn’t it be beneficial to make a base on the Moon first? Not sure of the orders of magnitude difference between building a moon base and sending humans to Mars and back. I’m sure both come with extremely difficult engineering problems. But a moon base seems like it could be beneficial for a lot of reasons.
Honestly we should focus on transitioning to green energy and building a robust, sustainable, and egalitarian food supply, not space enterprises
A note on ESA and ‘fractioned’ effort: ESA has what, a third, the budget of Nasa?
Relative to the size, it’s achieving a lot.
So it’s an efficient collaboration
Ha, I think the correct headline would be NASA’s pivot to program cuts and funneling money to cronies. That’s what leaves the ESA adrift.
It’s all about Trump’s ego. Kennedy already sent people to the moon. He wants to be the president who put a man on Mars. Not that there’s really any chance of a manned Mars mission in his term.
This is what Musk bought with his $300m.
Mars and the launches for the 36,000 “Golden Shower” satellites that Trump wantsm
Every investment into ESA is met by the same pathetic response from Europeans, “why invest in this, it’s useless?”. Europeans fundamentally dislike investments into anything other than useless renewables, health care, pensions, or social benefits. Accordingly, the space program is in a quasi non existent state, and whatever launches are done are all jobs programs
It’s grift BS from Elon Musk, again.
A manned mission on Mars is impossible because the time needed to reach the planet and the logistic hell it implies. Not to mention human physiology is not adapted to long travel without gravity (we’re speaking of 8 months from earth to mars, and the same in the other direction, and between 6 month and 1 year on Mars).
There is no oxigen on mars. No liquid water. The ground is toxic. The atmosphere pressure is 1/100th of the one on earth. Everything is exposed to solar winds and radiations because there is no active magnetic core ; and there is no ozone layer to protect from UV. Which means everything required to survive to go there, stay there and come back has to be brought in the spacechip.
Europe lost the momentum to become a federated state. Now we are dissolving because the absolute incompetence of our governments, mass corruption and a population that lives ok enough to not give a shit about taking any action.