Taking on SpaceX: Why Germany is building its own spaceport

https://www.dw.com/en/taking-on-spacex-why-germany-is-building-its-own-spaceport/a-67166692

by belter • 3 years ago

64 72 3 years ago

p1mrx• 3 years ago

The launch pad will be built some 350 kilometers from the coast in the remotest corner of Germany's Exclusive Economic Zone.

https://maritime-spatial-planning.ec.europa.eu/media/14877

Looks like the latitude will be around 55°N, not exactly ideal for a spaceport.

pacbard• 3 years ago

From what I learned from KSP, a high latitude launch site is helpful for polar orbit. That's why Vandenberg is used for this purpose over Cape Canaveral (or other equatorial launch sites) in the US.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out because there are other nations participating in ESA that have both land and launch sites that are at higher latitudes than Germany's floating launch site (e.g., [1]).

[1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/13/this-arctic-space-c...

Rebelgecko• 3 years ago

55° seems ideal if you want to launch at an inclination high enough that the orbits will go over Germany (the domestic tech stuff mentioned in the article) or areas that are of interest for defense reasons (eg Russia)

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

For reference, Russia's Baiknour is at 45.965°N (about a thousands kilometers difference, not counting longitude.)

A high latitude should work fine for Earth observing satellites that are suited for polar orbits, but I can't help but think it would make more sense for Germany to make a deal with France to share the Guiana Space Centre.

fomine3• 3 years ago

I imagine that having a launch site on far away location isn't ideal for R&D. Location is a US' advantage that's hard to catch up. Not having any lands for east is great.

_fizz_buzz_• 3 years ago

Depends on the orbit you want to launch into.

fooker7• 3 years ago

Germany doesn't have the resources to take on anything.

They have a shrinking economy and a rapidly aging population.

sMarsIntruder• 3 years ago

Energiewende unfortunately will give the fatality to the economic system.

Problem is: a weak Germany is a problem for the current European economic balance.

throwbadubadu• 3 years ago

will give the fatality to the economic system.

When?

V__• 3 years ago

Why would it?

croes• 3 years ago

So far, only the government's protracted energy transition under Merkel has harmed the economy because it was too dependent on Russia.

f1shy10• 3 years ago

And very bad management in many important and or critical companies which are the pillars of the economy. I can confidently say: some very big companies will go bankrupt starting next year.

maigret• 3 years ago

This might not necessarily be a bad thing. Will create manpower to create new companies more future proof.

TMWNN• 3 years ago

Are they in industries that are very energy-intensive, or depend heavily on petrochemical feedstock?

lispm• 3 years ago

Funny, Germany just now has the world's third largest economy (GDP), an achievement with slightly over 80 million people...

https://i.redd.it/uxeq0v67ketb1.jpg

adventured• 3 years ago

It's definitely not funny.

Germany's GDP is estimated at $4.4 trillion for 2023.

In 2008, the high before the crash, it was $3.7 trillion. Inflation adjusted that should be $5.4 trillion just to be even with 2008. They have never recovered.

During the good years of the 1990s for the global economy, 1995 was the peak for Germany, and that high was $2.6 trillion. That is $5.3 trillion today. You can pick most years from the 1990s though and it's a bad outcome inflation adjusted to today.

28 years later and the economy needs to increase by 20% just to catch up to where they were in the mid 1990s.

The reason Germany has passed Japan is because they have been suffering from an even worse economic stagnation the past two decades.

How long can Germany pretend things are fine?

f1shy10• 3 years ago

Waaaay behind USA and China, and comparable with the next 5 countries in the list.

fooker7• 3 years ago

It'll keep being funny until it's not.

The modern debt based economic systems tend to have that characteristic.

https://youtu.be/xmEhTFjQB1g?si=f2hdl8JkqBIox495

TruthWillHurt• 3 years ago

How's the Eurocloud project doing? Are they done writing regulations and started on services already?

silenced_trope• 3 years ago

reminds me of Quaero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero#Criticism

helge92103• 3 years ago

From what I see in Germany, this project will be drowned to death in meetings to prepare meetings to define policies even before the first rivet is ordered to be produced.

vardump• 3 years ago

Sigh. I wish you were wrong.

FL410• 3 years ago

Well don't worry, we have a fully stacked Starship waiting up to half a year for a Fish & Wildlife survey. Take your time.

FireBeyond2• 3 years ago

As it should be. Musk's "To Mars!" shouldn't just get to say "fuck Earth, we have grander plans".

f1shy10• 3 years ago

Sometimes I think Germany was infected with the sabotage manual [1] and some people believed it was the right way to do things.

[1] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Sabotage_Fi...

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

Don't forget armies of lawyers spamming hundreds of lawsuits at each and every step no matter how small.

Can't buy a screw without every single other company that might sell screws filing lawsuits. Repeat this for every part, every service, etc. The only winners are the legal parasite class who are very powerful in Germany. This kind of problem isn't unique to Germany of course, but they exemplify it. And if you try to cut through this BS then German people get spooked; I think due to their history they prefer being bogged down in legal BS and are prone to be suspicious of any attempt to cut through red tape. I don't think this will change until the collective psyche of Germany heals.

themgt• 3 years ago

To start, Dutch company T-Minus will launch a rocket from the German-Offshore Spaceport Alliance (GOSA) mobile platform.

This company apparently doesn't even produce orbital rockets: https://www.t-minus.nl/post/barracuda-rocket-at-esa-pac-symp...

Their largest in-development rocket is tiny, like a 1/4th the size of New Shepherd? Nowhere is it mentioned what orbital rocket would be launching from this spaceport. Just back of napkin I can't imagine you'll see any orbital payload delivered from this pad by 2030?

The obvious thing for Europe to do would be have ESA fund a replica of NASA's COTS/CCDev/HLS programs, which have overall delivered stunning return on investment and arguably the only reason China isn't absolutely dominating space launches now. This type of token "spaceport to nowhere" pet project is going to deliver absolutely zilch. Ariane 6 is a dead end and there appears to be no plan forward.

nickik6• 3 years ago

ESA already had the ATV to do what CommercialCargo does. But because of cost they stopped that program and instead helped with the Orion service module.

They are committed to Orion service module and have no interest in going back to cargo resupply. Given how close the ISS is to the end. By the time they would have finished a new cargo ship, the station is gone be close to gone.

And they simply don't really have the budget for CCDev. It simply doesn't fit in their budget. And even worse, given how absurdly high the cost for the Ariane 6 are, you would expect 6-10 billion for a crew capsule. And you know the European would go for some dumb space plane idea that's gone cost even more.

electriclove4• 3 years ago

The only reason China isn’t dominating is because of SpaceX. NASA helping fund flights is great and helpful to SpaceX but don’t mistakenly credit NASA for SpaceX’s success.

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

It was more than helpful; SpaceX would have failed without the COTS contract.

There's a tendency by some to describe money paid out by the government for services rendered as "government funding", framed like some sort of unearned charitable gift given by the government to the company which entitles the government to all of the credit in the end. This is an immature point of view that is often the product of motivated reasoning (particularly, motivated by personal dislike of the people/companies involved. There's also some people who thought that capitalism would be trapped on earth with space being the exclusive domain of governments, and are bitter to realize that won't be the case.) Maybe your comment is reacting in part to this tendency, I find myself frustrated with it as well.

Nevertheless, the truth is that SpaceX didn't have the money to develop Falcon 9 until they got that contract. I think themgt is correct to say the creation of contracts like that in Europe could provide European rocket companies the same kind of opportunity to develop technology and prove themselves.

BiteCode_dev3• 3 years ago

No government is going to "take on spacex" because what works for spacex is to act in all the ways, good and bad, a gov entity would never do.

Such projects would work much better if they would instead relyon the strength of govs instead of being a fish trying to follow a bird.

Of course, attempting to do it anyway and failing miserably while transferring the public money into parasites is a very gov thing to do.

So it will happen.

electriclove4• 3 years ago

Strength of the govs to do what??

BiteCode_dev3• 3 years ago

Stability, long time horizons, can adapt the law to their need, a communication on patriotism, no incentive to squeeze money out of every step, employees protection...

Every weakness can be a strenght depending of the context. Good profiles that would not consider working in high pressure, high risk envs like spacex can be interested in gov projects.

nickik6• 3 years ago

This is all a bunch of questionable nonsense. Small launch is already an economic terrible and all companies are losing money and are trying to get out of that business. So building an expensive sea based port will simply require even large amount of investment with no more revenue to compensate.

And as for the German government paying for everything, not really gone happen. They are already unhappy about what they have to pay for Ariane 6. They never even wanted Ariane 6. And they have been slushing their space budget.

This seems to me to be a news site making to much of some early concept that are not close to be happening.

az09mugen• 3 years ago

I don't get the point of building so far from the equator, the orbital speed in this area is something like half of the orbital speed at the equator. They will have to spend more in rocket fuel to launch the rockets. Maybe there is something I'm missing there.

Taking on SpaceX: Why Germany is building its own spaceport

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