Themis (European Reusable Rocket) is assembled on launch pad

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-themis-pad-fully.html

by theamk • 10 months ago

113 104 10 months ago

rob742• 10 months ago

A few years ago there would have been comments along the lines of "why sink money into this, SpaceX is years ahead, just use their rockets", but I think that the recent events in the US have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)...

JumpCrisscross12• 10 months ago

This is a terrific illustration of comparative advantage and economies of scale.

If Europe and America could trade with trust, Europe could put these resources into space missions. (Or solar panels. Whatever.) SpaceX, meanwhile, would have more resources with which to scale Starship.

Instead we have inefficient duplication and diseconomies of scale. All so…idk, the Italians stop taking advantage of America...

graemep4• 10 months ago

I disagree. It is good to have more than one design. It is not exact duplication so alternative approaches are taken. We have more than one design if one proves flawed. We avoid creating a monopoly.

We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models. No one would suggest that is a good idea.

Even the Soviet Union did not go to the extreme of having only one design for every possible product.

anovikov• 10 months ago

But that's govspace, it's not at all about efficiency or economy, it's a jobs program.

makkes• 10 months ago

"If everybody would just use Windows, companies and developers wouldn't sink money and effort into the development of operating systems."

StopDisinfo910• 10 months ago

No, access to space is too strategically important to ever delegate. It’s not something you can buy.

Even before the Trump debacle, the USA were extremely unreliable when it came to satellite images for exemple. Do you remember the fake images passed as Irak developing weapons of mass destruction? Because I certainly do.

Europe needs their own launcher in the same way it needs its own defence industry. It’s just sad that it took so long for some members to finally realise that provided they actually did.

chrizel• 10 months ago

You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus. Why should Europeans build their own aircrafts? Today I think a lot of people are happy, that Airbus exists to compensate for the problems that Boeing has. Competition is good and will lead to better solutions in the long run.

riffraff• 10 months ago

the US themselves are also propping up multiple companies for space deliveries. It's one of those things where it's important to have alternatives.

baq• 10 months ago

This is simply a case of the classic efficiency vs resilience tradeoff. If you know where to look, you'll find instances of it absolutely everywhere, with some spectacular blowups when efficiency prioritization is mistimed and some very boring out-competition failures in the other case.

harpiaharpyja• 10 months ago

I'm not sure if "economies of scale" is the thing here. I think calling it that may confuse people.

Really what produces an advantage is an environment of trust. Having that reduces a lot of friction when it comes to economic activity.

ben_w• 10 months ago

Mmm.

All so…idk, the Germans stop taking advantage of us…

Other than this part, I thought you had it: comparative advantage makes everyone richer. You don't actually want both parties getting richer when your counterparty appears to have gone mad and might be about to stab you in the face.

nradov2• 10 months ago

Duplication of effort is not an actual problem. Intense competition spurs progress far better than having more resources. And in the case of government programs — especially in Europe — more resources are often just wasted.

rsynnott5• 10 months ago

have proven that it makes sense for ESA to develop their own reusable rocket (better late than never)...

It may not actually be that urgent, at least for their own use. A non-expendable Falcon 9 launch costs $70m; an Ariane 6 launch costs 80-100m EUR (for a more capable rocket, especially for GTO). Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters. They're not in drastically different cost realms. The bulk of the cost of most ESA launches would still be the payload, not the launcher.

Also that Falcon 9 cost is up from about $60m a couple of years ago, so you wouldn't necessarily want to bet on it not rising further. And that's list price; in practice SpaceX charges NASA over $100m/launch and "Space Force" over $110m/launch (https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/reusable-rockets-are-h...), so, assuming that as another space agency ESA would be charged similar, Ariane may actually be the _budget option_.

Now, for commercial it's a different story, though really Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive there; even before SpaceX their market was mostly stuff that couldn't go on Russian rockets.

mschild3• 10 months ago

Its not urgent until the US government starts blocking ESA from launching anything unless the EU agrees to some trade deal.

Being independent isn't necessarily about lower cost. Its about having an alternative that you control.

themgt2• 10 months ago

Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters

Ariane 6 cost $5 billion to develop, more than NASA paid SpaceX for all of HLS development and lunar landing, and has had as many successful launches (2) in its entire 14 month launch history as Falcon 9 has had in the last 2 days. And Falcon 9 is the old, boring, table stakes rocket.

If your goal is actually getting stuff to space then only being able to get ~1/100th the stuff to space does matter quite a lot.

JumpCrisscross12• 10 months ago

Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive

Arianespace is run as a jobs programme and profit centre. It explicitly doesn't even try to compete [1].

So long as Arianespace soaks up European launch budgets, SpaceX's trans-Atlantic primacy is assured.

[1] https://illdefinedspace.substack.com/p/catching-super-heavy-...

philipwhiuk2• 10 months ago

Now, SpaceX may be building a lot of profit into that $70m, but from the customer's POV it hardly matters. They're not in drastically different cost realms

SpaceX internal costs are < $20m a launch. There's a huge profit margin.

SpaceX prices have risen because they have effectively no competition in the medium-> heavy launch market, not because they are more expensive to launch than they used to be.

It's a huge gulf.

Now, for commercial it's a different story, though really Arianespace and its predecessors have never been _hugely_ competitive there; even before SpaceX their market was mostly stuff that couldn't go on Russian rockets.

This is also not true. Arianespace dominated the commercial market prior to SpaceX. They were doing half a dozen GTO missions a year. Yes it's not dozens and dozens but prior to the dropping of launch costs, expensive GEO satellites launched into GTO was the market.

I'm sorry but this "maybe reusability isn't worth it" is the exact line that ULA and Arianespace have bandied around for a decade and they have lost their entire lunch to a company that can undercut them and still make a healthy profit margin.

pjmlp3• 10 months ago

We also need to go back to the 1980's of having European computers, operating systems and programming languages.

flanked-evergl11• 10 months ago

Not going to happen with the EU.

xinayder• 10 months ago

Isn't SUSE an European OS?

nickdothutton• 10 months ago

If indeed they are capable of getting it working and can equal or closely match SpX for capability.

dotnet002• 10 months ago

I think even SpaceX fans have been waiting for years for others to finally adopt partial reusability, and thus support this effort.

My complaint with Themis had only been that it didn't sound like they were taking it seriously back when it was announced.

Even after all these years, there has only been one non-SpaceX orbital rocket with reusability built-in to the design goals from the start, to actually fly (but not reused, yet), so seeing another one getting closer to that is good.

Edit: Though, IIRC Themis will mainly be doing hop tests in preparation for an orbital design.

ofrzeta• 10 months ago

"The first model of the European Space Agency's (ESA) reusable rocket demonstrator Themis is standing at its launch pad in Kiruna, Sweden."

Is Kiruna a good place for this? I read that it's collapsing due to extensive mining for decades.

ejolto• 10 months ago

The Esrange launchpad is more than 50 km from the Kiruna iron mine, which is 4km long, 80m thick and 2km deep.

ragebol• 10 months ago

Any city would be a bad place for a rocket (test) launch facility, 'collapsing' due to mining or not.

Luckily the city is some 44 km drive away from the launch site.

And there's still people living in Kiruna, it's not collapsing but affected still in some shape of form. Heard on some podcast that mining blasts are timed to reduce the disturbance and some buildings (or their inhabitants probably) relocated, IIRC.

prmoustache• 10 months ago

afaik they are moving the city step by step. Hasn't the church been moved a few weeks ago?

Hikikomori3• 10 months ago

The launch pad isn't in the town square.

MaxPock• 10 months ago

Are they copying Space X or that accusation is reserved for China ?

wosined• 10 months ago

Only midwits shun copying. It is good way to learn. It is only bad if you lie about authorship.

XorNot2• 10 months ago

And also by now it should be clear that if China look at your design and knock out a decent copy, they still did a ton of engineering to make it work.

It's like people forget Foxconn started as a copying operation and went mainstream.

dotnet002• 10 months ago

Within rocketry, a lot of accusations of copying against China are just hate. The form of rockets is dictated by physics, and so there are only so many ways to approach the same set of constraints and requirements with similar technologies.

Plus, the exterior form of a rocket is the easy part. The engines, plumbing, control systems, and internal structure are the hard part (and also hard to copy part)

mikebonnell2• 10 months ago

Is there a specific reason why this site seems to have so much less visible infrastructure than ESA or NASA?

philipwhiuk2• 10 months ago

It's a much much smaller rocket than you see at Kourou or at Kennedy. Kennedy was, let's not forget, built for a vehicle more powerful than the Saturn V. And both to handle the SRBs of Ariane launchers (which basically chuck flying rubble out the back on launch).

The pad infrastructure is reasonably similar to an actual comparative launch site like Kodiak AK.

mikebonnell2• 10 months ago

Thank you, that makes so much sense.

Gravityloss• 10 months ago

For history: Arianespace was founded in the first place to launch independent European communication satellites that USA wouldn't launch.

Trade is extremely useful, but certain strategic capabilities are very useful also to have on your own. I personally think it would make sense from Europe's point of view for European companies or consortiums to develop operational stealth aircraft.

MomsAVoxell2• 10 months ago

I sure wish SpaceX would just open source their designs so that nations around the world can join the space race, we can truly evolve as a whole species and not just as national identities, and we can get on with mining Psyche 16.

That would be a truly revolutionary human endeavour, imho.

Meanwhile, we're lobbing rockets at each other to kill innocents at massive scale, when we could, as an entire species, be building literal cities in the sky.

Nevertheless if Europe starts making progress, I'm sure it'll catch up with the USA and China. Some day. Assuming we don't nuke ourselves over idiocy first.

I know, it's a pipe dream. But a person can dream for the stars in spite of all the hatred that says otherwise.

lurking_swe• 10 months ago

cities in the sky? With all due respect…your head is in the clouds friend. We can barely keep the earth from warming catastrophically as it is, and you want to what - 5x global emissions? to build cities in the sky, where life is HARDER than on earth?

That’s just nuts. How about we learn how to not screw up the earth first before worrying about cities in the sky. Because i guarantee we’d find a way to trash the next planet really quickly. Humans (as a large species) tend to be great at that. I don’t see other animals trashing the planet. Just us.

I’m just looking forward to better satellites - better weather forecasting, communications, research, etc.

MomsAVoxell2• 10 months ago

I’m talking about space stations and mining Psyche 16. My head is way, way above the clouds, friend.

The Earth would be far better off if we moved all heavy industrial manufacturing to space and left the Earth to flourish as the only garden we have.

Yeah, it’s a pipe dream. Thats the point. We could do it - we don’t, because we’d rather argue about whose opinion is better, at mass scale.

Themis (European Reusable Rocket) is assembled on launch pad

Related Stories