Self promotion is just way more accepted in the US vs most European countries. You notice this in ESA vs NASA. I also notice it when I read resumes. Resumes from European countries are way more subdued than ones from the US.
I have to agree with you. They're more than happy to label anything "NASA/ESA" when the ESA's project contribution was fifty Euros and a can of spray paint.
This is just overplayed. If you look at European rocket startups, they don't act much different. Some of them are even more prone to hype and exaggeration then American equivalence.
No it’s not, this even goes to things like reference letters. US letters for the same candidate are always much stronger and use very different language.
Americans are just more comfortable showing emotion in general. It’s well known among musicians that American audiences are very different to European ones, they show their appreciation and involvement much more readily (and then there’s the Japanese…). There’s also
that whole thing about clapping when the plane lands.
Perhaps, however I would expect they would understand the immense value of selling it to the European public by properly showing them what they're paying for. Getting the European public excited about space is half the battle (for funding), NASA has understood that for well over half a century. Somehow ESA is still oblivious (which helps explain their budget).
They don't need to sell it to the public because the public has less than zero say. They need to sell it to the funding agencies and that is what they are doing.
Also, the bombastic American style marketing comes off as insincere to most of us.
They're being paid by the public to build something. Showing them that it actually works is "bombastic American style marketing"? In the US we would call it accountability.
Modesty is great and all, but this comes across more like "thanks for the taxes, now fuck off".
The public does not vote directly on any of this, and science in general is far down the list of priorities and thus get very little time in debates and campaigns. None of the regular citizens watching this can realistically do anything if they don’t like it.
The ESA is at its core all about cooperation and has to navigate an international landscape very far from the US government. It’s a technocratic agency; it cannot be used for communication purposes by politicians. Their job is to do the work and leave the communication bits to journalists. On one hand I’d like them to do more outreach towards the general population, because history has proven time and time again that you cannot trust journalists for vulgarisation. On the other, I don’t want this to turn into a political circus and funding to fluctuate as political parties get interested or not.
The good side of this is that science gets done reliably, on predictable budgets that span decades and not years, even the unsexy science that would not set crowds on fire. True, it reduces enthusiasm but you cannot have everything.
> Their job is to do the work and leave the communication bits to journalists.
Yeah but here is the thing. If you systematically exclude journalist. Don't give them any access. Hide everything you are doing and not even provide basic video footage of a engine test, they don't have anything to work with.
And of course that is even more true when Arianespace is flat out hiding damaging information that tax payers should know. And ESA supports them in that.
Major issues with Ariane 5 fairings were hidden from the public and it took a long time until it came out.
Lets face the facts, ESA has constructed a space monopoly and the monopolist is doing everything to hide its failures from the public, not giving journalist access so they can't talk about it. Journalist that are known to ask critical questions are routinely not invited to events.
If that is the kind of society you want to live in, be my guest. But I prefer that we actually have some accountability from our tax pair funded agency and monopolist.
> The good side of this is that science gets done reliably, on predictable budgets that span decades and not years
That's just not really true. ESA has as many project go over budget as anybody else. The Ariane 6 is a massive delayed and has a massively increased budget (and no end in sight). And we could talk about many other projects too.
The idea that ESA is some unpolitical agency that just executes perfectly is what they want you to believe and they downplay all the issues. Journalist that report on these issues have to find the details the hard way. But because space is so uninteresting in Europe there is not much good reporting on it.
Its also not true that ESA is humble and unpolitical. If they have something to brag about they do so pretty relentlessly. Go read ESA and Arianespace comments about SpaceX around 2015-2019, the were basically all over them selfes talking about how much superior they were.
And reticently they have done a lot of political lobbying to increase their budget and pushing for European space flight.
They do all these things, its just less visible to the public because the public cares less then in the US.
> That's just not really true. ESA has as many project go over budget as anybody else. The Ariane 6 is a massive delayed and has a massively increased budget (and no end in sight). And we could talk about many other projects too.
Sure, it was poorly worded. I meant from the funding providers’ side. Funding just does not get cut capriciously
for political reasons.
> The idea that ESA is some unpolitical agency that just executes perfectly is what they want you to believe and they downplay all the issues. Journalist that report on these issues have to find the details the hard way. But because space is so uninteresting in Europe there is not much good reporting on it.
Yeah, I tend to agree. But it’s not unique to space, the same is true in most fields, even technologies that affect people’s lives daily.
> Its also not true that ESA is humble and unpolitical. If they have something to brag about they do so pretty relentlessly. Go read ESA and Arianespace comments about SpaceX around 2015-2019, the were basically all over them selfes talking about how much superior they were.
Yeah, that one was quite bad. And also childish, because everyone saw what was happening and the fact that they went through so much effort to say that everything was fine was very suspicious.
ESA is a step removed from public funding when compared to NASA.
NASA is directly accountable to the US Congress, both in terms of the appointment of its director and its budget.
ESA is an IGO, and its Director-General is appointed by consensus amongst the member states, and its budget is set by them based on national contributions as well.
Not to mention that most also have their own space agencies (of varying capabilities). Even the EU has EUSPA, separate to, but collaborating with, ESA.
There is nothing here they could hype without sounding bombastic because the only novel bit is it’s European. Europe produces great marketing when it has something worth promoting.
Nobody is asking for "hype" or "bombastic marketing". Just a video of it in operation. It's a rocket, it's cool, people like to see rockets. If you used their money to build it, that doesn't seem like too much to ask.
I'm not a European taxpayer so nobody owes me a video. I'm just perplexed by the attitude of the (I presume) Europeans in this thread. Being proud of the fact that your government doesn't care if you're happy with their use of your taxes is...I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't modesty.
And before anyone (correctly) points this out: Yes, the US government doesn't much care what we think either, though it does a better job of pretending to. But you'd be hard pressed to find an American who will brag about it. And at least NASA releases cool videos.
> perplexed by the attitude of the (I presume) Europeans in this thread
It's deflection. ESA and ArianeSpace have left a massive strategic hole in Europe's capabilities, in large part due to the arrogance of their leadership.
I haven't met a capable European (and yes, I think I can speak that broadly to this) who couldn't communicate why they'd be good at a job or why a job done was done well. When people say they're eschewing promotion out of humility, it's usually because they don't have anything promotable or are bad communicators.
As a European from an ESA member state. Shaking my head at how ESA and Arianespace operate is just so frequent that I risking whiplash. I can't get bothered by every single instance where they do a bad job on minor things like this.
I wouldn't even mind if they sucked at things like this if they would actually have the right strategy and do the large things correct. Sadly they are really bad at the large things and the small things.
You’re right in principle, this is indeed how it should work in theory. In practice, though, it’s all very much "thanks for the taxes, now fuck off", and US is not much better here.
I guess that will happen, when they have a functioning system, i.e. a product. (Showing off with some in-between, not fit for purpose stage may be deemed somewhat embarassing, compare cultural differences.)
Its not cultural. Lots of European aerospace startups act not much different then American ones. In some cases they are even more over the top then American startups.
This is more about ESA culture then European culture in general.
Well, startups are not actually a mainstay of European cultural tradition… ;-)
On the other hand, more traditional enterprises, like, say, Mercedes Benz, will be quite cautious with claims about their R&D, until they have their level III autonomous car system actually approved (and even then… don't make too much of a fuzz, as it is still limited, etc…)
Or, for another Tesla comparison, take Citroën (that is, Stellantis): While Tesla keeps on going about how there will be an affordable EV someday, thus they are saving the world now (without anything like this even being in sight), Citroën actually launched the Ami (an electric 2CV equivalent at EUR 6,900.) And they didn't talk about this before the launch, either. (Then there was a short-lived publicity fuzz – and then they mostly forgot about it. That's quite a genuine example for how European enterprises think, showing off appropriately works.)
I like to think that ESA tries to do mostly research (even though they also like manned missions, which are mostly for fun).
SpaceX, on the other hand, is building a very polluting business, which IMHO should be forbidden in 2023. But there I would think that the people in the EU are more aware of the problem than in the US.
This engine development for example, is something that in the US startups who don't get much government money are doing. And there are like 10+ companies working on comparable technology.
Yes ESA budget is small compared to NASA but they also do far less things.
And when they do things its not efficient. Ariane 6 for example is a minor upgrade over Ariane 5 with mostly parts that were developed for Ariane 5 ME. And yet somehow it cost will easily pass 5 billion $ and that doesn't include even e new engine. And a lot of cost is also hidden on other balance sheet, a full accounting would be likely more.
That might be about 2x as much as the complete Falcon 9 (+ Falcon Heavy) + Merlin + Re-usability program cost.
So yes, a comparative small budget, but that doesn't actually explain many of the issues.
But it is a geopolitical issue.. The goal is not to have the cheapest or most efficient rocket. It is to have independent launch capabilities. If the EU wanted cheap, they'd just eat the shit sandwich of using Russian launch vehicles.
> The goal is not to have the cheapest or most efficient rocket.
Well I point out in other places. That's exactly what they said they wanted when they started building it.
Only now where they know they are way off they say 'oh that's never what we actually wanted'.
Europe was successful in getting commercial payloads on their rockets and that helped them finance everything. So a primary goal and justification for Ariane 6 in favor of Ariane ME was exactly this commercial market.
> If the EU wanted cheap, they'd just eat the shit sandwich of using Russian launch vehicles.
That literally exactly what they did. Arianespace launched more Soyuz then anything else.
But that simply wasn't tenable anymore.
So the reality is ESA was eating shit sandwiches until Russia tried to eat Ukraine and got diary. Now they can't handle it anymore.
> This engine development for example, is something that in the US startups who don't get much government money are doing. And there are like 10+ companies working on comparable technology.
"working on" is not good enough, most start-ups never succeed. Very few have a fully-tested reusable engine. And the engine has to be in the same class - most start-ups work on miniature rockets, only good to launch a couple tons into space.
Bottomn line is, Europe does not have the intense private investment for this sort of thing, but the work still needs to be done.
Well many are further along then Europe is with their engine. Some are much further along.
> And the engine has to be in the same class - most start-ups work on miniature rockets, only good to launch a couple tons into space.
Read my to level comment, I have a whole list. And I didn't even include smaller engines.
> Bottomn line is, Europe does not have the intense private investment for this sort of thing, but the work still needs to be done.
I didn't say they should do any investing or building engine. What I said is that you can't just say ESA has a smaller budget and that's why they don't have these things.
It requires quite some energy to build a rocket (you know, from extracting the matter from the Earth to having something that looks like a rocket on the launchpad), and then some more to fly.
There is no such thing as "green energy": even if SpaceX only used renewable energy, a) renewables are not zero-carbon and b) renewables are not infinite, so if you use it for SpaceX, you don't use it for something else, and that something else may well be using fossil fuels.
But let's be clear: SpaceX doesn't run 100% on renewable energy. So there's that.
Then, right now it is not launching rockets everyday, but I understand that the goal is to grow a lot. Create a whole new space industry. Just like one plane does not pollute that much on its own, if you take the entire aviation sector, that starts to make a lot.
I guess my point is generally that we are facing huge problems (peak oil, biodiversity collapsing, climate change just joining the party) that will probably destroy society as we know it. I don't think that pushing a lot more with a commercial space business is a good idea.
Reusable rockets are like the 5G for mobile comms: for the same usage, it requires less energy. But 5G will enable much more usage and hence it will use much more energy than 4G. Reusable rockets getting to 10M a launch... well rich people will be able to go have dinner in space, just for fun. That's not sustainable.
That's all just degrowth narrative. We should all go back to using coal fired trains because then we might use them less. Lets use horses instead of cars, then people will travel less.
> peak oil, biodiversity collapsing, climate change just joining the party
Peak oil isn't a thing.
Rocket launch pads actually are great for biodiversity as it requires a lot of land around it without humans. And animals turns out aren't that bothered by occasional rocket launches. See the high biodiversity around Kennedy Space Center as an example.
Climate change will mostly be decided on other playing fields.
> well rich people will be able to go have dinner in space, just for fun
How about trying not hold back the space industry when that is more then 0.0X% of the the market.
Before denying the energy problem (and I am not saying that philosophically, I think we should go back to horses because it is nicer, I am just saying that we are facing a big energy problem), I would encourage you to read this book, which was a huge success in France last year:
Written by a true expert, Jean-Marc Jancovici. Just check who he is, usually engineers like him, even if they don't like the conclusion (which is that engineers tend to be part of the problem, not the solution).