Europe is finally getting serious about commercial rockets

“I expect four or five companies to reach the launch point, then over a period of years [or frequency] “Any or two of them will be determined,” says McDowell.

Unique advantages

In their initial form, these missiles will not compete with anything displayed by Spacex in size and rhythm. Spacex sometimes launch a 70 -meter Falcon 9 (230 feet) missile, and is developing a much larger championship vehicle to the moon and Mars. However, the smaller European missiles in Europe can allow the launch of satellites to orbit without having to travel throughout the road across the Atlantic. “There is an advantage of its approach,” says Keelner, who says it will take RFA one or two days by sea.

The launch of Europe is also useful, to reach specific orbits. Traditionally, a lot of satellite launch was performed near the equator, in places like Cape Canaveral in Florida, to obtain an additional boost of Earth’s rotation. Space vehicles also launched the crew of these sites to reach space stations in a tropical orbit around the Earth and the moon. From Europe, though, satellites can be released north on uninhabited water extensions to reach the polar orbit, which can allow satellite photography to see the entire Earth revolves below.

McDowell increases increasingly, companies want to place satellites in the synchronous orbit of the sun, a type of polar orbit where the satellite Earth remains in permanent sunlight. This is useful for solar powered vehicles. “The largest part of the commercial market now is a simultaneous polar orbit,” says McDowell. “So the presence of high launch launch site contains good transport links with customers in Europe, a difference.”

The final goal of Europe

In the long run, missile ambitions in Europe may grow to vehicles that make up more than one match for Falcon 9 through initiatives such as the European ESA challenge, which will be given contracts later this year. “We hope for development [a larger vehicle] “Europe may consider launching humans in space one day on the largest missiles, says Thilo Kranz, director of the ESA commercial transport program,” says Thilo Kranz, director of ESA for space transport program. [crewed] Access to space, that will be a positive development for Europe. “

ESA is a separate project called theeris, at the same time, is to develop techniques for reusing missiles. This was the main innovation of Spacex Falcon 9, allowing the company to significantly reduce launch costs. Some European companies, such as maiaspace and RFA, are also validated by the susceptibility of reuse. The latter plans to use umbrellas to return the first stage of the missiles to landing at sea, where they can be recovered.

“Once you reach something like the Falcon 9 competitor, I think it is now clear that reushing is very important,” says McDowell. “They will not be economically competitors without reuse.”

Europe’s ultimate goal is to obtain a sovereign missile industry that reduces its dependence on the United States. “Where we are in the broader geopolitical situation, this may make this a more point than it might be six months ago,” McDonald says.

The continent has already shown that it could diversify the United States in other ways. Europe is now running its successful satellite -based alternative to the American GPS (GPS), which is called Galileo; It started its launch in 2011 and four times more accurate than its American counterpart. ISAR Aerospace may be the following companies, the first sign that European commercial missiles can be launched from America in a similar way.

“We need to secure access to space, and the more options we make in space, the more flexibility,” says Krans.