Don't we in Europe have our own space rockets?
Other launchers are not currently available.
It is not as if the US had no capability gaps. For a long long while they had to buy seats from Russia to get their astronauts to the ISS.
> we're talking about measurements being made with pen plotters because they'd get angry that "something changed" if we sent them a digital plot taken on the same equipment
That level of conservativism doesn’t sound entirely healthy to be honest.
There is a slightly different situation here, which is that the Space Shuttle was kinda... not that safe. I didn't like that either but for human rated spacecraft the requirements are all more strict, for good reasons. Unfortunately, those reasons are mostly things like Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. But overall I think I agree.
>That level of conservativism doesn’t sound entirely healthy to be honest.
We weren't convinced it was either. Did you know they don't make parts for pen plotters anymore? Somehow the customer was surprised by this. We did manage to convince the right people there to allow the switch eventually but it was a struggle.
The only European country with its own launch capability is Russia.
The UK is notable as being the only country to have had that capability and lost it - which says a lot of the lack of vision and ambition of the British ruling class.
Basically the belief that "economic ties would supercede ideology or meglomania". I suspect if Europe had taken a stronger line on Russia and the strategic threat it represented, then they'd have a stronger launch market since "we'll just buy a Russian launch" wouldn't be treated as a serious option (i.e. even the US was treating this as an option for manned spaceflight, and ULA using old Russian engines on their rockets without a home-grown option till Falcon 9 is ridiculous).
I entirely agree with what you way though. The west is extremely naive in its world view, and has been so for many decades. Silly ideas like "the end of history" are still influencing attitudes even though they are so clearly wrong that no one would explicitly espouse them.
The west has forgotten that not everyone is going to go along with the idea of social liberal free market democracy, and that it is not as appealing to many people from other cultures.
However, this lack of access to space should come to an end soon. The ESA has shipped stages of the first flight hardware for the Ariane 6 rocket to its French Guiana spaceport. While the ESA has not set a specific launch date, it is working toward a window that extends from June 15 through July 31.
And wow, lots of hate for Europe in this thread. Salty much
Arguments involving Musk's products, even tangentially, tend to do that..
Extreme hatred and saltier than a salt mine here.