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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Europeans view this as crony capitalism or getting fleeced?

As a European, I view this as preserving our strategic independence and wish we'd do more in more domains.

That's more or less what I suspected. I think it is fascinating to see the cultural differences on these topics. In the US, both parties of voters are extremely critical of such partnerships, claiming either corruption or waste.

Why do you think this is? Are the EU voters less price critical to spending? Are they simply more trusting?

I think it's related to our respective view of the State. As a French, I expect the State to do things for me and despite the State's too many failings, I have far more trust in the State than in corporations, so a States-led project in a strategic domain is a good thing. I don't wish the government (in its American meaning) to do less, I wish it to do better. It seems most people in the US view the State as a necessary evil and the worst entity to entrust their taxes with. Of course, things are more complicated and nuanced, but that's my bird's eye view.

It sounds like a big part of it is that despite the state handing huge sums of money to corporations, their is a belief in appropriate oversight.

what are you talking about? this is happening all the time in the US with Spacex+USGOV, Boeing+USGOV, etc.

The US government often takes the role of purchasing services and contracts, whereas the EU seems to favor more direct funding of corporate projects, like the one this article mentions, or the Airbus 380.

That said, I was talking about the sentiment around these activities, where much of the US is fairly hostile to the idea.

The EU needs to directly fund these project because otherwise they just don't happen. When the US produces many of these things just happen.

Starlink basically just fell from the clear blue sky into DoD lap. Leapfroging their own plans by about 4 generations.

This is because the US has more dynamic companies, a bigger internal market, that can access far greater level of funding, all the way from startup to grand investments.

> where much of the US is fairly hostile to the idea.

I'm not sure this is universally true. When it comes to military its the opposite. The US has broad support for the militarily, and in the military budget financed projects like GPS, like F22, F35 and so on. The Us military right now is planning multiple constellations in addition to extending Starshield.

In the US many of these things just happen out of the public view, internal to the govenrment. When in the EU this is all negotiated as part of bilateral agreements that are far more public.

Pff bit of this bit of that. Trying to compete in the private market against SpaceX is questionable. The system isn't cutting edge and at best will be in the private market with massive subsidies.

Doing a huge constellation is 'in' but doing so when you can't even figure out how to design decent rocket doesn't make sense. We end up spending much more government money then the US ever did on Starlink, and we don't even get a decent rocket out of it.

In fact, Europe is massively subsidising Amazon, just so the Ariane 6 can pretend it has costumers. And then we will launch this constellation with Ariane 6 and then everybody will pat themselves on the back declaring their 'vision' as a great success.

Creating some LEO constellation for government and military maybe not a terrible idea.

But 10 billion is less then SpaceX paid for the complete Falcon 9 development and the initial version of the constellation. And the government maybe paid a few billion at best.

So we are paying 10x is more, for getting about 10% the value. And we will give a huge subsidy to Amazon as well. That just not really a great use of strategic resources.

I would prefer to first figure out some basic, change the structures, start small and use contractors that can actually deliver. I don't actually see an urgent need for a 10 billion $ LEO constellation right now. Maybe get the rockets right and iterate on the technology for a while.

Its like, Germany for example can't get the trains to run on time, the military is a complete basket case with many much bigger needs then secure LEO constellations, but LEO constellation is what every 'great' power must have. Sending old military equipment to Ukraine is to hard, lets slow ball that, but copying Starlink so we can also have secure unhackable LEO constellation that is a huge priority.

I do think investing in critical infrastructure makes sense, but I don't have to be happy about how its actually done. So I don't really care about spending 10 billion. But the process of how decisions are made and how they are executed, is something I do care about.

For example, it was utterly embracing watching Arianespace bumble along looking like complete and utter buffoons for 10 years, embracing Europe on a global stage. And did anybody get taken to account for a complete and systematic mismanagement? Have those contractors suffered any consequences? Of course not, here is another 500 million $ go and do a research project about the basics of reusable rockets.

> The system isn't cutting edge and at best will be in the private market with massive subsidies.

It's intended for governmental use (which includes the military). As such, there's no need for it to be competitive with any private marketing offering.

> So we are paying 10x is more, for getting about 10% the value.

Such is the price of strategic independence.

Or would you really feel better if the EU were completely dependent on staying on good terms not only with the US (whose soon-to-be leader is publicly considering to let some of its adversaries "do whatever the hell they want" with Europe), but also US-based companies essentially being able to charge the EU whatever they want for space launches due to a lack of alternatives?

Its explicitly designed to also see private use, and sold to governments as such. They want to claim that this can subsidize the government operation.

This is the exact same playbook that they use with the Ariane 6. Don't worry, its operation will be subsidized by commercial contracts. And then the actual commercial contract is a billion+ $ for Amazon.

> Such is the price of strategic independence.

If you only get 1% of value for every project, then its simply 100% impossible to actually have broad strategic independence. This is just basic math. There are 1000s of things that you could talk about in regards to strategic independence, if you have to spend 10-100x for each one, then you will simply fail to achieve it in 95-99% of them.

And if you are in a position where you can't even get close to the goal of overall strategic independence you need to prioritize. Is a LEO constellation really the most important of those things? If your goal is not consumers streaming Netflix, but resistant military communication, what would a constellation look like that was focused only on that.

Strategic thinking is about priorities and using resources in the most efficient way possible to the greatest possible effect. This is specially true in Europe where the money for such things are incredibly limited.

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