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...
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.
> We have more than one design if one proves flawed.
One of the parties ends up with the right the design, the other will have a flawed design.
Verification and ability to verify comes with having some leverage. This brings some leverage to the table.
SpaceX has multiple designs generations ahead of anything in Europe in this category. (China is catching up, but it too is retracing Hawthorne's path.)
Themis is cool. But it's duplicating what SpaceX did fifteen to twenty years ago and what China has been working on for ten. Methalox, open cycle gas generator, steel tanks...there aren't any daring design decisions here. And there shouldn't be. This is a solved problem. (Again, that doesn't mean Europe shouldn't be solving it independently. But it's not innovating anything here.)
Consider an alternate universe where NATO isn't in shambles. Europe can use SpaceX for LEO. And in the meantime, it can focus on other designs, other categories. Maybe a different fuel. Maybe a novel engine. Maybe something entirely extra-atmospheric. Maybe it's a breakthrough in satellite design, or habitat science. Instead of replicating Falcon 1/9 and Raptor, there could be a genuinely new design.
We don't get that, because Europe has to secure its launch sovereignty. That is the cost.
> We could maximise economies of scale by having one car manufacturer that made a small number of models
Mature market. Multiple optima. See my comment on Airbus and Boeing. When you're pathfinding, you want multiple bets. When you're pursuing, R&D benefits from scale.
Sabre seemed a really interesting space approach that failed from lack of funding.
It’s because the EU is 27 different countries with different regulations while the US is 1. Some work is being done to fix this but remains to be seen if we can reach a point where we have unified capital markets instead of national ones.
The point of the EU is to provide unified markets, and capital flows pretty freely between major European economies (including those outside the EU) so I do not think that is it.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-france-europe-fighte...
I was rebutting a claim that differences in regulations preventing capital flows. That is not true in general in our globalised world (capital clearly flows freely between many countries) and certainly not true in the EU.
It is possible that the EU loses somewhat from not having the central budget that the US federal government has which which to back big projects, but, in most cases, the bigger EU states are big enough to back most things (as is the UK) but will not do so. The lack of fiscal centralisation in the EU also affects its financial stability but I do not think that is directly related to this problem.
As for sixth general fighters, a number of smaller economies than Germany alone have or plan their own sixth generation fighters, or have done so (some programmes have merged). Again, a difference in attitude and priorities.
Sabre was always a dead end.
And where did that initial money come from? Musks sale of PayPal shares, which he got when PayPal acquired his payments company... Would that have happened if he'd started his payments company in Europe? Would Compaq or an equivalent have been interested in paying for zip2, which provided the initial money to found x.com if he'd built zip2 in Europe?
Musk deliberately and intentionally moved to silicon valley, and I think a big part of the reason was almost certainly that the US is more prepared to invest money in these kinds of ventures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%9...
You couldn't. Boeing and Airbus have pursued different strategies, both in design and production. There is very little actual duplication between their work. To the extent there is, it's in each de-risking different technologies and then the other, after seeing the results, rapidly catching up.
This is partly a reflection of commercial aviation being a relatively mature market. Both in the pace of required innovation (and regulation). And the fact that the difference between branching out and marching forward is difficult to know ex ante.
Put another way, the next steps in launch vehicles are relatively constrained. The goals aren't particularly unknown, just the path. For aviation, on the other hand, the goals are quite varied.
Really what produces an advantage is an environment of trust. Having that reduces a lot of friction when it comes to economic activity.
Absolutely. The point is when pursuing a proven technological forefront, there are benefits to being able to focus on efficiency. Moreover, scale expands solution space.
Not always. But high-throughput manufacturing allows SpaceX to pursue both efficiency and resilience in e.g. engine design in a way not possible if you're building engines one at a time. (You always have multiple engines in process, which enables a higher risk tolerance, which enables a higher feedback rate, which allows for faster and more-meaningful iteration.)
> 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.
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.
I remember Colin Powell giving a presentation at the UN holding a glass vial of "proof" Irak had WMDs..
What a good thing he didn't drop it, otherwise they would all be "dead"..
New York isn't "delegating" its space access to California, Texas and Florida. (Same as America never saw itself delegating shipbuilding to our Japanese and Korean allies.)
I'm not arguing Europe isn't acting rationally. Just that this is the cost of strategic independence. Everyone shares a burden of duplication and diseconomies of scale. It really isn't that long ago that NATO members--America included--didn't think that way.
Politics of division will end up with fragmentation. But yes, Europe does need its own space capability as part of its own military capability in order to remain an independent block without undue external pressure. Conversely, that subordinates the independence of countries within the block, which is why things like an "EU military" haven't got off the ground until now.
They're going after different markets with similar tech (mostly not working, to be honest) or trying different tech. Themis and Prometheus are entirely unoriginal designs. (Which is fine. Their point isn't to be innovative, but to be there, in Europe, where Trump can't touch them.)
There are incredibly cool, novel designs in Europe. But they can't see the light of day because these duplication projects soak up funding. (Again, as they probably must.)