Macron Says Europe Must Become 'Space Power' Again (phys.org) 41
French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to reassert itself as a global space power, warning that France risks being sidelined in the low Earth orbit satellite market dominated by players like SpaceX and China. Phys.Org reports: Macron spoke at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget outside the French capital a day after France more than doubled its stake in satellite operator Eutelsat, the EU rival to Elon Musk's Starlink. Macron called for more investment as the European space industry struggles to remain competitive in the face of US and Chinese rivals. "SpaceX has disrupted the market, Amazon is also getting involved. China is not far behind, and I think we all need to be very clear-headed," Macron said. Europe must become "a space power once again, with France at its heart," he said. He warned that Europeans were "on the verge of being completely" squeezed out of the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation market.
Macron said France and its partners should not be reliant on non-European constellations in low orbit, calling it "madness." He called non-European players to team up with France. "This must be the solution for our major strategic partners in the Gulf, India, Canada and Brazil," he said. "We really need to succeed in increasing our collective investment effort," Macron added, noting the importance of private investors and public-private collaboration. He also said France planned to organize a space summit in early 2026 to "mobilize our public and private partners across the globe."
Macron said France and its partners should not be reliant on non-European constellations in low orbit, calling it "madness." He called non-European players to team up with France. "This must be the solution for our major strategic partners in the Gulf, India, Canada and Brazil," he said. "We really need to succeed in increasing our collective investment effort," Macron added, noting the importance of private investors and public-private collaboration. He also said France planned to organize a space summit in early 2026 to "mobilize our public and private partners across the globe."
Sure (Score:2, Informative)
When has Europe ever been a "space power?" Ariane has a competitive launch system for modest payloads. That's about the extent of all "space power" Europe has ever exhibited.
It's 2025 and no European aircraft manufacturer has a stealth military aircraft. Russia and China have both achieved this. The US has 2-3 generations of stealth, now, depending no how one counts. Nothing at all from Europe.
Kinda sad.
Re: Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
They haven't been an anything power since the second world war, where the continent leveled its own industries and infrastructure. Sure, the US helped, but only after being dragged into it. And that did induce us into ramping up our already strong industrial capacity many times over.
Besides, the first time I ever watched a rocket launch in person was falcon 9 carrying a payload to orbit at Cape Canaveral, right before recovering the booster. Its payload? The first Eutelsat bird.
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Europe is an aerospace power, with Airbus being the world's leading company of aircraft that don't kill the occupants. The ESA is decently successful, and has pulled off projects like Galileo, and some interesting space science and exploration missions.
Europe also invented the World Wide Web. CERN is one of the world's leading research institutions.
Militarily, both France and the UK are nuclear armed, and the UK, Germany, and France export a lot of weapons.
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Sweden also exports weapons
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"Europe" didn't invent the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee invented the basic principles and the CERN's page was the first one, but "Europe" (I imagine you refer to the european union) never capitalized on it
The WWW is older than the EU, though the general public became aware of it in the same year the Maastricht Treaty was signed. The principle of hypertext is older than the WWW, though. I had hypertext software on DOS, it "only" didn't link to other computers. That's an obvious extension, though. And it literally is obvious, because people were doing similar things with Unix, via rcp and uucp. For example, there were automated UUCP info gateways. You'd send them mail and they'd send you dynamic data.
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People were never using UUCP or RCP, which are protocols to copy files and, in UUCP's case, run programs remotely to process them, for hypertext, no.
Regardless, the World Wide Web itself is, indeed, a European innovation even if, like most innovations, it built upon technologies invented the world over.
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If they have the power to go there, they're a power. Macron's declaration has even an understatement. More than that, they were an *important
power* meaning someone you could not avoid to consider and talk to, until recently when new players appeared. This is what he wants back (I guess).
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Europa was also one of the early girlfriends of Zeus.
He used to visit her as a bull.
Apparently she liked his BBC or the BBC...
One of those anyways, I'm not sure if they watched TV in those days
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If you believe that stealth fighters are worthless then you need to learn of the "you should go home now" incident in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
An F-22 approached an Iranian F-4 that was attempting to shoot down an American drone. The F-4 pilot did not detect the F-22 on radar even when close enough that the F-22 pilot could visually inspect the F-4 weapon load-out. The F-4 pilot only became aware of the F-22 once the F-22 pulled up alongside the F-4 so that it was clearly in view of the pilo
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Europe was a "space power" in the 90s in the sense that "Ariane 4 managed to capture 50% of the market in launching commercial satellites". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Sure (Score:5, Informative)
ArianeSpace used to be a massive commercial orbital lift provider. It was considered almost as cheap as Roskosmos, but without the geopolitical risks of RosKosmos. This is time before SpaceX got its reusable boosters working, crashing prices for orbital lift.
Problem is that in mid 2010s, when asked about "reusable boosters" on camera, one of ArianeSpace bosses did the Lockheed Martin laugh (when they were told Russians had closed circuit rocket engines) saying "it's impossible".
He was then asked a follow-up question "but what if Musk is right and it is possible?". He laughed some more of that Lockheed Martin laugh, and then said "well if it's true, he'll put us all out of business".
He was correct in the last part. ArianeSpace is utterly uncompetitive with SpaceX today, and has shrunk to getting only French/ESA government' contracts and government sponsored contracts that stipulate usage of ArianeSpace. Rest of its clientele has long left for SpaceX.
This is French basically begging EU for more money for ArianeSpace.
Re: Sure (Score:2)
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Funny, but Ariane had the only rocket available to put the Webb Telescope into space.
That accounts for something.
Europe needs to worry about fixing Europe; Paris is a fricken sewer worst than it usually is.
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> When has Europe ever been a "space power?" Ariane has a competitive launch system for modest payloads. That's about the extent of all "space power" Europe has ever exhibited.
So you answered your first question with your second statement, and then tried to pretend your question was legitimate by adding a third statement that didn't contradict anything said in the second, but minimized it despite actually any point you were making being lost to the fine arts of trolling.
Europe has been a space power, a m
MESPA! (Score:2)
But how?
Under ESA, under EUSPA or under the Airbus, Thales and SpaceRISE rule?
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Sure, but in what pecking order?
Judging by the way iris2 went, it is the big business with the plan, and the Commission/EUSPA with our money, all in to spend it among themselves. And ESA as the hired help to create an air of propriety.
Get rid of Old Space (Score:1, Troll)
Europe has to do the same.
But it won't - the big old companies control the eurocrats.
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Just launch from some colony far away (Score:2)
just like the French did with their nuke tests.
Re: You can't have both... (Score:1)
Will space power matter (Score:1)
in 10 to 15 years when we're even more hit by the consequences of not caring about the climate?
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From the fine article...
Orbiting just a few hundred kilometers above Earth, low Earth orbit satellite networks can play a crucial role in various fields including telecommunications, emergency response, space exploration, and defense.
France has a number of more immediate concerns than global warming. Or at least concerns that are on an equal footing with global warming.
The mention of telecommunications is a concern since there's some unknown actors that have been destroying undersea telecommunications cables. We have a good idea on who is doing the damage but without a clear identification on the actor there's not much else to do but plan for redundancies.
Emergency response is mentioned as there's been attacks
Oh great, just what we needed (Score:2)
Loads more space junk filling the night sky.
Perhaps the reason SETI doesn't find anybody out there is that all civilisations eventually disappear behind a wall of orbiting trash.
Space power? (Score:2)
A creative soul would invest a space force then. Not sure we are going to beat Russia with that.
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The EU needs spy and communication satellites if it wants to be able to defend itself. This is the kind of satellites that contributed to the need for an EU space program.
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The EU needs spy and communication satellites if it wants to be able to defend itself. This is the kind of satellites that contributed to the need for an EU space program.
Not just that but an effective military will require weather satellites for accurate weather forecasting, as Demonstrated with Typhoon Cobra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Then is navigation satellites, as first demonstrated during battles in 1990/1991. In addition to GPS proving vital to effective navigation of warriors and munitions there's sensors on Navstar GPS satellites for the detection of nuclear detonations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
GPS satellites carry a set of nuclear detonation detectors consisting of an optical sensor called a bhangmeter, an X-ray sensor, a dosimeter, and an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sensor (W-sensor), that form a major portion of the United States Nuclear Detonation Detection System. General William Shelton has stated that future satellites may drop this feature to save money.
Then some future planned space operations of rapid mo
It's entirely their own fault (Score:2)
They rejected the concept of reusable rockets years ago when Falcon 9 was starting to eat everyone's lunch. Actually they didn't just reject it, they ridiculed it, saying that then they would have to fire all their rocket builders, think of all the poor unemployed rocket builders! You know, the ones who haven't been building too many rockets the past few years because Ariane 6 was fucking years late. And it's still expendable.
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Right they made this big mistake. Now the guy says they want to be back in game. By the way the Ariane service based on a reusable rocket is planned to launch in 2030, and a scale demonstrator already flies.
Be Space Power Again - did I miss the first time? (Score:1)
Re: Be Space Power Again - did I miss the first ti (Score:1)
I guess Russia is technically in Europe...
But no, you didn't miss anything. Post-war Europe collectively decided to spend their money on the welfare state rather than military development.
Every space program alive today traces its heritage to military programs to provide robust communications, surveillance, and weapons delivery through space. The scientific and commercial stuff came after, and in the US at least became somewhat self-sustaining as an industry.
Europe elected to miss out on the seed capital b
envy (Score:2)
Europe is like the guy who looks over the fence and sees his neighbor has something shiny, then wants one, too, even if he can't afford it nor know how to use it.