Preparations are under way for a rocket test flight in Norway that could make history and give Europe greater independence from the market leader in orbital launches, the United States.
Isar Aerospace says it is planning to launch on 24 March between 12.30pm and 3.30pm CET, weather permitting.
Some background info on the company:
Isar Aerospace was founded by former students of the Technical University of Munich, who already participated in the WARR group which also won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition several times.
They received fundings from (among others) Airbus, NATO and a former SpaceX executive Bulent Altan (who studied at TUM as well).
Very impressive achievement already and a real hope for European space programs and independence!
*For the first time in 80 years…
We know how to do stuff, it’s just that we thought the world a friendlier place.
I’m not quite that optimistic.
Yes, things are happening, but imo these are still mostly reactions to external pressures. There is no structural change or politicians that have the quality to properly lead.
As an example here in Germany we recently approved a huge amount of new debt for investments in infrastructure and weapons. But the leaked contract negotiations for the coalition of our next government includes tax gifts in the form of lower tax rates for eating out, ev subsidies for the car industry, and higher pension benefits for mothers payed out of the regular budget (while we already have a unsustainable pension system).
Also in the above mentioned decision to take on new debt we decided that defense spending above 1% of GDP doesn’t count towards the regular budget, but can be financed through debt separately. Which on the one hand might be nice, since right now we might invest more. But imo setting the limit at 1% kind of shows how much we actually value it. We could have set it higher and committed to sustained change, but this way leaves more room open in the regular budget for the gifts mentioned above.
Polluting the planet for money. You country has been doing it for quite a while.
This whole “expanding coal mines” meme is a bit of a joke. Germany is now using a similar amount of coal as in the 60s, i.e. coal usage has dropped massively in recent years. If people hadn’t voted for CxU this year, it probably would have dropped to (near) zero until 2030. We’ll see what we get with the new coalition that is probably eager to keep coal usage stable, so those highly-subsidized coal jobs can remain. [Notably though, the same people who whine the most about the death of nuclear also whine the most about the impending death of coal.]
And you can criticize the (CxU!) decision to phase out nuclear first, rather than coal, but coal does have advantages in that it is both cheaper to operate than nuclear and it is possible to regulate the amount of energy produced within days, [so using coal to avert the effects of the dreaded dunkelflaute is actually possible with coal but not with nuclear.]
The old nuclear plants didn’t have their major checkup for 13 years either, which is essentially the entire time since the regulations were strengthened post-Fukushima. Getting them up to par would have necessitated major investments. In addition, the nuclear plants were dependent on fuel rods produced by a Russian-owned supply chain.
Commercial/private spaceflights are dumb and shouldn’t exist. Just more trash that flies at bullet speed in our orbit.
Critical infrastructure shouldn’t be in private hands. As Musk perfectly demonstrates right now.
I mean true, but putting it in state hands encourages stagnation and will eventually leave you unable to compete globally. Also if someone tries to do stupid shit like Elon you can just nationalize the company or enforce some other harsh consequence. He does shit like this because he knows nobody can punish him.
This is an absolute basic necessity for a European Starlink, isn’t it?
Well, to be able to independently launch it: yes. But once the satellites are up, who cares about the car dealers-in-chief?
& There’s already Eutelsat; their satellites already seem to be providing internet much like Starlink: https://www.eutelsat.com/de/satelliten-dienste/satelliten-internet-breitbanddienst.html
I don’t know much about this but I think these low earth orbit satellites bump into ozone molecules occasionally so their orbits will deteriorate after 5 years or so. That is to say, you need to replenish regularly.
You are right that low orbit satellites aren’t in a stable orbit and eventually fail in a matter of years. I think it very much depends on what the intended useage would be for a european constellation:
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How much coverage do we want? Global or just the continent+ a bit more?
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Would it just be for critical systems or are we also looking for economic independence?
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What about bandwith and latency, how much do those matter?
All that would influence how many satellites are neccesarry and which orbits would be suitable. And also to what degree cost efficiency would play a role.
Eutelsat has geosynchronous orbits, which allows them to provide service over a much larger area per satellite and doesn’t require very many satellites to serve a consistent geographical area as the earth rotates and the satellites orbit the earth.
Problem is, though, geosynchronous orbit is 35,786 km altitude. Light travels at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s. So any signal takes 120ms to get to the satellite, and 120 ms to return. Any signal is going to have a 240ms latency at a minimum, and that’s just physics.
Starlink satellites have an altitude closer to 600 km. Light only takes about 2ms to get to that altitude, and 2ms to return. So the satellites add only about 4ms, which makes for easier and more seamless communication.
In order to compete with starlink for most typical Internet applications, it’ll require a bunch more satellites orbiting at much lower altitudes.
Eutelsat merged with OneWeb in 2022, which has satellites orbiting in LEO at 1,200 km.
So I suppose they also have access to that.
Weren’t we already launching rockets from the French Guiana?
Okay but why do we need that? As I read it Europa had a spaceport, now we have a second one, now what? I mean there was a reason to launch from SA and not Europe, right?
Mhm I guess it would reduce transport cost of the equipment you want to launch as you don’t have to ferry it down to French Guiana first.
Yes, but the news is that they are now launching from the European continent, making everything much cheaper because you don’t have to transport rockets and payloads around the world.
@tristipasta I thought it was more effective to launch the rockets from as close to the Equator as possible, as the gravitational field is less strong and so you need less fuel to take off.
That’s why US also launches rockets from Florida and the USSR and later Russia used/uses the Baikonur facility in Kazahstan.
True, but the primary advantage comes from the Earth’s rotational speed rather than a significantly weaker gravitational field. The Earth’s rotation provides an additional velocity boost to rockets, which helps reduce the fuel needed to reach orbit.
However, your remark is valid and is also addressed in the article (in the part behind the paywall):
Rockets launching close to the equator get a boost. Thanks to the planet’s spin, they start out travelling much faster relative to the centre of Earth than rockets launching near the poles.
Andøya Space Center is located at 69° north, so Earth’s rotational speed is considerably weaker there than in French Guiana. But this isn’t important for high-inclination orbits: those that make a bigger angle with the equator.
Isar Aerospace says it will be able to put 1500-kilogram payloads into orbit up to 30 times a year, in orbital inclinations from 90° to 110.6º. This would include sun-synchronous orbits - those that always pass over a given point at the same local time - which are ideal for spy and weather satellites. Isar already has a contract to put Arctic Ocean surveillance satellites into just such an orbit for the Norwegian Space Agency.
The launch site is also reasonably free of air and marine traffic, and it benefits from all the infrastructure needed for small launch vehicles. “It will be more limited in terms of what you can achieve, but it’s still, I think, reasonable,” says Amato.
