That's a great video. I wish they had a way to do a tracking shot with the mast camera

Well they might end up pitching a fit then lol. I have a feeling ESA is going to try and coax Sierra Nevada to Europeanize a few Dream Chasers and/or move some operations to Europe. Would still be launching on Ariane 6 so maybe it wouldn't upset the French too much

CRS is not that expensive on its own, but the ISS won't be around for much longer and it does cost a lot to maintain a crewed presence. In other words, Europe would be spending a lot on hiring Dragons/Starliners for crew plus the cost to orbit a new station, whatever that would look like, just in order to necessitate the need for a European CRS in the first place.

NASA seems to be going all in on commercial station(s). How that will work exactly is a bit of a mystery but there seems to be at least three (Axiom, Orbital Reef and Starlab) that seem fairly serious and are all getting some NASA funding. Mostly looks like private investment though. Looks like Airbus is a partner on Starlab so perhaps that is the one angling for ESA patronage the most. If that is the case, ESA wouldn't have control over the services contract since it would be commercially operated.

Its all interesting stuff but its still pretty early

>“There is not a revolution in the amount of money that is spent. The big game-changer is the emergence of the NewSpace sector,” he said. “If we go on with the same procurement policies, if we go on with the same constraints that we have today, if we go on with monopolies, if we go with hampering the emergence of NewSpace actors, we won’t make it no matter what the budget is.”

Well, yes, but also no. Europe is caught in a sort of "chicken or the egg" conundrum

The US was able to develop a vibrant commercial services sector largely due to the amount of money the government is spending. NASA's new budget will come in at around $27B and the US military is spending a roughly equivalent amount ($28.5B, which doesn't include everything) and that is up from $17B in 2021. That means there are a lot of big public money contracts available for companies to go after not just in terms of launch, but in all manner of space assets and services. That doesn't even get into the sort of private money investments like those from Amazon and other communications as well as remote sensing constellations like Planet Labs.

The ESA budget for 2022 is about $8B, which isn't terrible, but European military investment in the space domain is almost negligible compared to the US or China.

So yes, you can say that Europe needs to get a lot more efficient with the money it is spending and that may be true but I don't see how that can happen without fostering competition first. Who is going to bid on a European Commercial Crew program besides Arianespace? Europe doesn't have a Relativity Space, let alone a SpaceX, and if you think about it SpaceX won its first major commercial services contract to the ISS when it was around the same size as Relativity is now. If that didn't happen they never would have been in a position to bid on Commercial Crew. Arianespace will laugh if you try to make them sign a fixed price contract

Its not enough to just say "lets copy commercial crew, look at how cheap it was!" That ignores all the other NASA and military contracts SpaceX got (and delivered on) so they could reach the point where they could even build such a complex item as a human rated capsule at a reasonable cost.

In theory there will be commercial stations at some point. I assume tourists will continue going with SpaceX due to cost and track record but NASA will still buy Starliners because they would like to keep both options. Wouldn't surprise me if Boeing threatens to axe the program after the initial contract if NASA doesn't start paying them just to maintain it

Not really our problem, we don't have to do business with countries we don't like. That regime is supporting the war against Ukraine they are extremely far from blameless in this

Obama tried and the Castros screwed him for it. Spent the whole time whining about Guantanamo. Then Democrats lost Florida in the next election

Then they had to go and support the war against Ukraine. If those issues were not enough, i'm not convinced the regime there even wants the embargo lifted since it gives a convenient scapegoat for their own economic incompetence. Not saying the embargo is right but politically nobody is going to try again for a long time. There is little to be gained on the US side and a lot to lose due to the large anti-Cuba vote in a large swing state. It is what it is.

Pretty high stakes for a 'special military operation' if you ask me

National boundaries are dependent on being on Earth. Each country has its airspace and whatever above that is mostly fair game, which practically speaking means satellites almost exclusively.

Orbit is protected because we all require satellites to function if we want modern life to function. That includes Russia, China and everyone else too. If you trash MEO or GEO it will be trashed for decades if not centuries. Frankly it makes some sense for everyone to not be completely in the dark on the capabilities of everyone else anyways and regulating surveillance from orbit is basically impossible

So those are the limits everyone has de facto agreed with whether there's a specific treaty outlining it or not. Nobody would be playing with balloons if they didn't produce better intelligence in some capacity. SIGINT is the most obvious.

Because I don't care about the Karman line I am defining orbit as the key delineation between reasonable surveillance methods and methods which will likely result in force being a response.

Yes, you can technically have a suborbital method that is valid, but its gonna look exactly like a ballistic missile and its trajectory will be beyond lower LEO altitudes so what's the point? Just use an actual satellite at that point lol

When were we trying to define space? We are talking about valid surveillance tactics. You don't need a horizontal vector at all if the earth rotates below you and you have enough.... altitude.

Suborbital isn't a valid surveillance method because that is otherwise known as an ICBM and its gonna look exactly like one on radar. Which, returns to my original point:

>Its not fuzzy at all. You are either in orbit, or you are not.

If you aren't in orbit then you are a threat and a target.

Altitude is correlated to distance traveled down range unless you have a rocket motor with infinite fuel. Please, show my the viable launch position that would achieve the desired surveillance at a lower altitude than a satellite could that isn't then going to smash into US territory somewhere.

You can argue semantics if you want to but suborbital flights that could produce any sort of surveillance capability would reach altitudes considerably higher than those necessary to complete actual orbits.

Yes, and?

Do you have a point or nah?

Its not fuzzy at all. You are either in orbit, or you are not.

The US outstripped the UK economy because it makes up the good chunk of an entire continent while the UK is the size of Michigan. A continent with a disgusting overabundance of natural resources and a massive population far larger than any other western nation I might add. Comparing US geographical advantages to those of the UK is like matching up an infant to fight Mike Tyson.

The US economy dwarfed the UK economy well before WWII, interested data but that war only accelerated the inevitable.

Risk of attack in the US? Is he referring to his own security forces beating people in the streets here?

We don't build wooden ships anymore. There are no size limits for steel, and eventually the ship gets so big that weather just won't affect it much.

The Seawise Giant was 2.5x bigger than an American supercarrier. If there were a shipyard big enough to do it, there is nothing stopping us from building a ship 10x bigger, or even 100x bigger except the price tag and the lack of logical reasons to ever build such a ship due to how impractical it is

There is theoretically nothing stopping you from making a ship as big as you want it to be. Practically speaking, that ship still needs to fit into harbors, through canals and enter drydocks for maintenance.

Ship size is limited by the infrastructure necessary to support it, not any sort of engineering limitations.

Why use a comet? Aren't you basically just describing what we've already done with Voyager 1 and 2? Both contained the Golden Record which is intended to provide some basic information about humanity to any alien civilization which happens across them in the distant future.

I have an exact replica of the Golden Record cover piece framed and hanging on my wall. Its incredible.

Yeah they don't have special interests in Europe. Its an EU law written somewhere, probably.

^(/s)

The fatal flaw in your analysis is assuming that CGI is always cheaper than practical effects (or will be in the near future). This is wildly untrue. It is both cheaper and better looking to chuck a low paid stunt double through a fake wall during an action scene than it is to try to render that whole action scene through CGI, as one example. You are thinking of the huge practical action set pieces that certain directors are known for, but those typically take up under 5% of the runtime of a movie.

Yes, eventually in hundreds of years if humanity manages to avoid destroying itself then we may start seeing entire movies just rendered entirely in CGI and even characters down to the voice acting that are 100% digital and basically indistinguishable from real actors in real places but they didn't even use a camera at all to make it. Because its cheaper, not because its better. You can't get better than real if its done right. That's not happening in you or your kid's lifetimes though, after that who the hell really knows.

Yes, that is what I already said

That is never going to happen lol, Russia will keep them up there for a double cycle if they have to. They are probably more referring to the one American who went up in that Soyuz and how to get them back should Russia fail to come up with an alternative.