ESA announces competitive program to encourage new European rocket startups
The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced a new competitive award program, dubbed the European Launcher Challenge, designed to give contracts to new European rocket startups to help them develop their own rockets.
Proposals are due no later than May 5, 2025. The program will award up to $183 million to each company, depending on its application. The program has two components, one for rockets that will serve government contracts and will launch beginning in 2026, and the second for rockets that are upgraded by 2028. In both cases a company must complete a demonstration launch by 2027 to qualify for any award. More details here.
Essentially, ESA is structuring this program to provide free subsidies to those companies it decides it likes, with anywhere from two to three getting awards. In January six rocket startups — HyImpulse, Latitude, MaiaSpace, Orbex, Rocket Factory Augsburg and The Exploration Company — submitted a joint letter to ESA endorsing the program and outlining how they think the program should be structured.
Interestingly, the two rocket startups did not sign that letter, Isar Aerospace from Germany and PLD from Spain. Of all these companies, these two are actually closest to launch, with Isar about to attempt its first launch and PLD having already completed a suborbital test flight and building its launch sites in French Guiana and Duqm, Oman.
Officials at PLD are quoted here as apparently opposed to this ESA award program.
“We need to let the market select a winner,” Raúl Verdú, co-founder and chief business development officer of the company, said at the January conference. “Today, to be very honest, it is super-hard to select who will be the winner.”
It will be interesting to see this government program play out. Right now it appears designed to play favorites, a typical European approach. There is a good chance however that it will not do this, and will instead succeed in jumpstarting an independent, competitive European rocket industry. The program’s main structure remains sound, truly capitalistic, whereby the government owns nothing and simply acts as a customer, buying rockets from competing companies on the open market.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced a new competitive award program, dubbed the European Launcher Challenge, designed to give contracts to new European rocket startups to help them develop their own rockets.
Proposals are due no later than May 5, 2025. The program will award up to $183 million to each company, depending on its application. The program has two components, one for rockets that will serve government contracts and will launch beginning in 2026, and the second for rockets that are upgraded by 2028. In both cases a company must complete a demonstration launch by 2027 to qualify for any award. More details here.
Essentially, ESA is structuring this program to provide free subsidies to those companies it decides it likes, with anywhere from two to three getting awards. In January six rocket startups — HyImpulse, Latitude, MaiaSpace, Orbex, Rocket Factory Augsburg and The Exploration Company — submitted a joint letter to ESA endorsing the program and outlining how they think the program should be structured.
Interestingly, the two rocket startups did not sign that letter, Isar Aerospace from Germany and PLD from Spain. Of all these companies, these two are actually closest to launch, with Isar about to attempt its first launch and PLD having already completed a suborbital test flight and building its launch sites in French Guiana and Duqm, Oman.
Officials at PLD are quoted here as apparently opposed to this ESA award program.
“We need to let the market select a winner,” Raúl Verdú, co-founder and chief business development officer of the company, said at the January conference. “Today, to be very honest, it is super-hard to select who will be the winner.”
It will be interesting to see this government program play out. Right now it appears designed to play favorites, a typical European approach. There is a good chance however that it will not do this, and will instead succeed in jumpstarting an independent, competitive European rocket industry. The program’s main structure remains sound, truly capitalistic, whereby the government owns nothing and simply acts as a customer, buying rockets from competing companies on the open market.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News