Europe tests a new engine design aimed at nothing
The European Space Agency:
home of dead-end projects
The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that it has successfully completed a static fire test program of a new rocket engine, dubbed Greta, that uses alternative fuels in order to save the environment.
Greta uses hydrogen peroxide and ethanol as propellants, a more sustainable alternative with a lower carbon footprint compared to monomethyl hydrazine propellant used by most traditional rocket engines in this thrust range.
Greta was ignited multiple times from July to November 2025 and showed stable operations, including controlled shutdowns. During the test campaign the engine fired continuously for over 40 seconds at a time. Greta was tested on a new, low-cost and versatile mobile test stand with instruments measuring data such as pressure and temperature, which will be used to further optimise the engine.
The problem is that this engine is not being built for any specific rocket or spacecraft. As the press release notes vaguely, “This type of engine could be used on lunar landers or on kick stages, such as Astris that is being developed for Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket.”
In other words, this is a test program only, and could very well end up on the scrap heap once completed, because it belongs to no private company aimed at making profits.
NASA did these kinds of projects for decades, all for naught. The agency would make a splash with its press release, the propaganda press would extol blindly the wonders that have been achieved, and then the project would complete and get quietly shelved, stored somewhere in the government archives (possibly in the same place they put Indiana Jones’ Ark of the Covenant).
ArianeGroup is building this engine for ESA, so there is a small chance the company might decide to use it in a future rocket or spacecraft, but only if it makes sense financially. And there is no indication that this engine’s development is tied to financial concerns, in the slightest. For example, the program only calls for another round of static fire engine tests — using “parts for the flight-like motor design” — in 2027, more than a year hence. At that pace the engine will be obsolete before tests are completed.
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:
home of dead-end projects
The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that it has successfully completed a static fire test program of a new rocket engine, dubbed Greta, that uses alternative fuels in order to save the environment.
Greta uses hydrogen peroxide and ethanol as propellants, a more sustainable alternative with a lower carbon footprint compared to monomethyl hydrazine propellant used by most traditional rocket engines in this thrust range.
Greta was ignited multiple times from July to November 2025 and showed stable operations, including controlled shutdowns. During the test campaign the engine fired continuously for over 40 seconds at a time. Greta was tested on a new, low-cost and versatile mobile test stand with instruments measuring data such as pressure and temperature, which will be used to further optimise the engine.
The problem is that this engine is not being built for any specific rocket or spacecraft. As the press release notes vaguely, “This type of engine could be used on lunar landers or on kick stages, such as Astris that is being developed for Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket.”
In other words, this is a test program only, and could very well end up on the scrap heap once completed, because it belongs to no private company aimed at making profits.
NASA did these kinds of projects for decades, all for naught. The agency would make a splash with its press release, the propaganda press would extol blindly the wonders that have been achieved, and then the project would complete and get quietly shelved, stored somewhere in the government archives (possibly in the same place they put Indiana Jones’ Ark of the Covenant).
ArianeGroup is building this engine for ESA, so there is a small chance the company might decide to use it in a future rocket or spacecraft, but only if it makes sense financially. And there is no indication that this engine’s development is tied to financial concerns, in the slightest. For example, the program only calls for another round of static fire engine tests — using “parts for the flight-like motor design” — in 2027, more than a year hence. At that pace the engine will be obsolete before tests are completed.
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 relevant Scene:
“Top…Men”
Indiana Jones (1981)
https://youtu.be/Fdjf4lMmiiI
(0:37)
Lordy, these folks are thick. Precisely what contamination are you worrying about in lunar or open space, who cares what your exhaust is in space use H2/F2 or even pulsed fusion/fission for that matter. And if memory serves H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide) is rather touchy to store and handle at concentrations above the 5% you can get from a pharmacy. It also REALLY wants to go to H20 + O2, it is not blindingly stable. It is more stable than monomethyl hydrazine, but H2)2 is not far behind once you get to useful concentrations. on top of that Monomethyl Hydrazine is a better propellant with an ISP of 280-340 seconds vs Ethanol/Hydrogen peroxide at 215-281 seconds. Well at least for once someone is not wasting my money (unless NASA has been tossing money at this ESA project).
A solution in search of a problem.
“In other words, this is a test program only, and could very well end up on the scrap heap once completed, because it belongs to no private company aimed at making profits.”
Well…..I see no problem with NASA returning to its useful NACA days and building test articles to prove or refine – or disprove – ideas, techniques, hardware. Boosting things out of the low TRL’s is not a bad function. And I’m sure a lot of those might end up on the junk heap. And a lot of the ideas might be laughed at by some – as I chortle over the climate-friendly engine design in the post topic. But that’s basic research, after a fashion, and I don’t mind inefficiencies there. And you might learn something.
Most of the the focus ought to be guided by commercial needs and desires. But it doesn’t have to be all.
Saville wrote: “Most of the the focus ought to be guided by commercial needs and desires. But it doesn’t have to be all.”
Then why don’t you invest in this research, and let me and others alone who don’t want our hard-earned money going to empty Potemkin Villages.
Private companies and individuals have a long tradition of investing in pure research, but they are choosing to do it with their capital, earned from profits or from investors willing to commit the funds. They do this pure research because they always have some idea there may be the potential for future profits from the work.
Government test programs aren’t interested in profit in the slightest. Their goal is always to convince the legislature to give them a budget, and that budget is always divorced from any real results.
As we can see here with this ESA engine, and multiple past NASA projects that are, as I said, archived with the Ark of the Covenant.
Tregonsee314 wrote: “Lordy, these folks are thick. Precisely what contamination are you worrying about in lunar or open space.””
Everything… EVERYTHING found on Earth is found all over the known universe. Cosmic shhhhtuff! I believe the major “contamination” we should be most concerned with is the mental disorder known as Liberalism.
Re: hydrogen peroxide (HP) specifically – since it is used to lighten hair, get closer to blonde, will the HP be the latest item to fall into the raaaaaacist column.
Just now, there is this:
Democrat Rep Maxine Dexter says putting “White milk” in schools is “White supremacy” So now, cows cause Globull Warming and racism.
“Then why don’t you invest in this research, and let me and others alone who don’t want our hard-earned money going to empty Potemkin Villages.”
No need to get steamed RZ……..we just have a slightly different outlook…perhaps.
Is it your position that ZERO government dollars should fund pure research? Is that your position – I don’t want to make assumptions.
Did you mind the NACA research, testing and development of turbocharging and supercharging? I don’t mind it so much. THE USAAC benefited a great deal from that. Not exactly a potemkin village – but very much basic research
…paid for by tax dollars….
And there were huge commercial benefits.
Did you mind the NACA document on the Meredith Effect is titled “Cooling of Aircraft Engines With Special Reference To Ethylene Glycol Radiators Enclosed In Ducts,” published in 1936 by F. W. Meredith. This report outlines the principles of the Meredith Effect and its application in aircraft design. Certainly tax dollars paid for that. Had commercial benefits.
I don’t mind that we spent tax money on that…the P-51 benefited.
In fact we still use the NACA developed airfoils today – my plane has one. I don’t mind all that wind tunnel testing done with NACA tunnels because they were the only ones capable of the testing required at various times.
And of course there will always be flops – like the NACA study “Calculated Condenser Performance for a Steam-Turbine Power Plant for aircraft”. But that’s the nature of basic research.
And, no, government research is not interested in profit.
And, yes, commercial R&D choices are made based upon enhancing product to make more money – and yes as a GENERAL rule capitalism models are better.
And yes NASA has gone way off the deep end.
But, in my opinion, there is a place and time for basic government funded research. To wit: high risk/high payoff projects at a basic level. To demand ZERO government funded basic research is neither realistic nor beneficial.
Maybe you think differently. So again I ask – Do you believe that absolutely ZERO tax dollars should be used for pure research?
Saville: At this time, based on the utter incompetence across the board of our government (including a great deal of corruption and outright fraud and theft), at almost all levels, yes, I do not want to send one penny for this stuff to our government.
All the examples you cite are from a far different time, when those involved had some ethics and respect for the money given them. It worked then because 75 years ago people considered the moral component of their actions far more important, and acted accordingly.
Today we cannot trust any government worker with our money. We need a real house-cleaning before the kind of programs you describe can be considered again.
If our government wants anything research done at this time, it should buy it from the private sector. And the private sector should own every aspect of what it produces.
Saville: If I sound heated it is because I am sick and tired of the inability of far too many Americans to see the utter failure of their government, a failure that has been on-going and quite pervasive for many decades. People keep demanding that NASA do this and NASA do that, but what has NASA actually accomplished in the past quarter century? Its manned program is a mess (other than the parts it hired SpaceX to do); its astronomy program is filled with overpriced and overbudget and behind schedule big projects that suck the life out of the rest of the program; Its planetary program have been badly managed for most of the last decade (consider Mars Sample Return as just one example), resulting in fewer and fewer missions.
And that’s just NASA, which actually is one of the more effective federal agencies. The rest of the story is far worse.
And yet, people refuse to see it. Instead, its always “Government is the solution! If we just had the right government program all would be well!”
“Europe tests a new engine design aimed at nothing”
And, it looks like they will hit it.
Ronaldus Magnus: I saw that news item. The last gasps of a nonsensical and corrupt ideology. Never more on display than the Democrat response to the State Of the Union address. My Progressive trope card was full inside five minutes. In a changing world, Progressivism is stuck in 1930, and will not leave. It’s all they have. People have noticed, and voted accordingly.
Robert, this government hatred of yours is pathological.
I remember a Chi-com, mind you, on CNN complaining that he thought China’s new opera house was a boondoggle, okay?
Yes he had the perfunctory red star on his uniform and all that–but he sounded like he had good sense.
Meanwhile, private Bud Light made a fool of themselves.
You have this ideology that government=bad and private=good.
I don’t care about -ists or -isms…and you shouldn’t either.
I could probably find some old Soviets who ran a tighter ship than some CEOs. People are what matter…not ideology.
Robert wrote: “NASA did these kinds of projects for decades, all for naught.”
NASA has, or had, engineers and planners with dreams and ideas for the future. They were trying out new ideas that would be useful in that future. Unfortunately, Congress had no interest in that future and funded something different, making many of those projects obsolete, leaving them as dreams for space enthusiasts, such as Jeff Wright, to hope for a resurgence of the heyday of the 1960s.
Government was not the solution then, and it is not the solution now.
Fortunately, we have several commercial space companies attempting their own innovations for their own current projects, not hoped-for future projects. We are now seeing three successful commercial launch companies (Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and SpaceX) and several successful space operations companies doing business going into and within space. These projects are not for naught. We are now getting production from space that we thought we would have received for these many decades from our government’s efforts in space.
When we let government run the space industry, all we got was what government wanted. Now that We the People are running the space industry, we are getting what We want.
Jeff Wright: you are sidestepping his point, which is the self-serving corruption so common in government, and the entitlement and misuse of taxpayer resources. It takes highly motivated reasoning to say that NASA is doing its best with programs like the SLS, James Webb, MSR, et al. The government needs significant internal reform before it can be trusted, while you want us to trust it because it is the government.
Plus, the norm for the US is for the citizenry to do things for itself, rather than depend upon the state. That includes spaceflight, whether you like it or not. Your ideology is losing power, and that’s clearly what has you worked up.
So they named it after the anti-Semitic climate troll-child?
Seriously?
RZ Writes:
“If I sound heated it is because I am sick and tired of the inability of far too many Americans to see the utter failure of their government, a failure that has been on-going and quite pervasive for many decades. People keep demanding that NASA do this and NASA do that, but what has NASA actually accomplished in the past quarter century? Its manned program is a mess (other than the parts it hired SpaceX to do); its astronomy program is filled with overpriced and overbudget and behind schedule big projects that suck the life out of the rest of the program; Its planetary program have been badly managed for most of the last decade (consider Mars Sample Return as just one example), resulting in fewer and fewer missions.
And that’s just NASA, which actually is one of the more effective federal agencies. The rest of the story is far worse.
And yet, people refuse to see it. Instead, its always “Government is the solution! If we just had the right government program all would be well!” ”
Ah ok so your two posts clarifies things quite a bit. Thanks for the two posts.
Seems we are in agreement pretty much. You aren’t against taxpayer funded pure research – you just don’t like the way it has morphed over the last few decades – and I quite agree with you.
And we both think government is rarely the solution.
And we both think NASA has gotten out of hand and that it’s fantasy that it would ever return to its Apollo glory days of accomplishment.
I – and others – would like to see NASA reduced to to the functions of it’s 1930’s NACA days. I doubt that can happen because the opportunities for pork and grift are too strong.
But when I’m pointedly asked: How would I prefer NASA function in the future? I reply that it would be nice if it was reduced to the NACA days of focused, pointed, high risk/high reward R&D – able to be requested by commercial firms – and at such a small level that it’s below the grift-radar of the congresscritters.
I do ponder whether it’s OK for NASA to operate the decadal surveys – they are useful in determining direction of scientific astrophysical research. But I’m open to other methods.
“”let me and others alone who don’t want our hard-earned money going to empty Potemkin Villages.””
And the “hard-earned money” of several future generations that we have already spent.
If we do not reduce the levels of spending, the NASA budget will be just a small part of any budget reductions.
Federal interest payments on the national debt reached $970 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2025, according to the American Action Forum, making it the third-largest federal expenditure, behind only Social Security and Medicare.
There are still too many liberals and RINOs in Congress who will not address this insane spending. Aside from that, Congress mandating certain NASA projects because “they think it is a good idea” is also not rational (other than bringing Federal $$$ to their districts).
Did any government apparatchik or Congress Critter mandate reusability? Mandate inflatable space facilities?
If the Federal Leviathan ever gets spending under control, perhaps a few RFPs for certain projects might be feasible. Maybe.
One of my other FAVORITE private sector space projects is asteroid mining. I will not live to see it fully developed, but once again, science fiction will become science fact.
Ronaldus Magnus: AstroForge is building spacecraft to that very end, and launching both on rideshares and making plans to launch on Stoke’s Nova.
I personally do not believe that the US government should be funding science research for any reason other than pure military. Top secret military research.
All other government funded research tends to be public knowledge. Thus we are just funding other nations research.
If we want more Space research from the private sector give them property rights on any “land” they can produce from. The Moon , Mars, Asteroids. whatever. Its not like any mining operation or colony on the Moon would ever be seen be eye from Earth is ludicrous.
I certainly have no problem with private property ownership….I have seen what punks do in public schools first hand. I do not have a problem with taxes going to research, in that you can find military utility in the most unlikely of places.
One big lie about SDI was that it was a brain drain. In point of fact it made Clementine and other small missions to Mars possible. If anything, it was too good….we were used to small Delta II rockets with smaller payloads to where we got into a rut.
Starship/SuperHeavy may get us out of that rut.
If I could go back in time, I would interfere with development of the microchip, so as to get folks used to building larger LVs.
The microchip should have been invented in a Moonbase.
When I was younger, you saw greater access to model kits….better toys. I hope Elon or some tech-bros would develop aerospace and military toys. I had a nephew that I bought an X-15 for. They don’t even make that toy anymore.
We have got to do something to get kids away from wrestling, smartphones and sportsball.
Vocational School has to be mandatory.
Ronaldus Magnus,
Rep. Maxine Dexter seems to be a typical self-hating white female Progressive. No accident she represents part of Portland, OR. She does have a husband and two kids, though, so at least she’s not a childless cat lady.
One can only wonder if her antipathy toward white food is limited strictly to milk or whether white bread, potatoes, grits, white rice, white-shelled eggs, etc. are also – in her mind – manifestations of white supremacy.
When I was a kid I’d have been all in favor of allowing “Milk of Color” as an alternative to the white stuff – chocolate milk was a favorite.
I love chocolate milk.
There are just not enough brown cows.
I dislike Greens for the same reason I lament a lot of cost cutters
Greens have assaulted steel for quite awhile–and they got a victory
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-unintended-consequences-decarbonizing-steelworks.html
To quote:
“Steel sits at the center of overlapping, nested systems—from local communities to the national economy and global markets. Altering one part of a system sends tremors through the rest. Systems scientists describe this dynamic as panarchy: a concept from ecology that explains how interconnected systems operate at different scales and timescales, so change propagates unevenly and often in unexpected ways.”
“With this approach, focusing only on emissions risks a kind of *carbon tunnel vision.* Judging success by a single metric misses how one decision ripples into livelihoods, culture, mental health and identity.
“After the immediate change came quieter, more troubling effects which emerged more slowly. Steelmaking wasn’t just a job.”
“Many former steelworkers told me of the pride, dignity and identity it gave them. When the furnaces closed, loss of purpose, stress and depression followed in ways that don’t show up in emissions data or balance sheets.”
“The local economy shifted again too. The short-term boost from redundancy money faded. Businesses that relied on a large, stable workforce began to feel the loss. The town entered an uncertain medium-term phase, where opportunity and fragility coexisted.”
It matters not if it is a Greta or a Vought that kills things.