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Isar Aerospace wins $11.3 million in EU innovation competition

Capitalism in space: The German rocket startup company Isar Aerospace has won the first place $11.3 million prize in the European Innovation Council Horizon Prize in the category of low-cost rockets.

Isar was one of three finalists for the prize announced earlier this month by the European Commission, along with another German small launch vehicle developer, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Spanish company Payload Aerospace, which is working on a reusable small launcher. Those three came from an initial pool or more than 15 applicants, Breton said at a ceremony during the conference to announce the winner.

Isar hopes to launch its rocket, called Spectrum, late this year.

Whether this contest marks the beginning of an open and competitive launch industry in Europe remains unclear. Apparently the EU is thinking of creating what it calls the “European Space Launcher Alliance,” which — from the vague descriptions of it as well as the reservations expressed by Isar officials — might force independent companies to cater their actions to the needs of the larger rocket companies, like Airbus and ArianeGroup. This quote suggests the thinking of those larger companies:

“We understand how important it is for Europe to grab and keep leadership,” said Morena Bernardini, vice president of strategy at ArianeGroup. “This is possible only if industry is pushing in one direction.” [emphasis mine]

If I was a new startup, the highlighted words from this powerful established big space company would worry me enormously. Who decides what that “one direction” is? And what if different companies want to approach rocketry differently?

Genesis cover

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 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.


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"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

One comment

  • Edward

    Robert asked: “And what if different companies want to approach rocketry differently?

    In the recent past, free market capitalist companies that are at liberty to chose a different direction (nobody to prevent them from going it a different way) were able to find ways to reuse first stage booster rockets and bring down the cost of access to space and to orbit. One company that is currently trying to do things dramatically different — insanely different — may be able to bring down the price to orbit to a price point similar to shipping overnight-air from San Francisco to Paris, and they intend to make it inexpensive to fly to the Moon and to Mars.

    In the recent past, companies that are at liberty to chose a different direction were able to find ways to reduce the size of satellites and probes, bringing down the cost of the spacecraft itself. Added to the lower cost of access to orbit, more companies are doing business in space than ever, and more countries are creating space programs than ever.

    In the distant past, when the space industry and their government customers were all pushing in one direction, the costs remained high and few companies could compete with government in the exploration and use of space.

    Clearly, pushing only in one direction is stifling, but pushing in multiple directions allows us to discover which directions take us to where we want to go.

    What if Europe tries to grab and keep leadership by only pushing in one direction? Then they run the risk of falling into the old ways of doing things and failing to grab leadership if their one direction is a wrong direction. It seems that the lessons of competitive free market capitalism has been lost on the Europeans.

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