Can’t disagree with any of that. The Italy thing is certainly ironic. I think the reason it is true is that Italy is just the first large European nation to get a local-language version of MAGA-esque leaderhip. But I don’t think it will be the last. And once France and Germany follow suit, the EU’s days are numbered. Even the Brits electing Farage would be a major step toward the EU’s inevitable doom. The increasingly likely spectacle of Canada cracking up will also have echoes in Europe.

Anent space, once they’ve seen off the Russians, the Ukrainians could well be factors – again – in space as they were during the late Soviet period. The early 2030s – both in space and here on the ground – seem fated to look almost nothing like the early 2020s. And that’s a good thing.

I think that is an advantage. They are not going to spend a lot of money trying to develop a launch vehicle and all the facilities to support it. Think of the tens of billions of dollars they will save. Instead, they hire Axiom or another company to take their space program to orbit, manned or robotic. They can save additional dollars by hiring other companies to build the robotic satellites or probes for an unmanned space program. They benefit by doing in space what they want done, and vendor companies benefit by profiting from constructing or renting space systems (launches, space stations, satellites, etc.).

Meanwhile, the CAA kills off British aspirations for a space industry. They already killed their most promising launch company, Virgin Orbit.

At the same time, Rocket Lab is doing a good job of ramping up its launch cadence as well as making satellites and providing other services for companies and space programs. I see a good future for the space industry from the launchers to the satellite operators to future probes, and to the space programs of countries, companies, universities, and billionaires. As long as they avoid the CAA.

East Europe of course today lacks the economics, technical capability, and desire to get into space.

I think Poland is worth keeping an eye on — they have an astronaut on ISS as we speak as part of Axiom 4, and they show serious signs of building up a domestic satellite industry — and they are just big enough and economically successful enough that they could do something significant in space.

Their disadvantages are geography (no suitable place to build an orbital launch complex) and the urgency of their ongoing military buildup, which will create pressure to push whatever they might spend on space into milspace applications.

For the established major European powers, their political and economic situations are all so bad right now that it’s going to continue to be difficult to find the bandwidth or the money to step up things in space. When Italy has the most stable and popular government of any major Western European state, you know things are dire.

That’s too small.

The correct response for us in America is to nod politely and laugh to ourselves, and keep nudging ourselves forward. Get the NASA bureaucracy under control (perhaps President Trump will nominate Mr. Zimmerman to be its next director?), end the SLS, keep providing contracts to SpaceX and Rocket Lab (and not to Boeing), and keep encouraging others to join the fun.

I guess they could always say they are the alternative to American tech-bro launchers –but they may have been too successful at sliming spaceflight in general for even that to work.

For all their revolutionary zeal, the French answered the protest of them shooting off the West’s last nuke and such with Rainbow Warrior.

Not even Trump would pull something like that.

I miss those Frenchmen.

During the whole “Freedom Fries” deal, there were two competing programs here on martial arts. Folks from other countries let the Yanks win.

Not the French.

One kicked a host to where he doubled over.

“Human Weapon” I think it was.

Bob Goddard sent out an email this morning, furious that he applied for his launch permit in 1928 and it was just approved. Furious.

The UK seems unserious about furthering space-flight technology.