Victor_D
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LE BOURGET, France—Europe appears to have abandoned all hope of independently pursuing human space exploration, even as the region's politicians and aerospace industry leaders complain about shrinking U.S. commitment to various space ventures.
After years of sitting on the fence regarding a separate, pan-European manned space program, comments by senior government and industry officials at the Paris Air Show here underscore that budget pressures and other shifting priorities have effectively killed that longtime dream.
Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the European Space Agency, stressed that Europe won't design its own rockets or new spacecraft for manned missions, but may contribute to international efforts.
"We don't need any European autonomy in manned flights," Mr. Dordain told a press conference earlier this week.
The agency's chief also said that by failing in the past to set up robust international space-transportation partnerships, Europe and the U.S. "made a collective mistake." As a result, Mr. Dordain said, "we now face the not very comfortable situation" of being totally dependent, at least for the next few years, on Russian technology to reach the international space station.
Such concerns coincide with next month's planned retirement of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's final space shuttle. That will leave Russian Soyuz rockets as essentially the only way to get cargo or astronauts from any nation into low earth orbit—until the U.S develops and deploys shuttle replacements in the second half of the decade.
NASA chief Charles Bolden also made an appearance at the show partly to stress trans-Atlantic cooperation, including a possible unmanned voyage to Mars. But European officials generally remain skeptical that NASA will be able to come up with its full share of funding for the project.
Under President George W. Bush, NASA explicitly said it didn't want European involvement in critical manned systems. Now, the agency is singing the praises of international cooperation as the only way to cover the huge costs of manned exploration of deep space. But budget constraints and political squabbling may put many of those plans on hold.
Jean-Yves Le Gall, chief executive of launch-services provider Arianespace, agreed in an interview that an all-European manned space effort is off the table. "It's a dream," according to Mr. Le Gall, "but it's not realistic."
Mr. Le Gall also said that when it comes to U.S. launcher development, "there is a lot of talk, but not a lot of achievements."
Both NASA and ESA, its European counterpart, face severe spending constraints and political uncertainty over their future. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are plans to build powerful new rockets with enhanced capabilities, including heavy-lift versions to explore deeper into space.
But their problems also are similar. There are debates in Europe and the U.S. about safeguarding the existing industrial base tied to solid rocket motors. At the same time, experts in both cases are advocating new liquid-fueled rocket engines as less costly and easier to operate.
For Arianespace, the next few months will mark an important milestone. Supplementing its core Ariane 5 rocket, the company is slated to have the first launch of a Soyuz rocket from a pad it built at its complex in Korou, French Guiana. The new capability will provide Arianespace, which already is the leading launcher of commercial satellites, added flexibility to launch scientific and government satellites.
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Good.
As much as I'd like an independent European manned spaceflight capability, there is currently no reason to waste billions of Euros on developing another uncreative tin can capsule to be launched on a super-expensive rocket that will become obsolete years before it makes it first flight. Let the Americans and Russians do that, we should focus on more futuristic projects (and continue doing great science, as always). In the meantime, it's not that that expensive to buy seats on the Soyuz, or use the commercial suppliers if they come through.
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