How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle

Re:How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shu... by cfgvjkljhgfb on Sunday July 24, 2011 @11:12PM (#2801153)

ESA manages to launch telescopes much more complex than Hubble in spite of not owning a single rocket.

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Re:How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shu... by arethuza on Monday July 25, 2011 @04:22AM (#2801808)

In case anyone is wondering, I presume this is a reference to the ESA Herschel telescope launched by Arianespace:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html

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Re:How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shu... by pavlov on Monday July 25, 2011 @04:45AM (#2801839)

ESA does have the Ariane 5 rocket:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Launchers_Access_to_Space/SEMEUB...

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Re:How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shu... by arethuza on Monday July 25, 2011 @05:52AM (#2801982)

From my reading of the relevant wikipedia page is looks like ESA gets the private company EAD Astrium to develop Ariane launchers and Arianespace, which is also a private company, to actually launch them and market them for commercial launches:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_%28rocket_family%29

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Re:How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shu... by cfgvjkljhgfb on Monday July 25, 2011 @08:53AM (#2802380)

Arguements about government ownership of EADS aside - the important part is that ESA is free to launch on Ariane, Soyuz, Chinese or any other rocket without it becoming a congressional matter.

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