State sponsored programs can move fast. Kennedy gave his "man on the moon" speech in May 1961, and we put a man on the moon in 1969.

8 years to develop the Saturn rockets and all the associated lunar module gear, without any ability to do sophisticated computer modeling or simulatoins. That's pretty competitive; SpaceX is about 20 years old now.

At the Apollo program's peak the US was also putting more than 4% of the total US budget toward the program. If the EU put more than 4% of it's total budget toward ESA I'm sure they could do something similar.

But that's not the point. The point of Falcon 9 was to reduce the price of getting to space. That was purportedly the promise of Ariane 6 but now there has simply been goal post moving to "it's to maintain independent access to space".

The price of a launch is not necessarily determined by the money spent developing the launch capability.

What is the EU spending compared to what SpaceX spent to develop its launch vehicles?

People love to quote this 4% total budget thing. Like yes we get it, but please stop just repeating that stuff.

Government did much less stuff in 1960s, that was before the Great Society and many other things. 4% total budget in 1960s and 4% in a modern Western state are totally different things.

Is it wise to overfit on the exception rather than the rule?

Is the state sponsorship the same in both cases, or are there noteworthy differences?

> State sponsored programs can move fast. Kennedy gave his "man on the moon"

By hiring private contractors and throwing lots of money at them.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. "Fast moving companies", from a Europeans perspective, often comes down to: ignored all the regulation, at least some of which was there for a reason. And now look at the mess that was left behind, it'll take decades to clean it up.

This is why the EU is falling so far behind the US in GDP per capita, when they started out pretty close 30 years ago.

True but it helps that:

- all US states all speak the same language

- US got oil

- the dollar is the reserve currency

The USA has multiple advantages, not just one.

Given the potential for wars this day, being surrounded by mostly ocean may also prove very useful as well.

There's also the fact that pretty much every useful technology from WW2 ended up being made by dominant industry in the US, because everyone else was rubble.

Silicon Valley was Silicon Valley before FAANG

Airbus came much later than Boeing and managed to be a worthy global competitor.

Which makes it even more impressive.

But I can tell you as a French, not having any natural resource and an economy mostly based on services in today's world is not making me bet on a bright future for us.

I saw there's still plenty of manufacturing in France, not just the service industry.

China had none of those advantages, and overtook the EU already in many high-tech industries.

Indeed, Europe had none of those advantages when it rose to Number 1.

China has over advantages, like have a sixth of the population in the world, having massive mineral and coal resources and being the factory of Europe and the US.

Baring a miracle, my continent has nowhere to go but down.

We have no metals, not fossil fuels, massive debts, an expensive lifestyle and few industries that cannot be copied elsewhere.

Post covid and the ukraine war, we are in deep, deep trouble.

Politically the extremes are rattling more and more, and they may very well win at some point because things are looking bleak.

Of those, only the resources are an inherent problem, and I'm not sure if it's really that bad if you take a continental perspective. I think you need to take a step back, and look at production of goods, technology, and services, not at money flow. In the end, getting rid of debt is just one default away, and that's a political decision. The Chinese exploit their resources and work hard - good thing they invest at home and in their military, because otherwise they might never get something back for their troubles.

The EU incorporated a lot of countries in the last 30 years, some of them in a pretty bad shape after their transictions from socialism into a market economy. Of course it would decrease GDP per capita.

But GDP per capita, and Nominal GDP per capita non adjusted by purchase power parity only tells half the history.

Free healthcare, good quality public education, cheaper and or subsidized housing, better worker protections and other good wellfare policies largely make for the nominal GDP difference betweeen the US and most EU countries.

Not to mention that a lot of economic activity not directly related to goods in the US like the sue-happy judicial economy, speculative financial services and insurance, and the cartelized highly inneficient healthcare industry are a big portion of the GDP.

> ncorporated a lot of countries in the last 30 years, some of them

Every of those countries was in a better shape than China, when it started the transition to a market economy.

> Free healthcare, good quality public education, cheaper and or subsidized housing

You do understand that those (highly desirable) goods need to be paid for, and in the past have been paid for by the economic success of the successful EU countries like the Netherlands, etc. But even those have been loosing their competitive edge more and more vis-a-vis China and the US. Loss of access to cheap Russian energy will make this worse. With economic decline those niceties will wither, too ...

Here's what a famous british tabloid has to say on the topic:

https://archive.is/8aqVH

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35591338

France has the same GDP per captia of Alabama, but I know where I rather live.

There's a middle ground between the two. You can take it slow enough to ensure well-regulated production, but you can still aim to _iterate_ over your designs for a fast-feedback cycle.

It's the latter that's really causing SpaceX to run rings around its competitors.

> There's a middle ground between the two.

I fully agree with that, SpaceX definitely earned the place it occupies right now.

I only objected to the view that "fast moving" is a goal in and by itself, and warrants dropping regulation left and right, just for the hell of it. In some way, the EU is a place I like to live in, _because_ it moves slow. I enjoy having all the rights and safety nets as a citizen, and I voluntarily give up opportunity as long as I can keep the former. If a company respects that, it can iterate all day (and many companies do, not only European), but if it doesn't, I don't care for their nice and shiny. IMHO, they're just a prototype. Either a) their business model is based on ignoring regulation, b) they'll adapt eventually, or c) another will come and eat their lunch a few years later.

Perhaps I don't understand your comment. What mess has SpaceX made that will take decades to clean up?

Sorry, not talking about Space X in that case, more the likes of Uber, Advertising, and Social Media.

The irony of using a USMC slogan and acting like Europeans invented that mindset…

The USMC has another famous slogan: Improvise, adapt, and overcome! I’m not sure many European companies share that mindset.

If you encounter US companies that share that mindset fully depends on the bubble you live in. Ever dealt with credit card schemes?

"Here they go investing money on useless long-term infrastructure, when the private sector could be fleecing them for a fraction of end product..."

Is Ariane 6 long-term infrastructure? Unless I missed something it's still a totally expendable launch system. That doesn't seem like it's viable in the long term.

Politrucs don't change.

Hearing about office culture in France was a shock. The country held up as a shining beacon of progressive policies also has a miserable culture of "no one leaves before the boss" and "you work till 6:30, even if you have nothing to do" like in Japan or Korea? So bizarre!