Will Europe be able to compete with the United States and China?

Europe recognized very early the strategic importance of access to space, both civilian and military. France, under the leadership of General de Gaulle, successfully launched the first satellite in 1965 using a Diamant rocket, becoming the third country after the Soviet Union and the United States able to place a satellite into orbit using its own launch pad. To compete with the huge investments made by the United States and the Soviet Union in the conquest of space, it soon became clear that French efforts alone would not be sufficient. In July 1973, 11 European countries met in Brussels for the Second European Space Conference and decided to join forces to jointly launch the Ariane program. A few years later, in 1979, the Ariane 1 rocket made its first launch. Europe now has a launch vehicle capable of placing satellites in geostationary orbit, providing European countries with a significant military and scientific advantage.

Despite these initial successes, pooling our efforts at the European level has not made it possible to develop a space program competitive with those of other great powers. The European Union does not have any rocket capable of carrying out manned flights and still relies on cooperation with the United States and Russia to send its astronauts to the International Space Station. Ariane helps ensure Europe’s independence when it comes to launching satellites, but European commercial launches still cost much more than those undertaken by heavily subsidized US companies. SpaceX, which was founded by former PayPal president Elon Musk in 2002, and in 20 years has become the world’s leading company in the space sector, has earned more than $5.5 billion thanks to contracts concluded with NASA and the military between 2002 and 2015. These government contracts correspond to the real needs of the United States, but are signed at higher prices than launches carried out for private companies and constitute a form of indirect support from the US federal state to SpaceX, which helps ensure its competitiveness in the face of international competition.

Europe lacks the necessary funding to achieve technological innovations

The limited resources that Europe devotes to space exploration also lead to technological delays. SpaceX has successfully industrialized its offerings and developed major innovations thanks to numerous launches carried out by the US government to meet its military and scientific needs. The American startup has developed technology that allows the launch pad of its Falcon 9 rocket to be reused, saving several tens of millions of euros on average per launch. However, this technology only matters for a large number of launches that European rockets cannot achieve. SpaceX carried out 31 launches in 2021 and 61 launches in 2022, while Ariane 6 plans to launch a total of 11 to 12 launches per year. To remain competitive, the next generation Ariane rocket incorporates a series of technological innovations allowing for a 40% cost reduction compared to the current Ariane 5 rocket, but remains hampered by the low number of rocket launches carried out by European countries. Industrial or military needs.

The European delay is also exacerbated by the inability of our venture capital funds to finance the huge investments needed to develop new technologies in this sector. SpaceX raised $100 million when it was created, and in 20 years, its total fundraising has reached nearly $10 billion, reaching a value of about $150 billion in 2023. The number of French companies that have raised more than 500 million euros in 2021 can be counted or 2022 is on the fingers of one hand, and fundraising of this kind remains very rare at the European level.

While technologies developed by startups in the space sector will be essential to enable future generations of Ariane to compete with SpaceX, Europe is struggling to create a dynamic ecosystem in this sector characterized by huge investments, significant technological risks and strong dependence on state decisions. . ArianeGroup began thinking about this topic and notably organized and funded a separate project, called Maïa Space, to develop small, reusable launch technology applied to placing small satellites into low orbit. Structuring around ArianeGroup an ecosystem of startups heavily supported by public contracts and public and private funding will be essential to closing our technology gap by incorporating the innovations developed by these NewSpace companies into future generations of European rockets.

It is the basic catch-up that involves intensifying European efforts regarding the conquest of space

Europe has faced many difficulties in recent years to maintain its position in the space competition. The development of the Ariane 6 rocket was delayed by 4 years, and the first commercial launch of the European light launcher Vega-C, which would have allowed us to put small satellites into orbit, ended in failure. These difficulties should not lead us to accept permanent dependence on the United States, while control of space has become increasingly important in the digital and military spheres.

Elon Musk has notably taken advantage of SpaceX’s advances to place the Starlink constellation of more than 4,500 satellites into low orbit, providing its customers with fast Internet access anywhere in the world. Last February, when Russia bombed key civilian and military infrastructure in Ukraine as part of its attempted invasion, the Ukrainian government realized that access to the Internet and communications networks was at risk in part of the country. SpaceX agreed to provide Starlink terminals to ensure reliable internet access for Ukrainian forces despite Russian jamming attempts, which was instrumental in Ukraine’s ability to resist Vladimir Putin’s attempted invasion.

It is possible that the European delay will be quickly compensated. Within a few years, China has managed to become a leading space power that directly competes with the United States, and has achieved several technological achievements in recent years: landing on the far side of the moon in 2019, sending a robot to explore Mars in 2021, and placing a Chinese space station. In orbit in 2022. Specialists estimate this Beijing invests about $15 billion annually In the conquest of space, a level that rivals American efforts; In comparison, European Union member states have decided to increase the budget of the European Space Agency (ESA), but it remains four times less than NASA’s budget.

The pooling of efforts of European countries under the auspices of the European Space Agency has made it possible to maintain launch capabilities with Ariane, but our space program is not of a size that allows it to compete with the United States and China. Europe can only become a leading space power if its member states agree to make the conquest of space a priority, and agree to allocate the necessary resources to it.