Yet another #Artemis II article (from a French press agency, no less) ignoring that propulsion, power, & life support to the Orion capsule are provided by ESA’s European Service Module.
-
These are issues that ESA will have to carefully & honestly examine with its Member States in the coming months, as they try to come up with a strategy for human spaceflight that takes into account its deep current dependence on an increasingly unreliable partner.
Do European governments & the European public believe that an independent human spaceflight capability is desirable & affordable?
IMO, it’s perfectly ok if the answer to that is no. But the current model appears very broken.
@markmccaughrean I think the Ariane 64 Block 2 will have the payload to launch a reasonable two-person capsule on top of an ESM to the ISS? But I imagine they couldn't be kept in storage long enough to both develop the capsule and crew rate the rocket.
So nothing short or medium term by that route, hm.
-
@datenwolf One of my jobs at ESA was to give regular updates to our various committees & boards on scientific results from both the robotic missions & the human spaceflight programme.
That there’s a lot of material from the former goes without saying, but there is plenty from the latter too. That said it tends to be less “cosmically awesome”, relating to human & plant biology, materials science, fundamental physics, etc., less immediately exciting than stars, planets, & galaxies.
-
Yet another #Artemis II article (from a French press agency, no less) ignoring that propulsion, power, & life support to the Orion capsule are provided by ESA’s European Service Module.
Built in Bremen by Airbus, with parts from all over Europe, e.g. solar wings made in Leiden.
Also no mention of the fact that the ESM’s for the Moon-landing Artemis IV & V missions are to be supplied as part of ESA’s contribution to the Lunar Gateway.
Which NASA cancelled last week.
@markmccaughrean OH GREAT LEADER WITH GREAT SKY WAGON PLEASE LOOK AT US WITH PITY
-
@datenwolf One of my jobs at ESA was to give regular updates to our various committees & boards on scientific results from both the robotic missions & the human spaceflight programme.
That there’s a lot of material from the former goes without saying, but there is plenty from the latter too. That said it tends to be less “cosmically awesome”, relating to human & plant biology, materials science, fundamental physics, etc., less immediately exciting than stars, planets, & galaxies.
@datenwolf It also tends to be a lot more “bitty”, coming in small chunks as experiments are modified & upgraded over time. It’s also often a bit buried in wider studies of which the spaceflight experiments are just part.
Of course, I’m deliberately avoiding saying whether the cost-science benefit ratio is worth it compared to robotic missions, but arguably the two pots of money aren’t really fungible. Science is a by-product of other human spaceflight, not the primary goal.
-
@markmccaughrean I think the Ariane 64 Block 2 will have the payload to launch a reasonable two-person capsule on top of an ESM to the ISS? But I imagine they couldn't be kept in storage long enough to both develop the capsule and crew rate the rocket.
So nothing short or medium term by that route, hm.
@pauldrye There was Hermes for Ariane 5 & more recent efforts within ESA to get the Member States to agree to an independent human crew vehicle for Ariane 6, with Samantha Cristoferetti playing a big role.
But it didn’t go anywhere in the end, perhaps underlining my point about there continuing to be less appetite / desire / need for Europe to be autonomous in this regard.
Space bubbleers struggle to accept this, of course, saying it reflects poorly on Europe. But does it really?
-
And of course it’s entirely possible (personally, I think likely) that the wider European public isn’t especially interested in human spaceflight.
At least not in the way that superpowers like the US & China are, where it’s part of soft power propaganda & national myth-making.
After all, there are many other priorities on this planet, arguably more pressing than going to the Moon, such as climate change, security, & resource management, areas where space also plays a critical role though.
@markmccaughrean On a straw poll of the microcosm that is our golf club, I'd say that the (UK) public is more in favour of human involvement than their government is. All of a sudden, I found that I was having to slip a term like "Specific Impulse" into the post-round conversation yesterday!
-
@markmccaughrean On a straw poll of the microcosm that is our golf club, I'd say that the (UK) public is more in favour of human involvement than their government is. All of a sudden, I found that I was having to slip a term like "Specific Impulse" into the post-round conversation yesterday!
@birchbirch The problem with that is that people are often fine with glorious, exciting endeavours when the bill is footed by someone else.
Ask your golf friends whether they’d be willing to pay an extra few percent income tax to fund an independent European human spaceflight programme & a wider boost to education, universities, government R&D, tech incubation, & science needed to support, justify, & benefit from such a programme.
I suspect you know the answer already
-
@birchbirch The problem with that is that people are often fine with glorious, exciting endeavours when the bill is footed by someone else.
Ask your golf friends whether they’d be willing to pay an extra few percent income tax to fund an independent European human spaceflight programme & a wider boost to education, universities, government R&D, tech incubation, & science needed to support, justify, & benefit from such a programme.
I suspect you know the answer already
@birchbirch While I know that it’s de rigueur to knock the government (which leads to ugly populists like the Tangerine Tyrant getting into power), my sense is that European govts are following the lead of the public on this, not vice versa, i.e. that the taxpayers don’t wish to put too much money into big vanity endeavours like human spaceflight.
After all, didn’t the Tories propose a fully UK Crew Dragon flight, but to be paid privately, not by the govt? Shades of Project Juno.
-
These are issues that ESA will have to carefully & honestly examine with its Member States in the coming months, as they try to come up with a strategy for human spaceflight that takes into account its deep current dependence on an increasingly unreliable partner.
Do European governments & the European public believe that an independent human spaceflight capability is desirable & affordable?
IMO, it’s perfectly ok if the answer to that is no. But the current model appears very broken.
@markmccaughrean Quite a lot of people used to be really excited about manned space exploration, myself being one of them, but current events have made us almost indifferent to it. To refer to a professional author's take:
-
@datenwolf It also tends to be a lot more “bitty”, coming in small chunks as experiments are modified & upgraded over time. It’s also often a bit buried in wider studies of which the spaceflight experiments are just part.
Of course, I’m deliberately avoiding saying whether the cost-science benefit ratio is worth it compared to robotic missions, but arguably the two pots of money aren’t really fungible. Science is a by-product of other human spaceflight, not the primary goal.
I'm well aware of the experiments that are done on the ISS (or back in the day on the STS and Mir). Heck, a couple of years ago some hardware for a medical study went up to the ISS what was in part built (or rather modified from the commercial system) by colleagues of me (optical coherence tomography to investigate the eyesight problems astronauts develop in microgravity).
1/
-
I'm well aware of the experiments that are done on the ISS (or back in the day on the STS and Mir). Heck, a couple of years ago some hardware for a medical study went up to the ISS what was in part built (or rather modified from the commercial system) by colleagues of me (optical coherence tomography to investigate the eyesight problems astronauts develop in microgravity).
1/
What's puzzling to me is, that so little of what's done on the ISS ends up being discussed during lunch, or over the post seminar pizza. Whereas so much other research, often in very far removed fields tends to be brought up.
It's a quite remarkable situation: Crewed space flight is a very "popular" topic; almost everyone in the 1st and 2nd world knows about it and that "a lot of science" is happening there.But among my earthbound researcher peers it's discussed very little.
-
To be clear, yes, the article is in a British newspaper, @guardian, but is directly sourced from @AFP.
Not that the articles written by the Guardian’s own journalists are necessarily any better, mind you:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/02/artemis-ii-nasa-moon-launch-american-moment
And this is no UK anti-Europe bias; same across most Euro-media.
Some are doing better though, & I know the BBC are doing a piece today about the key role being played by the ESM, & ESA themselves are of course talking up the ESM.
@markmccaughrean @guardian @AFP
I haven't read the english AFP article, but I can tell you that BFM (main tv news) invited someone who spoke long about ESA's work on this mission (I can't remember his name but I'll try to find the video).
There's also other articles like the one from RFI (RAdio France Internationale), interview with Philippe Berthe :
Artemis II: «Sans le Module de service européen, la mission est impossible»
https://www.rfi.fr/fr/science/20260331-artemis-ii-sans-le-module-de-service-europ%C3%A9en-la-mission-est-impossible -
What's puzzling to me is, that so little of what's done on the ISS ends up being discussed during lunch, or over the post seminar pizza. Whereas so much other research, often in very far removed fields tends to be brought up.
It's a quite remarkable situation: Crewed space flight is a very "popular" topic; almost everyone in the 1st and 2nd world knows about it and that "a lot of science" is happening there.But among my earthbound researcher peers it's discussed very little.
@datenwolf I agree, & little of the science done there is covered by media either, hence burying it from the public radar screen too. Possibly because in part it’s visually unexciting, just humans & boxes of gear.
There’s also an element of truth in that it’s a bit of an insider club, with the same groups getting experiments approved all the time, partly because they already know the ropes & partly because they then sit on the committees deciding future strategy & experiments.
-
@datenwolf I agree, & little of the science done there is covered by media either, hence burying it from the public radar screen too. Possibly because in part it’s visually unexciting, just humans & boxes of gear.
There’s also an element of truth in that it’s a bit of an insider club, with the same groups getting experiments approved all the time, partly because they already know the ropes & partly because they then sit on the committees deciding future strategy & experiments.
@datenwolf And that you get weird outliers like AMS-02, a hugely expensive piece of kit that made its way to the ISS despite not being highly-ranked in peer review, despite huge technical problems during test which led to the cryomagnet being dumped, making the experiment less sensitive, & despite needing congressional approval for a whole extra shuttle flight to get it there.
The power of a Nobel prize winner very adept at playing politics, to be sure, but good for science?
-
@markmccaughrean @guardian @AFP
I haven't read the english AFP article, but I can tell you that BFM (main tv news) invited someone who spoke long about ESA's work on this mission (I can't remember his name but I'll try to find the video).
There's also other articles like the one from RFI (RAdio France Internationale), interview with Philippe Berthe :
Artemis II: «Sans le Module de service européen, la mission est impossible»
https://www.rfi.fr/fr/science/20260331-artemis-ii-sans-le-module-de-service-europ%C3%A9en-la-mission-est-impossible@hadon Oh, there certainly has been some coverage of the European involvement in Artemis, & I also saw a piece of Dutch TV where the fact that the solar wings were made in Leiden was mentioned.
I’ve been asked to do media around Artemis & have largely turned it down, because I have felt very conflicted about not wanting to give any succour to the current US govt. Missed opportunities to discuss the ESM as a result, of course.
And overall, ESA’s part is just lost in the noise of US flag-waving.
-
@birchbirch The problem with that is that people are often fine with glorious, exciting endeavours when the bill is footed by someone else.
Ask your golf friends whether they’d be willing to pay an extra few percent income tax to fund an independent European human spaceflight programme & a wider boost to education, universities, government R&D, tech incubation, & science needed to support, justify, & benefit from such a programme.
I suspect you know the answer already
@markmccaughrean Golfers are rather used to the imposition of additional levies to be used for "future programmes" - whether the members want them or not! But you're right; a good proportion wouldn't be in favour of additional taxes.
-
@markmccaughrean Quite a lot of people used to be really excited about manned space exploration, myself being one of them, but current events have made us almost indifferent to it. To refer to a professional author's take:
@Lemmus I have a lot of time for Charlie & his perspective, & suspect that it’s widely shared even among tech & science folk.
Which is a problem for NASA, inasmuch as the association between the tropes of human destiny in space & fascism are probably even stronger now in the public eye than it was in Von Braun’s heyday.
But perhaps even more so for ESA, if the next move is to try to persuade people that an independent human spaceflight programme is the way forward.
-
Yet another #Artemis II article (from a French press agency, no less) ignoring that propulsion, power, & life support to the Orion capsule are provided by ESA’s European Service Module.
Built in Bremen by Airbus, with parts from all over Europe, e.g. solar wings made in Leiden.
Also no mention of the fact that the ESM’s for the Moon-landing Artemis IV & V missions are to be supplied as part of ESA’s contribution to the Lunar Gateway.
Which NASA cancelled last week.
@markmccaughrean Maybe I didn't read the thread carefully enough, but what does that cancellation mean for the planned moon landing?
-
@markmccaughrean Maybe I didn't read the thread carefully enough, but what does that cancellation mean for the planned moon landing?
@kallekn I'm not fully up-to-speed on all the details, but the original Moon landing mission was supposed to Artemis III, but was already moved to IV. ESM-3 & ESM-4 were delivered by Airbus to KSC in Aug 2024 & Nov 2025, respectively, so those parts of the hardware for those missions is in place.
Whether ESA will get its promised lunar astronauts (in principle the first should be German) & what happens to ESM-5 & 6, I don't know.
-
Yet another #Artemis II article (from a French press agency, no less) ignoring that propulsion, power, & life support to the Orion capsule are provided by ESA’s European Service Module.
Built in Bremen by Airbus, with parts from all over Europe, e.g. solar wings made in Leiden.
Also no mention of the fact that the ESM’s for the Moon-landing Artemis IV & V missions are to be supplied as part of ESA’s contribution to the Lunar Gateway.
Which NASA cancelled last week.
@markmccaughrean @happydisciple I'm sure Austria isn't the only European country whose media is running excited stories about the country's contributions to the ESM. Pressurisation lines from Styria! The service module backbone network from Vienna!
