Skip to main content

Europe Follows the USA and China in the Strategic Use of Space

From the series The war industry and European defence

Next Spring SpaceX will be 20 years old. The company founded by Elon Musk has rapidly achieved a key role in international space activity. The first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket has recently been recovered, reconditioned and reused for the tenth time.

SpaceX has already repeated this type of reflight 70 times or so; it allows for substantial savings when compared to the losses incurred in the first stages of a traditional rocket launch. It is for this reason that it is being considered as the standard for the future. According to NASA’s calculations, the average cost of launching a satellite into orbit has fluctuated around the level of $18,500 per kilogram for the whole period between 1970 and 2000. SpaceX has reduced this figure by seven times.

Internet constellations

In recent missions Falcon 9 rockets have put a total of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit. The aim is to create a vast constellation designed to guarantee broadband internet connection worldwide, starting with North America SpaceX has 1,550 such satellites 540 km above the planet and has obtained authorisation from the American authorities to add another 2,800, which are planned to orbit 1,300 km above the Earth.

Starlink is not the only space internet project, but it is definitely the most advanced. However, it is not the only important project SpaceX has been involved in. SpaceX has completed three missions with its Crew Dragon vehicle transporting crews to the International Space Station. In this way it has provided the USA with a freedom of action which it has lacked since the end of the Shuttle missions. SpaceX has also been chosen for 40% of all the Pentagon’s launches for the period 2022-2026 (this should be around 15 launches). Finally, it has been commissioned to design the module for future lunar landings, as envisaged by the Artemis programme launched by Donald Trump.

Musk is famous as the founder of the electric car manufacturer Tesla. He is in competition with Jeff Bezos not only for the title of world’s richest man but also in the field of space technology. The owner of Amazon also owns Blue Origin, a company which was beaten by SpaceX in the race to participate in the Pentagon’s launch programme and in the development of the lunar module.

Amazon has kicked off Kuiper, a project for 3,226 satellites which replicates Starlink and should be deployed soon. The idea is to give Amazon’s cloud computing clients an alternative, or back-up, to terrestrial networks. It is no coincidence that Microsoft Azure, the global no. 2 in cloud services, and Google Cloud have recently formed an alliance for the use of the Starlink constellation. Unsurprisingly, the Pentagon is observing both constellations with interest.

DARPA and inventiveness

Since 2005 Falcon rockets have been funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Back then its CEO Steven Walker said that the team at SpaceX impressed [him] with their work ethic. There was some brashness there [and] some arrogance. [Eric Berger, Lift off, HarperCollins Publishers, 2021].

Richard Walters writes in his Financial Times column that SpaceX’s strategy is firmly anchored in the tradition of Silicon Valley. SpaceX didn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel: the engines which power the Falcon 9 are Merlin engines from the 1970s which have been adapted for re-entry to Earth after the launch. In the same way as the pioneer producers of semiconductors and the pioneers of internet did back in the day, Space X used a time-tested strategy: ride on the back of government-funded research, while also using government as the anchor customer to fund the development of a new market [May 7th].

Morena Bernardini, chief strategist for ArianeGroup, told La Repubblica that, for each launch the Falcon 9 makes for the Pentagon, SpaceX is paid $180 million by the US Department of Defense. This means that SpaceX can charge private clients only $40-50 million for a launch. It therefore receives a sort of proxy subsidy from the US government.

The new generation Ariane

The received view in Europe is that the choices made by the European Space Agency (ESA) at its 2014 conference were too conservative: We should have had […] audacity stated the French economy minister Bruno Le Mare. At that time the ESA launched the new Ariane 6 rocket programme. This was a traditional rocket with an expendable first stage.

Ariane 6 should make its maiden flight in 2022; the pandemic has slowed down development. Each flight will cost $77 million instead of the $177 million of its predecessor Ariane 5. ArianeGroup, the company which produces the rocket, is developing a programme so that both the Prometheus engines used in the first stage and the entire section (called Themis) can be recovered and reconditioned. The expected timing of the first tests is 2023-2024 and the introduction of the new Prometheus powered rocket is planned for 2030. Ariane 6 will therefore have an active life of only eight years. This compares with 25 years for Ariane 5.

The race has been started by the socalled American NewSpace phenomenon. According to the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, for Europe it is not the time for complacency. […] The standards for launchers are currently being redefined outside of Europe.

Mini-launchers

The NewSpace phenomenon has led to a series of private European initiatives for the development of mini-launchers. The table shows a brief summary. In part these are start-ups nurtured by the likes of Airbus, OHB (the manufacturer of Galileo satellites), the German space agency DLR, and the French agency CNES. All of these provide backing and funding.

EUROPE's MINI-LAUNCHERS
Company Country Rocket Payloada (kg) Cost (€1m) Planned first launch First stage recovery
Venture Orbital Systems France Zéphyr 70 2.4 2024 No
Orbex UK Prime 150 … 2022 Yes
PLD Space Spain Miura 5 300 8.0 2024 Yes
Skyrora UK Skyrora XL 315 … 2022 Yesb
HyImpulse Germany SL11 400 4.5 2023 Yes
Isar Aerospace Germany Spectrum 1,000 10.0 2022 Yesb
Rocket Factory Ausburg Germany One 450/1,200 3.0 2022 Yes
Notes: a) in low orbit, from 250 to 1,300 km; b) recovery under consideration, but not for first launches.
Sources: Aviation Week & Space Technology and company websites.

According to the HyImpulse startup, these projects focus on two main aspects: the economic viability of small payloads, the recovery of the first stage, and immediacy — the ability to plan missions (for example, for military and security purposes) at short notice.

The management at ArianeGroup and Arianespace (the company that markets the launch capabilities of Ariane, Vega and Soyuz) have highlighted the problem of planning and how these new initiatives might replicate their existing capabilities. In short, any new rocket must have a lower payload capacity so as not to compete with Ariane rockets. In their opinion space launches are not merely a commercial proposition but are also an instrument of sovereignty which European institutions — such as ESA and the EU Commission — should defend. This is no easy feat given the nature of the continental institutions.

In his Agenda for 2025, the new director of ESA — the Austrian Josef Aschbacher — notes that: Europe unfortunately missed the boat in the dotcom, Big Tech and artificial intelligence (AI) domains. Europe can still avoid the same fate in space. […]. The successful maiden flights of Vega-C and Ariane 6 and their transition into exploitation are an absolute priority. […] ESA will work with Member States, the EC [European Commission] and industry to establish a way forward for space transportation.

Three constellations for three powers

Aschbacher has provided enthusiastic support for commissioner Breton’s proposal for an internet constellation. At the start of January, Breton announced that within a year the Commission would publish a plan for the launch of a constellation of satellites for internet connectivity based on quantum encryption by 2028. The aim is for these to be funded for use by 4.0 industry and to provide cover against cyber attacks to terrestrial structures, Some experts (such as Daniel Fiott of the Institute for Security Studies) have doubts over the practicality of such a constellation. This is because of the thermal and electromagnetic shielding required by any quantum cryptography and computing. However, it is clear that Brussels wants to play in the same league as the USA and China.

China has landed a rover on Mars and has recently launched the central module of its space station into orbit. The news broke around the world due to the alarm shown by the USA over the unguided re-entry of the Long March 5 rocket. At the same time the Beijing government created the China Satellite Network Group. This will most likely coordinate the activities of two national aerospace companies which had been separately developing an internet constellation. China has asked ITU (International Telecommunication Union) for permission to launch the 12,992 satellites of the Guowang constellation (national network) into orbit.

It is interesting to note how the three main imperialisms intend not only to develop autonomous access to space, but also to equip themselves with the three main components for its strategic use. The USA, EU and China all set their eyes on a positioning and navigation system (GPS, Galileo and Beidou), an observation system (NROL, Copernicus and Gaofen) and a constellation for internet connectivity.

Recently, the French company Eutelsat has partnered with the British government and the Indian company Bharti Airtel to finance and gain control of OneWeb, a company which is currently launching into orbit an internet constellation (so far it has launched 182 satellites out of a total 648). London does not hide the fact that it wants to use OneWeb for a navigation capability, especially as Brexit has deprived it of access to Galileo PRS. Eutelstat and Bharti are more focused on telecommunications.

Eutelstat is one of the nine European companies which have been called upon by Breton to work on the constellation proposed by the EU Commission. Eutelstat’s CEO recently told Les Echos that they will continue to do that, given that it has high priority in terms of scale and timing.

Lotta Comunista, May 2021

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Chinese Rearmament Projects Itself in Asia

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 5 From the series Asian giants Trends in rearmament spending and comparisons of military equipment are increasingly set to dominate coverage of the contention between powers in the crisis in the world order . The military factor has entered the strategic debate, accompanied by a wealth of figures and technical details. The increase in military spending as a percentage of GDP represents a widespread sign of the rearmament cycle at this juncture, but spending alone cannot entirely explain the situation, given the qualitatively different natures of the arsenals being compared. Nor are comparisons between this or that type of weapon useful in themselves, because ultimately all weapons are only ever used in combination with the complex military means available to a power, either in alliance or in conflict with other powers in the system of States. Therefore, while it is difficult to assess the real significa...
Read more

Democratic Defeat in the Urban Vote

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series Elections in the USA A careful analysis of the 2022 mid-term elections revealed the symptoms of a Democratic Party malaise which subsequently fully manifested itself in the latest presidential election, with the heavy loss of support in its traditional strongholds of the metropolitan areas of New York City and Chicago, and the State of California. A defeat foretold Republican votes rose from 51 million in the previous 2018 midterms to 54 million in 2022, a gain of 3 million. The Democrat vote fell from 61 to 51 million, a loss of 10 million. The Republicans gained only three votes for every ten lost by the Democrats, while the other seven became abstentions. In 2022, we analysed the elections in New York City by borough, the governmental districts whose names are well known through movies and TV series. In The Bronx, where the average yearly household income is $35,000, the Democrats lost 52,00...
Read more

The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment Strengthens the ‘European Party’ in China

From the series News from the Silk Road “Chinese people treat [US democracy] as a variety show which is much more interesting than House of Cards’ [...]”. Beijing does not feel the same embarrassment as the old democracies of the West faced with the grotesque scenes of demonstration against the Capitol organised by the president of the United States. Zhao Minghao from the Chongyang Institute spelled out the obvious in his analysis some time earlier: “the political farce by the incumbent president and some Republican lawmakers is reflecting the profound crisis on US domestic politics.” The Global Times is serving a hefty bill to the ideologies of liberal interventionism: “the ‘beacon of democracy’, and the beautiful rhetoric of ‘City upon a Hill’ [...]” are undergoing a serious debacle or in other words, a “Waterloo of US international image”. It will be a while before the US can “interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs with the excuse of ‘democracy’[...]”. Attention is also...
Read more

Class Consciousness and Crisis in the World Order

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Pages 1 and 2 The consciousness of the proletariat “cannot be genuine class-consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population”. If it concentrates exclusively “or even mainly” upon itself alone, the proletariat cannot be revolutionary, “for the self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding or rather, not so much with the theoretical, as with the practical, understanding — of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society”. For this reason, the worker “must have a clear picture in ...
Read more

Uneven Development, Job Cuts, and the Crisis of Labour Under Global Capitalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 16 Uneven development is a fundamental law of capitalism. We have a macroscopic expression of this in the changing balance of power between States: Atlantic decline and Asian rise are the key dynamics behind the political processes of this era, including wars caused by the crisis in the world order. But behind all this there is a differentiated economic trend, starting from companies and sectors: hence the differentiated conditions for wage earners. And this is the element to keep in mind for an effective defensive struggle. It’s only the beginning The electrical and digital restructuring imposed by global market competition affects various production sectors. The car industry is the most obvious, due to the familiarity of the companies and brands involved. We have already reported on the agreement reached before Christmas at Volkswagen, which can be summarised as a reduction of 35,000 employees by 2030. Die Zeit [De...
Read more

Socialism and Nationalism in the History of France

The collapse of French socialism at the outbreak of the First World War is considered by many historians to be the most significant case of its kind. We must go back in time to find its origins. The dramatic repression of the Paris Commune in 1871 was followed by a decade of shootings and the deportation of tens of thousands of revolutionary militants. Reactionary monarchical legitimism attributed the decline of France to the Revolution of 1789, but by then the nouvelles couches sociales , the new classes produced by capitalism, as Leon Gambetta defined them, demanded a politics free from economic, social and clerical ties. The Radical Party, a turning point of French politics, was its expression. The same taditional Catholic Judeophobia dating back to the Middle Ages — according to Michel Dreyfus’, research director at the CNRS in Paris, Anti-Semitism on the Left in France [Paris, 2009] — gradually transformed into the image of the Jews associated with money and modernity who des...
Read more

The Defeat in Afghanistan — a Watershed in the Cycle of Atlantic Decline

In crises and wars there are events which leave their mark on history because of how they make a decisive impact on the power contention, or because of how, almost like a chemical precipitate, they suddenly make deep trends that have been at work for some time coalesce. This is the case of the defeat of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which is taking the shape of a real watershed in the cycle of Atlantic decline. For the moment, through various comments in the international press, it is possible to consider its consequences on three levels: America’s position as a power and the connection with its internal crisis; the repercussions on Atlantic relations and Europe’s dilemmas regarding its strategic autonomy; and the relationship between the Afghan crisis and power relations in Asia, especially as regards India’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Repercussions in the United States Richard Haass is the president of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations; despite having ...
Read more

Armed Negotiations between the Gulf and the Mediterranean

David Petraeus, Commander of the US forces in Iraq and the Gulf in 2007-2008, then director of the CIA in 2011-12, described the elimination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on January 3 rd in Baghdad as a defensive action , with which the Trump presidency restored a US deterrence , which was weakened by recent Iranian actions . This is a reference to the attacks conducted indirectly, unclaimed by Tehran, against the Saudi oil infrastructures on September 14 th 2019. In March 2008, when the forces under Petraeus’ command supported the Iraqi Army in the fight against local Shite militias, Soleimani sent a message to the American general: informing him that he was the person in charge for Iranian policies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza therefore the channel through which to define an agreement to resolve the various issues with Tehran. Petraeus holds the advisors of the Quds Force, the spearhead of the Pasdaran asymmetric operations, responsible for the killing of around 600 ...
Read more

The Works of Marx and Engels and the Bolshevik Model

Internationalism Pages 12–13 In the autumn of 1895 Lenin commented on the death of Friedrich Engels: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. […] In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of class struggle and of class domination – private property and anarchic social production – disappear. The interests of the proletariat demand the destruction of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the organised workers must be directed against them. And every class strugg...
Read more

Jakarta Gives Priority to the BRICS Invitation

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 11 The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008 has gone down in history as the symbol of the financial crisis and of the subsequent “great recession”. According to our Marxist analysis, that economic earthquake revealed above all a world power balance transformed by Atlantic decline and Chinese rise. It was a crisis in global relations and, in fact, we can also count the birth of the BRICS among its strategic consequences: the coalition of China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa began meeting annually, demanding the reform of the international order to give the emerging powers a bigger say. G7 and BRICS in the G20 The firstborn son of the global crisis was the “Group of Twenty” (G20) which, as swiftly as November 2008, met for the first time in Washington at the level of heads of State and government. We wrote in our newspaper that this was the birth of a “new balance in power relations: the old metropol...
Read more