this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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German company set for first commercial rocket launch from Europe (www.newscientist.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by zaxvenz@lemm.ee to c/europe@feddit.org
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Preparations are under way for a rocket test flight in Norway that could make history and give Europe greater independence from the market leader in orbital launches, the United States.

Isar Aerospace says it is planning to launch on 24 March between 12.30pm and 3.30pm CET, weather permitting.

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[–] tfm@europe.pub 1 points 1 week ago

Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advancements in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology.

Sure, but these are incremental improvements and not groundbreaking innovations. They surely have good engineers there. But the point that I want to make is that these improvements would have happened with or without SpaceX.

I don’t know why but Ukraine was using it so clearly it’s good for something.

I don't know if they need low latency, but currently it looks like other providers like Eutelsat will replace Starlink in Ukraine.

It’s also useful for people in remote places where there’s no good internet otherwise

Viasat for example provides 50MBit+ download speed. Should be more than enough for remote locations.

or to avoid government censorship

Shouldn't also be a problem with other satellite internet providers.

I don’t think anyone in the 80s thought a smartphone was possible, nor did anyone in the 50s think the Macintosh possible. Maybe it didn’t have to be private institutions making them, but it was.

If Jobs and his employees had the idea for that, others would have too. They weren't some once in a lifetime geniuses. Also, it only was possible because the underlying technology was developed first.

For a lot of modern technology decades’ worth of infrastructure and know-how are needed to even think about making the stuff, and most of that is the product of private investment and development.

The know-how isn't going anywhere. People have this knowledge, not organizations.

I, as someone from the Middle East, don’t have access to that infrastructure and know-how and therefore am forced to pay through the nose for an American phone or a Japanese car. You can make the argument that private innovation is nonexistent or unnecessary only by using the results of decades upon decades of private innovation. You only need to look to the Global South to see what happens when you don’t have that.

Maan, private investment is mainly responsible for the under-development of the global south. Capitalists took their resources and privatized vast amounts of land and resources. Just look it up.

A lot of it (but not all) is in fact developed by developers in companies.

But many are not. Not everybody is doing things just for the money.

Also there are many applications where the best option is closed source, one example being Excel.

Sure. But this hasn't anything to do with it being closed source, but only because Microsoft decided to not share the source code. Also, I like LibreOffice more :P