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European Shuttle Program Update

Posted by timothy on from the going-up dept.

Rolo Tomasi writes "ESA's reusable launch vehicle demonstrator, Phoenix, was recently wind tunnel tested to determine its low speed aerodynamics. A free flight for Phoenix is planned for early summer 2004. In case you haven't heard of it yet, here's an article from last year, describing the Phoenix/HOPPER concept. Here's another page at ESA, but it seems to be available only in German. What's interesting is the first sentence of the DLR press release, stating that (my translation) 'Europe's future and competitiveness in space substantially depend on an autonomous access to space and 'on a drastic decrease in the transport costs of getting there.'"

2 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Manned space flight is only for romantics by DOsinga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Space just is not a very friendly environment for men. Machines are much more suitable and they don't require a return ticket. Instead of focussing on building machines to put people in space and take them, ESA should concentrate on developing robots to do the work and research.

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  2. Re:German language links on slashdot... by Sigurd_Fafnersbane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it makes sense to post comments in more or less readable English, but to exclude an interesting link to a story just because it is not written in the Kings English makes little sense.

    In Europe, especially in "New Europe" (Baltic and Eastern European countries, Russia), German is widely spoken and even more widely understood. Similar cases could be made for French in "Old Europe" and Spanish in the Americas (&Spain ;-).

    Using a link to an English page is great when such a link exist, but it would be silly to ignore a great story just because it is not available in English.