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A Brief History of the ESA (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica takes a look at the history and development of the European Space agency. Getting things done at the ESA has an extra layer of difficulty compared to most other space programs because they rely on cooperation between many governments with different goals and budgets. "The first talks regarding the ESA took place against the backdrop of the growing space rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union, which had burst onto the world's stage with the successful Sputnik mission in October 1957. ... By 1959, the effort took on a sense of urgency.
Auger and Amaldi were concerned that the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Science Committee was thinking of developing a satellite to put Europe in space. Krige's book states that both scientists '[balked] at the prospect of having European space research located in an [organization] essentially dedicated to military goals, an [organization] which would impose layers of bureaucracy and secrecy on any space science effort.'" This led to the formation of the European Space Research Organization and the European Launcher Development Organization, which became precursors to the ESA. Today, the ESA's mission pipeline is packed with interesting probes set to do fascinating science.
Auger and Amaldi were concerned that the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Science Committee was thinking of developing a satellite to put Europe in space. Krige's book states that both scientists '[balked] at the prospect of having European space research located in an [organization] essentially dedicated to military goals, an [organization] which would impose layers of bureaucracy and secrecy on any space science effort.'" This led to the formation of the European Space Research Organization and the European Launcher Development Organization, which became precursors to the ESA. Today, the ESA's mission pipeline is packed with interesting probes set to do fascinating science.
The whole reason for both Shuttle accidents is because hardware had to be but in different states and shipped to another state to launch it. O-rings were needed so the SRB's could be segmented for transport and the foam on the ET's couldn't be done completely because of close outs that needed to be done after shipping.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
is up with the login server? click a link, logged in. another, logged out. back and forth. randomly logged in and out.
Yeah, I thought it was just me - try this:
Go to you pseudonym 'home' and select log out.
refresh logged out, then log back in
select the /. logo, then spawn your pages from there and you should be ok to continue.
HTH!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
ESA and the European Union are two completely different organisation. This discussion comes up a lot when people get confused with the difference between the Council of Europe, and the European Council (one of the elements of the EU).
ESA and the European Union are two completely different organisation.
And not even the same countries.
There are countries part of the ESA that are not part of the EU (like Norway and Switzerland), and EU members that are not part of the ESA (like Croatia and Slovakia). And other European countries that are part of neither (like Bosnia and Iceland)
Unfortunately, to many Americans, EU is another name for Europe. Which is as uninformed as thinking that USA is another name for North America.
That's because rockets are hard and space is harsh.
We actually have a space colony, for very small values of colony; the ISS.
Space is really not our future. Our future is, for better or worse, right here in this gravity well.
Sorry to be a bummer.
"ESRO enjoyed its first big success in 1968 with the launch of ESRO 2B, an astronomy survey orbiter that was delivered to orbit utilizing a Scout rocket from the Western Test Range in California. But the establishment of a European launch vehicle, which was eventually named Europa, didn't progress as hoped. Several nations collaborated on the vehicle, with the United Kingdom developing the first stage (based on the “Blue Streak” ballistic missile), France the second stage, and Germany the third. Europa experienced many growing pains, cost overruns, and a lack of focus. Successive rocket stage failures eventually doomed the program."
What isn't mentioned is that there were 2 countries that had developed space programs with a launch capability by 1971 in the same time period as they were trying to develop Europa. The French had the Diamant launch system, and in the same period the UK developed the same Blue Streak missile technology, used on the Europa first stage, into the Black Arrow rocket. Both countries had successfully launched satellites by 1971. The Europa launch system was your obvious european politically driven mixture of technology from UK, France and West Germany with the divisions causing confusion and poor communication between the engineering teams. Result was it failed, got scrapped and the Ariane launch system was developed and put together by the French, which makes sense as they had the most experience and success with their own launch vehicle. The UK dropped their space launch capability and decided to focus on what would become ESA, making them the only country to have developed a national satellite launch capability and then to have dropped it.
Where words fail, you need an Euler Diagram. Now we would just need to add ESA there somehow... ;-)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
Fifty years ago ,we had visions of astronauts in space stations taking pictures out the window of the Earth with 35mm cameras, developing the film using chemicals and sending the pictures down to Earth for weather forecasting.
Now what do we have doing that? Probes (aka satellites).
Actually, we already had those probes 55 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.