Space Rider - The ESA answer to the SpaceX Crew Dragon? Well, it's complicated.

The Angry Astronaut explores the reusable Space Rider and why the ESA is missing an opportunity by not making it a human rated ship.

Space Rider cost per kg by 2025

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Space Rider ESA

ESA Reusable rocket engine

[moritzk]

The ESA is neither for a "space race", nor for colonizing space, nor for profit or whatsoever

Its one and only goal is to explore space, as in getting the raw data, before something is going there


Its not ESAs job or whatsoever to be a competitor to spacex, or to produce new rockets or whatever

[sylvain]

Dear Angry Astronaut, as a Frenchman I can tell you a few things about the EU and that's all you need to know to understand why there is no manned spaceflight program and will never be. And I'm gonna tell you right now. ;)

There is no European pride. Nobody waves the European flag. Nobody feels European. Nobody cheers for the ESA except astro geeks like me. Here in France everyone likes Thomas Pesquet, he's a news hero, we've had him almost every day on TV when he was in the ISS, but when there's an Italian or a German up there, nobody cares. That's the reality of Europe that Americans sometimes don't realise, it's simply not a nation. And I think there's a big element of pride in developing your own manned spaceflight capability. As it is, if Europeans knew their money was spent on that, it would cause an outrage, I assure you. The EU is just a bunch of trade and political treaties and its leaders a bunch of heartless unelected accountants. It's just felt as an annoyance in our lives, really.

That being said, I love the ESA and the choices they made for their missions. Gaia is maybe my favourite. I like the telescopes of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, too. You can expect the EU on scientific missions, experiments, research, but a European flag on the Moon? I can assure you, that sounds absolutely ridiculous to a European and noone would relate to that.

[jamiewilliams]

My company is to take over downlinking from Mars Express. My job is to control the procedure for downlink.

[sillywarlock]

From how I understand it ESA simply doesn't do prestige stuff, it's pretty much only science and max neutrality (BTW: it technically isn't tied to European Union or any countries).

[hubertseidl]

one thing regarding ESA: it is not a EU agency.
It was formed by several states in europe, indepently from the EU (although the EU considers funding it).
For example switzerland is a ESA-member, but not a EU member. furthermore, there are 3 states that have an association with the ESA, one of them is canada, which is not even in europe ;-)
I know, this is weird... but ESA is independent from the EU.

EDIT: oh, and funny thing about mars express. it was a derivation of rosetta (they made rosetta, and then changed a few things), and they had a spare mars express unit, which was launched as venus express, which worked aswell phenomenally good.

[peterfludde]

Thanks for another great presentation! A small point, and someone else may have said this already - Ukraine have a serious history of space engineering going back to the Soviet Union times and so it is not perhaps so very surprising that they were involved in producing the engine module for the Space Rider.

[enricomontanari]

I had the honor and pleasure to meet Samantha Cristoforetti after a conference that she has held here in Italy, not far from my house.
I was very excited, she also autographed her book for me, which I now keep as a work of art.

[FairyWeatherMan]

Your channel is definitely getting more and more interesting.
You started your adventure with an unconventional stance that is quite unique in the web: you don't spare criticism to anyone and, at the same time, you are keen to acknowledge notable achievements. You don't waste your (and our) time with flattering videos like many do. Moreover, you are producing lots of videos covering MANY topics about space industry and space exploration.
Keep up the good work! I expect your channel to grow a lot in the incoming years

[charonstone]

Hi from France ! Thanks Mr Angry for covering our stuff! Don't worry, you are not being to harsh at all, you are actually understating things quite a lot. The thing is, ESA has no defined leadership. It is basically France, Germany and Italy. Historically, France led the game and had a strategic vision of things: it led to the Ariane program, almost Hermes (Really angry it was dropped), Galileo, and other things like nuclear development and the Concorde (with the Brits). But the other partners never shared this strategic vision, not seeing the whole picture. They were only interested in the industry they could develop with it, especially the Germans. Yet, France is to small to go solo on this, so it needs the Europeans. Now the Germans buy tickets to space X instead of Arianespace, which tells a lot about the cohesiveness of ESA partners... One thing that makes it tricky in Europe for reusability is the small market. There are not enough institutional missions for creating a reusable rocket. Reusability is only profitable if you launch very often. And no industrial partner is interested in producing a reusable rocket like, one per year or less...

[absalomdraconis]

Thinking about it, this space glider of theirs is probably a good first step to a manned program entirely their own. Start by using it to return mission to Earth, then test as an emergency escape capsule, before finally outfitting it as a complete mission capsule.

[Yrouel]

I don't know if the Space Rider would be the right way to do it but the fact that Europe doesn't even have plans for a manned space program is a damn shame

[jtjames]

If they add a crew compartment, they should rename it the Farscape.

[pipersall]

You sure do present content found no where else. Well done and thank you.

[paulmakinson]

I am a European engineer and I totally agree. The problem is that Arianespace is French. The French tend to be risk averse.

[ullinhope]

This video encapsulates everything that makes me love your channel, STAY ANGRY! (about space)

[mattc]

Another great episode. I knew very little of the ESA efforts. Thanks for covering these issues.

[gefahrenstoffel]

Sit Humans on a SRB's without lunch escape system? Yes sounds like a great Idea...

[vincentcleaver]

A man-rated orbiter is a huge resource sink; less money for the variety of robot probes if they were to sink funds into that instead. Same thing with jaxa

[tiagomendes]

The things ESA does so that they don't have to land the damn rocket like SpaceX already does

[popelgruner]

"Well, it's complicated." That's EUrope/Europe in a nutshell xD