Dhopelessly complexed by its delay vis-à-vis the United States, space Europe seems to give in to a doxa: that of a so-called orbital economy in which we must participate at all costs, at the risk of sinking. The Space Summit 2023, held in Seville, illustrates this: the Old Continent wishes to acquire a “private” space cargo ship [pouvant apporter du fret à la Station spatiale internationale et revenir sur Terre] and entrust its future to a myriad of start-ups. This ongoing upheaval, modeled on American space policy, does not constitute an industrial strategy and risks benefitting above all opportunistic actors.
Almost twenty years ago, taking note of the disaster to which the so-called choice had led “all-shuttle [spatiale] », the American administration called on NASA to reinvent itself. The agency then launched the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, through which it purchased space transportation services and no longer rockets or spacecraft.
This “revolution” took place in a field entirely under the responsibility of NASA: the transport of cargo and crews to and from the International Space Station. This paradigm shift had multiple effects, including the emergence of SpaceX, supported by NASA.
Europe has set itself the ambition of transposing, twenty years later, to a fundamentally different situation, the old COTS program. But NASA is a federal agency in a federal state. The European Space Agency (ESA) is an international organization which is not attached to any state entity. NASA was operating in a market of which it was the only customer. The ESA intends to intervene in two markets in which it has neither control nor mandate: small launchers and spaceships.
A fictional market
To copy NASA, you needed markets… or stories to take their place. In 2022, 350 small satellites were launched worldwide. Almost all of them were passengers on conventional launchers. In the United States, after twenty years of efforts, the supply of small launchers is reduced to a single operational vehicle which, in 2023, took 100% of a market of seven missions. In Europe, more than ten projects are encouraged by regional or national aid schemes.
The space cargo market, for its part, has no reality other than fiction. It is based on the promise of manufacturing all sorts of things in orbit. What has never appeared in half a century would arise today simply because these future stations would be operated by the private sector.
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