Open your checkbook, please
The administrative structure of ESA is not favorable to take action quickly. On the one hand, ESA member states inspect the budget of the agency well in multi -year steps, giving his projects a sense of stability over time. However, it takes time to get new projects approved, and the Member States of ESA expect to receive benefits – Jobs, Investments and Infrastructure – a lot for their expenses for European space programs. This policy is known as geographical return or geo-return.
For example, France has been attached to a high strategic importance for placing an independent European launch capacity for more than 60 years. The administration of French President Charles de Gaulle brought this determination during the Cold War, around the same time he decided that France would have a nuclear deterrent completely independent of the United States and NATO.
To match this policy, France has been more willing than other European countries to invest in launchers. This means that the Ariane Rocket family, developed and funded through ESA contracts, is largely a French company since the first Ariane launch in 1979.
This model is outdated in the era of commercial space travel. Startups throughout Europe, mainly in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, develop small launching devices that are designed to wear up to 1.5 tonnes of charge to a lane with a low earth. This is too small to compete directly with the Ariane 6 -rocket, but in the end these companies want to develop larger launchers.
Some European officials, including the former head of the French space agency, blamed Geo-Return as a reason that the Ariane 6 rocket missed its price target.
Toni Tolker-Nielsen, acting director of the ESA of Space Transportation, speaks at an event in 2021.
Credit: ESA/V. Stefanelli
With the European Launcher Challenge, ESA will experiment with a new financing model for the first time. This new “fair contribution” approach will present ESA Leadership a plan for its member states at the next major ministerial conference in November. The space agency will ask the countries that benefit most from the winners of De Launcher -challenging to provide most of the financing for the contracts of the challengers.
