Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

blini-kot

Plesetsk is also european soil.

MisterMunchkin

How can it be the first European rocket? There’s the ESA! Are you telling me we have all these organisations and none of them have ever launched from their own continent?

ChrisArchitect

Isar Aerospace launch into orbit [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1DUqLjecc ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580325 )

milleramp

Made with imipolex g?

verzali

Fantastic job!

hypfer

This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily. Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.

shevy-java

The sooner Europe cuts itself off from the US crazy billionaires, the better - on all levels (software and manufacture processes are the two biggest issues). Today we already could see the US surrender team crawling up to dictator Putin. Enough is enough - agent Krasnov needs to be isolated.

capocasa

This is such a breath of fresh air

artisinal

I wonder whether the Sámi people have been consulted or compensated for the use of their traditional lands as a rocket launch site. Given Norway’s long history of suppressing Sámi people and their land rights, I'd be interested to know how that was handled.

godwinson__4-8

A good historical nugget is that the Americans got a huge leg up in the space race by importing the Germans who worked on the V-2 program. Germans killed Soviets by the millions. If you were a German of value (like a rocket scientist) you were eager to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could get their hands on you. If you were the Americans, you distrusted the Soviets already, so it was a win-win. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

StanislavPetrov

The Germans also launched the first rocket to make it to space on June 20th 1944, though it wasn't privately made.

whatever1

Yeah in general it’s good advice to not existentially challenge the Germans.

MadrasTh0rn

One can hope they can repurpose this to a shield for Ukraine

formvoltron

i was under the impression that the closer you launch from the equator, the less sustained force you need. wrong?

____tom____

> "The findings identified an unintended opening of the vent valve How do they figure things like this out, after a rocket goes "boom"?

neya

> from European soil When someone emphasizes nationalism a bit too much that's usually only because they don't have enough technical merit to talk about.

sinuhe69

Congratulations! An immensely important achievement, I’d say. IMO, this success has a great implication for accessibility and sovereignty of the EU. Although ESA can launch from French Guiana, the spaceport is an ocean-away from Europe! That fact alone affects the cost and the launch cadence for Europe greatly. Now they prove they can launch directly from Norway with their own production from Munich and elsewhere and that has immense potential for the future: much higher launch cadence, significant lower cost and always-on accessibility. The only way Europe can have a Starlink similar network is to launch it from their own soil and reuse the first stage. Also from the perspective of security, launching spy and other military satellites from EU soil is the only practical possibility in this political climate.

dermacentor

Why are they on X? As a European company, should they not be posting instead from W Social?