Can European space industry compete with American domination?

Jean-Marc Astorg. The Euro­pean space indus­try is now a mature indus­try that has devel­oped con­sid­er­ably since the 1970s, both in the field of launch­ers and satel­lites and in that of space appli­ca­tions – for exam­ple, in the use of Earth obser­va­tion­al data. And this for var­i­ous sec­tors of activ­i­ty (mar­itime, mobil­i­ty, secu­ri­ty, envi­ron­ment, insur­ance and urban plan­ning, to name but a few). Well-known and impor­tant play­ers include Ari­ane­space for launch­ers, and Air­bus Defence & Space and Thales Ale­nia Space for satel­lites. These com­pa­nies employ around 30,000 peo­ple in the space man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try in France and 60,000 across all sec­tors, gen­er­at­ing a turnover of around €10bn.

The space sec­tor is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing an intense and rapid trans­for­ma­tion due to var­i­ous factors:

• the arrival of pri­vate Amer­i­can entre­pre­neurs who have been able to devel­op new space sys­tems – launch­ers, con­stel­la­tions – with the help of NASA using con­sid­er­able resources and new meth­ods. The glob­al space sec­tor has been com­plete­ly turned upside down and, in my opin­ion, we are only at the begin­ning of this transformation.
• tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion (dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, reusable launch­ers, con­stel­la­tions, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence), which democ­ra­tis­es the use of space data through a dras­tic reduc­tion in costs.
• the rise of con­flict­ing inter­ests in space, which is a con­se­quence of the increased use of space resources.
• and final­ly, the revival of projects to return to the Moon and Mars in the con­text of a new race between the Unit­ed States and Chi­na, this time with the aim of estab­lish­ing a per­ma­nent base on the Moon.

In this con­text, the Unit­ed States has become a world leader, togeth­er with Chi­na, in the field of launch­ers (Fal­con 9, Star­ship, New Glenn), con­nec­tiv­i­ty con­stel­la­tions (Star­link) and manned explo­ration. How­ev­er, Europe is in pole posi­tion for when to comes to Earth obser­va­tions – for exam­ple, to sur­vey cli­mate-relat­ed changes across the globe.

Europe, how­ev­er, does suf­fer from an exces­sive frag­men­ta­tion of its space indus­try, which is still seg­ment­ed into dis­tinct indus­tri­al sec­tors – for launch­ers, satel­lites, appli­ca­tions and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors. This sit­u­a­tion calls for rad­i­cal measures:

• The first is to defend our strate­gic auton­o­my and to pri­ori­tise Europe, with the aim of safe­guard­ing our own satel­lite launch capa­bil­i­ty and con­tin­u­ing to secure inde­pen­dent communication.
• The sec­ond is, of course, to increase these capa­bil­i­ties to be able to com­pete with Amer­i­can com­pa­nies such as SpaceX.

We are wit­ness­ing the emer­gence of “New­space” in Europe. Start-ups that are main­ly pri­vate­ly fund­ed and exploit new devel­op­ment meth­ods are there­fore more flex­i­ble than the longer-stand­ing play­ers. There are now sev­er­al hun­dred start-ups estab­lished in Europe, but, again seg­ment­ed for dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties: launch, obser­va­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Since these start-ups have only been cre­at­ed in the last few years, they do not yet have the crit­i­cal mass need­ed to face Amer­i­can competition.

Part­ner­ships between long-stand­ing play­ers and new entrants is inevitable, but they will have to be accom­pa­nied by spe­cif­ic mea­sures so that the best com­pa­nies can devel­op and grow. Ini­tial invest­ment in start-ups is less prob­lem­at­ic because fund­ing is avail­able, but it becomes more com­pli­cat­ed when it comes to rais­ing, say, a hun­dred mil­lion euros. There is a sig­nif­i­cant lack of pri­vate fund­ing in Europe com­pared to the Unit­ed States. This is prob­a­bly due to cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, inso­far as ven­ture cap­i­tal is still a rather an Amer­i­can concept.

Restruc­tur­ing will take place, with regroup­ings and merg­ers, because, as men­tioned, the Euro­pean space sec­tor is over­ly frag­ment­ed. Today’s mar­kets are glob­al mar­kets, so sig­nif­i­cant con­sol­i­da­tion at the Euro­pean lev­el will be nec­es­sary to pre­vent cer­tain com­pa­nies from dis­ap­pear­ing. It should also be men­tioned that Euro­pean indus­try is very sen­si­tive to mar­kets: approx­i­mate­ly 40% of the Euro­pean space indus­try’s turnover comes from the com­mer­cial sec­tor. This fig­ure is much high­er than in the Unit­ed States.

Strate­gic auton­o­my projects in Europe will there­fore be cru­cial, in par­tic­u­lar the devel­op­ment of a Euro­pean con­nec­tiv­i­ty con­stel­la­tion. In this sense, these projects will have to be applied across all space sec­tors. Solv­ing the prob­lem of dif­fer­en­tial invest­ment between the Unit­ed States and Europe is also cru­cial; the Unit­ed States has a pub­lic bud­get of around 70 bil­lion dol­lars per year (although this may change with the new Trump admin­is­tra­tion) while in Europe it is just 12 bil­lion dol­lars per year.

In this con­text, we can men­tion the IRIS² pro­gramme, which is an autonomous and sov­er­eign telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice and whose con­ces­sion con­tract was signed last Decem­ber between the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and a Euro­pean con­sor­tium of tele­com oper­a­tors (Eutel­sat, SES, His­pasat). This new infra­struc­ture will com­ple­ment the Galileo nav­i­ga­tion con­stel­la­tion and the Coper­ni­cus Earth obser­va­tion programme.

There is also the Amer­i­can Artemis explo­ration pro­gramme, for a sus­tain­able return to the Moon. Launched by Pres­i­dent Trump’s first admin­is­tra­tion, it could be called into ques­tion by his new admin­is­tra­tion. If the pro­gramme is sig­nif­i­cant­ly mod­i­fied, this will inevitably have con­se­quences for Europe, which is par­tic­i­pat­ing in it. In his inau­gu­ra­tion speech in Jan­u­ary, Trump stat­ed that Amer­i­ca should plant its flag on Mars. The Unit­ed States there­fore wants to pri­or­i­tize Mars and go there alone. This is a rather dif­fer­ent approach to the Artemis pro­gramme, which is an inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion. In fact, Star­ship (from SpaceX) should be used to send probes to Mars dur­ing this decade, to set up exper­i­ments there. Manned flights will be more like­ly dur­ing the next decade, which means that per­haps by 2035, there will be Amer­i­cans on Mars.

In real­i­ty, there is no eco­nom­ic inter­est for going to the Moon or Mars, even if some say that there are min­er­als that can be mined on the Moon. In my opin­ion, the Moon has a become a geopo­lit­i­cal sub­ject – a race between the Unit­ed States and China.

As for Mars, the plan­et is first and fore­most of sci­en­tif­ic inter­est. We must go to Mars, prefer­ably with probes, to under­stand why water dis­ap­peared from the Red Plan­et, why the Earth and Mars expe­ri­enced fair­ly com­pa­ra­ble growth at the begin­ning of their evo­lu­tion and why Mars became unin­hab­it­able while life was able to devel­op on Earth. Was there ever life on Mars? These are sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions, but we don’t need to send humans to the plan­et to answer them. Elon Musk’s vision is to make Man a mul­ti-plan­e­tary species, a vision that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly shared by the Unit­ed States, and cer­tain­ly not by Europe.

In short, we have all it takes in Europe to keep our place among the world’s lead­ing space pow­ers: an excel­lent edu­ca­tion sys­tem, high-per­for­mance indus­try, aca­d­e­m­ic research at the high­est inter­na­tion­al lev­el and high-per­for­mance space infra­struc­tures (launch­ers, satel­lites, ground facil­i­ties). We must also defend the val­ues that are dear to us: pro­tect­ing the plan­et, com­bat­ting and adapt­ing to cli­mate change, trust­ing sci­ence, and inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion for a safer world. Europe was built on these val­ues. And in the future, it is impor­tant that we hold onto these.

Interview by Isabelle Dumé