JAKARTA – Europe has been one of the countries that has successfully set foot in space since 1987. This happened, when a German astronaut named Sigmund Jähn boarded the Soyuz spacecraft, and traveled to the Salyut 6 space station for a week.
Then four decades later, dozens of astronauts from the European Space Agency (ESA) flew in vehicles operated by Russia and the United States (US) to various space stations.
Recently, French astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Matthias Maurer of Germany flew to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Both praised the smooth space flight of the Crew Dragon vehicle, even though the rocket is reusable.
Indeed, they had no complaints whatsoever. However, a new manifesto reveals that European astronauts would like to have their own continent-made rocket to reach the ISS.
According to the document, European leaders must immediately decide whether the continent will seek to remain at the forefront of the ranking of space explorers, or continue to rely on foreign countries.
“While Europe remains at the forefront of many space endeavors, such as Earth observation, navigation and space science, it lags behind in the increasingly strategic domains of space transportation and exploration,” the manifesto said. ArsTechnica, Thursday, February 17th.
“Europe’s Gross Domestic Product is comparable to that of the United States, but its co-investment in space exploration does not even reach a tenth of NASA’s,” he added.
Currently Russia has the Soyuz crewed vehicle, China has the Shenzhou spacecraft, and NASA has the Crew Dragon, SpaceX. In addition, within a few years, the US space agency will add the Orion spacecraft and Boeing’s Starliner capsule to its fleet of human space vehicles.
Likewise India, which is also working to develop and demonstrate a manned transport system to low-Earth orbit in the next two years.
The manifesto comes because according to the European Space Explorers Association, which represents astronauts, the continent needs to develop its own crewed spacecraft as quickly as possible.
Otherwise, Europe will continue to bow to the whims of NASA, Russia, and private companies like SpaceX. Moreover, by driving SpaceX vehicles, they will only enrich European space industry competitors.
One of the cons to this manifesto may be that Europe has always gone its own way in space. Why focus on building a crewed transport system, when ESA can focus on doing meaningful things in space? After all, building a new manned spacecraft would be a very expensive and time-consuming process.
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