“Last September, 183 rockets were launched worldwide, three of them by European operators. And 1,946 satellites had been sent into space. European operators accounted for just 1% of the payload, while American companies accounted for 80%.” Vittorio Colao sets out the debate. In the Financial Times on Monday, Italy’s former minister for technological innovation and the digital transition (2021-2022) develops the points that his friend Mario Draghi--former prime minister of Italy and ex-president of the European Central Bank--included in his .

While the number of launches is in fact largely linked to low earth orbit and its poor coverage, which requires many satellites to be launched--like Starlink--the European Space Agency (ESA) has already realised this. At the end of October, at its last ministerial session, it finalised the organisation of a call for projects, to be launched in the first quarter of 2025, to help European startups get their European launcher projects “into orbit.” Of course, there are the Arianespace satellites (6, Vega and Vega-C), but Europe can also count on Miura 1 and Miura 5 (PLD Space--Spain), Electron (Rocket Factory Augsburg--Germany), Prime (Orbex--UK), the Spectrum (Isar Aerospace--Germany, which was selected by ESA with Arianespace to develop future first stages or boosters for reusable rockets), the Zephyr (Latitude--France), the Skyrora XL (Skyrora--UK) and the Odin Rocket (Nammo--Norway), to name but a few. Having snubbed Space X for years, Europe now has nothing left to do but chase its tail...

We need to “achieve continuity with a sustained European presence in low Earth orbit in the interests of science, de-risk deep-space habitation and unlock commercial opportunities. A sustained European human presence in LEO is the backbone of ESA’s exploration programme,” states the space agency’s “, which is still under discussion at ministerial level.

“A commercial cargo transportation service is considered the most cost-effective way to establish a low Earth orbit cargo return capability that could be used to offset ESA’s needs for scientific utilisation and European astronaut flights in the next decade,” the document continues. “Transport to and from LEO represents 70% of the total cost of an infrastructure’s exploitation. In addition, it will make it possible to develop European providers in a competitive logistics market. This strategic choice of a cargo service will also secure technology bricks to support a crew vehicle development in a reasonable timeframe, if and when that is decided at the political level.”

“LEO activities as a springboard to, around and on the Moon and Mars,” since it is the Moon and Mars that the ESA is brandishing in an attempt to make Europeans dream.

First a single market problem

But Draghi’s ghost writer brings everyone back... to Earth. “First of all, Europe must reduce the complexity of manufacturing and increase speed, efficiency and innovation in the sector. ESA should abandon the principle of ‘geographical return.’” And therefore act on a European scale, which is an application to the space sector of the whole Draghi report on the imperative need to move forward with the integration of the European single market.

Indeed, this is what he says in his third proposal: “In order to allow EU innovators and private capital to be attracted by an EU-wide market, a true single market for space services should be created by harmonising standards and defining common licensing requirements in all member states.”

As he promised during his visit to Luxembourg, ESA director general Josef Aschbacher is also pushing ahead with these “small measures” to give startups flexibility. In the United States, this ecosystem is booming not only because the venture capital firms have deeper pockets, but also because access to public contracts is so important. One set of figures sums up the gap between the two worlds: $27.2bn per year for Nasa’s budget compared to $8bn for the ESA.

One of the measures, he said, is to increase the amount of advance payments that the ESA makes to companies when they sign new contracts. These down payments currently represent 10-15% of the total size of the contract, but Aschbacher indicated that they could rise to 35% depending on the project. Another measure is to allow companies to provide “partial deliverables” for payment of contract milestones. These partial deliverables would give rise to partial payments, which he said would help companies’ cash flow.

A new authority to come

A year after we first heard about it, the director of the European agency did not elaborate on the creation of its “Independent Project Management Authority.”

“This will accompany the implementation of projects, examining new programmes in terms of costs, deadlines and content, and ensuring that they are well and realistically prepared to avoid unexpected problems along the way. Of course, we work in space technology, where we always expect the unexpected, which means we have to deal with it. But, at least from the point of view of costs and deadlines, we would really like to adopt a more conservative approach to ensure that the planning goes very smoothly,” Aschbacher said during the press conference after the ministerial meeting. It is not clear whether or how this authority will turn off the financial tap for a given startup.

“An EU space fund should be set up to support critical technologies, underwrite multinational programmes, enable the European Commission to be a reference customer for services and attract private funding as a co-investment,” Colao recommended, while von der Leyen called for an increase in the resources of a competitiveness fund.

“This investment capacity will be dedicated to strategic technologies--from AI to space, from clean technologies to biotechnology--to ensure that we develop these strategic technologies and produce them here in Europe,” said the European Commission president. “It will also ensure that we use the strength of our budget to attract and secure private investment in our common goals.”

“A targeted service-oriented approach, support for commercial initiatives and challenge-based competitions must emerge to lead to even more innovative, competitive and therefore cost-effective implementation, accompanied by transformation both within the ESA and industry,” said the ESA’s director of human exploration and robotics programmes, Daniel Neuenschwander. “At the same time, Europe’s political stance must evolve towards a mindset of self-determination and leadership, in order to strengthen existing cooperation and foster new partnerships. The strategic considerations presented in this document offer all actors in Europe a coherent path of exploration, while sending a message to our valued international partners that Europe has a direction to follow.”

The only thing left for Europeans to do is to point in the same direction: start by solving the pragmatic problems of innovators, find public commissions and funding, then facilitate their commercial development to get closer--with each success--to the ultimate goal: Mars.

This article was originally published in .