Europe has been relying on the US for a lot of its space activities and was caught unprepared by the US becoming an unreliable partner. It takes some time to regroup a whole industry.
Not so. Europe has the Guiana Space Centre and Ariane. Arianeespace was the world's first commercial launch service provider.
But in a very European fashionthey were slow to innovate and to adapt and were completely blown out of the water by SpaceX (long before the US "became an unreliable partner", which is not super relevant here). Now China is catching up and had 10x more launches than Europe in 2025, and Europe is not.
Europe has managed, again, to self-destruct along the way. Last Russia carried out more launches than Europe and India was just behind.
Europe has been relying on the US for a lot of its space activities and was caught unprepared by the US becoming an unreliable partner. It takes some time to regroup a whole industry.
Not so. Europe has the Guiana Space Centre and Ariane. Arianeespace was the world's first commercial launch service provider.
But in a very European fashionthey were slow to innovate and to adapt and were completely blown out of the water by SpaceX (long before the US "became an unreliable partner", which is not super relevant here). Now China is catching up and had 10x more launches than Europe in 2025, and Europe is not.