Isar Aerospace is not hurting for money, but it is sorely lacking in the currency of flight experience.
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Key mission for Europe’s commercial space enterprise scrubbed again
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I want to know how many days “unauthorized boats in restricted waters” occur per year, not just how many launch days it impacts. If non-controllable disruptions always going to occur that is a policy and governance issue. Even if the rocket was perfect, other issues are afoot. Well good luck to them.
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Bill Swallow
Ars Centurion
Well, dealing with issues such as all of these is a kind of experience...
That said, I wish them luck and hope to see them launch soon, and successfully.
That said, I wish them luck and hope to see them launch soon, and successfully.
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I'll side with the fishermen - after all, as the saying goes, they were there first.
That said, considering total costs for launch, infrastructure, insurance, etc - one would think that paying off a fisherman or 3 to take a day off would be a drop in the bucket for those budgets.
They would have clear ranges and build good will with the local industry while providing working folks with compensation.
This sort of thing could be easily sorted out as long as government is not cheap or short-sighted.
(yea, I said that with a straight face somehow)
That said, considering total costs for launch, infrastructure, insurance, etc - one would think that paying off a fisherman or 3 to take a day off would be a drop in the bucket for those budgets.
They would have clear ranges and build good will with the local industry while providing working folks with compensation.
This sort of thing could be easily sorted out as long as government is not cheap or short-sighted.
(yea, I said that with a straight face somehow)
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ReadandShare
Ars Centurion
Europe's enterprises seem less nimble than their American counterpart. Europe's governments seem less persistent/consistent than their Chinese counterpart. Makes me wonder if Europe's private/public partnership actually represents the worst of both worlds - handicapping its competition against both America and China?
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Why would fishermen need to be 'paid off' to stay out of a legal exclusion zone? Norway isn't some corrupt poor country where you have to bribe people to get what you want. Isar is already paying plenty to the Norwegian authorities to use the spaceport, which includes them enforcing the exclusion zone.
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yet quality of life is much higher than either examples you mentioned, so clearly they're not doing all that bad
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Truly awful headline, I read that as yet another in the unfortunately long list of "we're no longer going to do that" program cancellations, not a launch scrub. I even knew that Isar had scrubbed their launch, and didn't realize this article was referring to that until I started reading it.
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You could probably save money on enforcement (e.g. avoiding the mobilisation of coast guard type assets) if you just compensate the people who would normally depend on access to the exclusion zone for their income, and everyone would be happier. That said, the savings might be minial since you'd still need something on standby to deal with idiots who violate the exclusion zone due to ignorance.
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That's a cool rollout image, complete with a couple Jedi-sword-looking lights in the snow saluting the rocket.
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It is not their water or fish. It is the people's/government's water and fish, and those can set the rules who and when someone can use it. Norway is not the wild west.
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eduardopozo56
Ars Centurion
Nimble = break everything around us in the process?
Persistent/Consistent = Apply laws based on how much $ the politicians are being bribed with, or if you are aligned with the government?
If any of those questions is yes, then yes, EU is less "nimble" and less "persistent", and we are grateful for that.
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Less well funded generally, so the trade-off between spending time and risking money is different. People forgot that after 3 failed launches of the original Falcon, SpaceX was, according to Musk, one further failure from being shutdown.
Functional democracies tend to be like that.
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I think they meant "worst of both worlds" in regards to putting things into space. Not quality of life.
It isn't like those things are mutually exclusive, but I can see their point.
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Am I reading you correctly that you're saying that European new space is less well funded?
Arguably the exact opposite is true. EU industry is too well funded. Isar has more from ESA alone than the entire of SpaceX's budget for developing the F1 and that is after adjusting for inflation.
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Because the government unilaterally changing conditions without compensating for impact is the kind of government the Chinese go for.
Or versions of eminent domain in parts of the US - where if someone can show in their business plan that your property can be used to make more money, the government will help them to take your property.
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Typically, they use "scrub" for planned launches that don't launch. That's common nomenclature for the launch industry. They're not actually vigorously washing things down with soap and water
If a company goes under, they usually use "folds" instead, which, while also isn't what they do actually do. If they're actually canceling a program, they also typically use "cancels", but add a noun or verb to delineate what was canceled.
English is funny that way, where context is very important in determining actions, since we have a lot of words for adverse outcomes that can apply to a wide range of interpretations, depending on the nature of the failure.
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I think both perspectives are correct. The worry is that the somewhat more "casual", people-friendly and risk-averse way of doing business in Europe is going to handicap the companies in international competition, ultimately leading to displacement by foreign products, and with it a drop of said quality of life.
It's why the EU is engaging in at least some protectionist measures to try and level the playing field, from stuff like the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that seeks to diminish the advantage of third countries ignoring environmental concerns via additional tariffs, to the Supply Chain Act to investigate and penalize breaches of human rights that may occur at some point during the production of imported goods.
In essence, Europe is struggling to not join the "race to the bottom", but it seems to be tough to find a good balance between international competitiveness and the preservation of European values.
Especially when European corporations are also lobbying against restrictive measures, because of course some execs only seek short-term gains for their own business regardless of the greater picture.
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To add to the "first" part: The very first sounding rocket launch from Andøya Space Center (ASC) occurred in 1962. The military test and training area is even at least a decade older. So unless the fisherman in question is a really old dude I doubt that he was "first".
https://nifro.no/en/portfolio-item/andoya-space-center-asc/
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I think they're alluding to Europe being a lot more tight with venture capital compared to the US.
Isar Aerospace may seem like an odd exception here (perhaps specifically because EU governments have identified this as a problem and kind of pushed for investments here?), but when SpaceX almost died after their third failed launched because funding had dried up, and it took the 4th launch to get NASA onboard with that life-saving $1.6b contract, I can see why they're being really cautious with launches, making them somewhat "cancel-happy" at the slightest sign of problems?
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Fishing has occurred in these waters since before we Norwegians got a written language, and has been a huge part of our economy for at least 1000 years, so that industry was definitely there first...
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These waters are regulated so that most of the time it is open for fishing, and then it is an exclusion zone for set launch windows and military testing periods. The reason for this becoming a conflict is that the time spent on launch windows and military testing is increasing, and often falls on unfortunate times for the fishing industry. This is a transition issue and interest conflict that they will sort out in a relatively civilized manner, I'm pretty sure.
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Generally yes, they are less well funded - even Isar, the best funded European operation, has a order of magnitude less resources than a well funded US outfit e.g. Blue Origin.
Falcon 1 was an total Hail Mary play at a time when neither the Musk nor the wider market would further fund it - it was literally do or die for the company after a string of failures, and secured a 1.6bn line of revenue. It didn't matter whether they even expected it to work - even low % chance in the circumstances was worth it.
Most companies reasonably try to spend time and money to reduce risk below that level.
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If Blue Origin is your benchmark then every human endeavour in history has been poorly funded. Blue Origin isn't an new space firm, it's an old space firm created with a bottomless ocean of money.
Do you want to compare against the development costs of Electron instead? Because it won't look any prettier.
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How much is the income of picking up some tangled lines today and not tomorrow?
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Isar's Spectrum has 4 times more capacity than Falcon1, so it's hard to compare how well funded they are to develop a bigger rocket compared with Falcon 1.
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The amount ESA has paid them is about equivalent to the amount NASA paid to develop the F9, after adjusting for inflation. And NASA got a capsule for that money too.
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We are talking about the spaceport, obviously. If your neighbor forced you out of your workplace once a month they'd be a bad neighbor. If they moved into your neighborhood and insisted on doing that so they could work they'd still be a bad neighbor.
A good neighbor would pay your for the days they forced you out of your workplace. Or your neighborhood's government would pay you for that if it was an important priority. The cost of the compensation is practically negligible to the bad neighbor or the government while gaining great benefit, but the loss of work to you is just an unjust cost with no benefit to you.
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The income tomorrow using those lines comes from picking up and untangling them today. Doing it tomorrow means not getting the income tomorrow.
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Why does the EU launch from northern Norway? Is there some advantage to getting to orbits the EU prefers? I thought that the closer the launch site to the Equator the more assist the launch gets from the Earth's rotation. Northern Norway seems like the worst place in the EU to launch from on that basis.
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The workplace is a public space. Yeah, I fully expect the government to be able to kick me off of a public space if they intend to do something else more important there. I can't go and have a yoga class in a park if there is a rally/festival/manifestation scheduled to the same place. Me ignoring the government order would make me the bad neighbor. Not the people that scheduled a festival in the public space that I used for yoga classes.
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Northern/Southern places are better to launch to SSO. Equatorial places are better to launch to GTO/GEO
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We are not talking about whether the government has the right or power to kick them out. We are talking about whether it's just that the government do so. You weren't sure that the bad neighbor was the spaceport, now you don't know what the disagreement about it is.
You can hold your yoga class someplace else. The fishers must work where the fish are, and have been doing so for centuries, long before the spaceport was put there.
The government should not have put a spaceport where it will disrupt the longstanding (and important, to Norway and to the others who eat the fish, not to mention the fishers and their industry) workplace without compensation. The cost of the compensation is tiny compared to the cost of the spaceport and its operations, as well as the benefits from it. Clearly the spaceport is the bad neighbor that should compensate its neighbor it's disrupting, or the Norway/EU governments should compensate for the overall greater good.
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I wasn't sure if he was referring only to the spaceport activity, or also to the military test range.
The military might close the area more often than the spaceport.
Didn't knew that fishes only existed next to that particular spaceport.
https://www.politiet.no/nyheter-og-presse/nordland/nyhet/2026-04-08/ferdselsforbud-pa-andoya
The exclusion area appears to be close to a 40km by 40km square. The fishermen can fish in the rest of the sea during that day, and come back to that 40 by 40 area after the launch.
The sea exclusion zone is not even active for a full day, it's 5 hours.
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Key information about the fishing and the exclusion zone: (source in Norwegian)
- It's the fifth best fishing grounds in Norway's waters.
- You can't just fish anywhere, the fish is where it wants to be, at the time it wants
- Of course, this is also heavily regulated
- They can only work in the area 5 boats at a time, sometimes there are 40 boats in a queue
- For 2025, the zone was closed 20 days
- The spaceport has permission to have 30 launch windows a year
- Military not included or specified, only that it is more than the spaceport
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The local fishermen used this area since hundreds of years. Well before there was anything like a state. I heard an interview with the guy who is causing the problems just now. Really not very sympathetic, but he has a point. He’s just doing what he’s always has done. If someone wants him to change his habits, they better come to an agreement with him.
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Governments introduce and change regulations all the time without getting agreement from every single person affected by said regulation, and I fail to see how this would be different. Maybe Norway does things different and everyone there just gets to ignore regs whenever they want, but somehow I doubt it.
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The fishers are out in an area for days at a time. Interrupting them for 5h means them spending the rest of the day going out and back in, disrupting the entire work cycle, burning fuel and paying employees etc. It's 1600 square km exclusion, so 57km diagonally cruising at about 16km:h takes about 7h roundtrip, plus 5h spent outside, perhaps traveling to someplace worth working during the wait, plus tides etc.
You were talking about a yoga class in a public park as if that were at all analogous to these fishing grounds. You are not bothering to think about the disruption and deprivation of work, only the spaceport. I know this is Ars and not the Norwegian Fishermen's Association website, but if you're going to be reasonable you should see that the two parties can coexist in their respective work, even if that means the spaceport operations cost a negligible amount to compensate the fishers who've worked there for many generations.
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