March 2016
Time for European visionary goals
... formative decades in the middle of the 20th century saw Europe, still recovering from its recent shattering military past, building its industrial strength while firmly grounding its humanistic values. Can it really be 55 years since...
September 2016
Preparing the future: the right technology at the right time
... market. Europe’s competitors, by contrast, receive significantly higher shares of institutional support, including effective military subsidies. Europe’s position is a fragile one, however, reliant on the wider performance of the telecom...
November 2016
Microgravity and space research: Bringing the commercial market into focus
In the beginning, space missions were directly linked to military projects. Launcher technologies were developed with the goal of transporting nuclear bombs from one continent to another. As ...
May 2017
Recipe for success on flights to Mars
... rocks. Today’s space food eaten aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shares more similarities with military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), vacuum sealed plastic pouches that must be rehydrated or reheated. Ideally, space food...
November 2017
Reusable air-launch and the space access paradigm
...it has actually stagnated and even regressed. Space is still dominated by government programmes, both civil and military, while communication satellites – a market that is successful because it moves information, rather than material objects, through...
April 2020
Reviving Russia’s space programme
... own satellites, scientists re-ran ancient datasets or accessed American ones. No more weather satellites were launched and military observation missions became infrequent. Even the libraries could not afford to order journals and President Yeltsin...
