U.S. companies give Europeans more chances to fly to space
“Why would you have less chance as an Estonian or a Norwegian or Greek to fly to space than when you come Germany, France or Italy?”
As a European I can thank American free market capitalism for the modern blessings of fast food and Facebook. And due to recent American innovation, Europeans now have a better chance to fly to space.
They will fly to space in SpaceX’ privately built spaceships1, on missions organised by the private company Axiom with its corps of private astronauts. NASA’s efforts to commercialise the heavens are paying off in recent years.
This year, Axiom has signed contracts with several European nations to fly their astronauts. In early 2024, Swedish Marcus Wandt will fly to the ISS as part of the AX-3 mission. A Polish astronaut, likely Slawocz Uznański, will follow soon after. Hungary has signed a deal with Axiom to launch one of its citizens to the ISS and the UK has announced a mission with the company with a crew of only Brits.
I recently did an interview with Frank de Winne, who is the head of ESAs European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. He said that ESA, anticipated the new opportunities that companies such as SpaceX and Axiom would give Europe.
“Within the ISS program we have long duration space flights but they are not so frequent - about one flight per year. We have of course 22 member states and we expected that there would be some member states that would be interested to fly a citizen of their nationality on a commercial mission to the ISS,” Frank de Winne explains.
This new development in spaceflight even shaped ESA’s decision last year to select a much larger class of astronauts than was usual for the space agency. Aside from picking five career astronauts, who will go on long duration missions to the ISS, ESA created a new type of astronauts; reserve astronauts that might go on short trips to space if an opportunity arises. 11 reserve astronauts were selected.
“We were a little bit surprised that only six months after the reserve was selected, we already had two countries taking this opportunity,” Frank de Winne says.
Swedish reserve astronaut, Marcus Wandt, will be the first of ESA’s 2022 class of astronauts to go to space. The first news about his mission came in April this year, when Axiom announced they had signed a deal with ESA and the Swedish National Space Agency to send a Swedish national to the ISS. I was curious to know from Frank de Winne who was the driving force behind the deal.
“You have to understand, Axiom is a commercial company. So Axiom tries to sell their missions on the market. The market can be billionaires. The first [Axiom] mission, there were three billionaires on board. But we already see that now there are no more billionaires that are willing to pay for these types of missions, at least not at the regular basis that people were expecting for space tourism to develop,” he says. He adds:
“So Axiom is continuing to try to sell their missions to interested parties and that might be rich people, but might also be space agencies and national governments, like for example the Turkish government2. And this is something that we predicted would happen because commercial companies, of course, they have a business to sell interesting things.”
Giving every European the chance of spaceflight
Though ESA expected Axiom to charm European governments with tickets to space, it is less than half (10 out of 22) of ESAs member states that have an astronaut in the astronaut corps. Hungary is one of them, and thus the country has signed its own deal with Axiom to get a Hungarian to space.
I asked Frank de Winne if ESA wants to enable citizens from every member state to go to space.
“I cannot talk for the policy of the member states, but personally I think it would be great that we would have the possibility to fly every ESA citizen to space. Why would you have less chances as an Estonian or a Norwegian or a Greek to fly to space as a European than when you come from Germany, France or Italy, which are bigger countries that are contributing to our space programme?”
“I think this is something that we need to attentively look at; how could we do this and how could indeed every European citizen have a chance to fly to space. I think this would be a great dream to realise for me personally. Of course, today we do not have the budgets in our space programme to have 22 flights to the International Space Station or to space. This might change in the future. Maybe if Starship comes alive, spaceflight becomes a lot cheaper. Who knows?”
What opportunities do you think commercial spaceflight will bring for European astronauts in the future?
“If the cost of transportation stays at what it is today, I think the opportunities will stay the same, at least in the near future. You know, ESA is also looking into developing their own crew transportation system. Of course, if we would have a European crew transportation system that would open up a whole new range of possibilities for European astronauts,” Frank de Winne says. He adds:
“But that would mean, of course, also an increase in budget and that is a decision that eventually the member states will have to make. We have now decided that we would start developing a cargo system that eventually could evolve into a crew vehicle. Look at what SpaceX did with Dragon. First Cargo Dragon and then Crew Dragon. So we are looking a little bit at the same schematics.”
Europe beholden to U.S. timelines, ambitions in space
American commercialisation of spaceflight will continue to shape European human spaceflight. NASA plans to retire the ISS by 2030. Private space stations will succeed it. However, there are already signs that the commercial space stations will not be ready in 2030 and that will likely force NASA to extend the lifetime of the aging space station. This also made it difficult for Frank de Winne to assess if the current ESA astronaut corps will be the last to visit the ISS.
“I cannot predict when the commercial space stations will be there. There were a lot of plans some years ago that the first space stations would be there by 2025. That is clearly not going to happen because very few of them are building hardware. Will they be there by 2030? Maybe yes, but also maybe no. Really, this is more speculation today than having real concrete plans on the table,” Frank de Winne explains.
Looking to the Moon, Europe is also beholden to NASAs schedule and the probable delays in the Artemis program. So whether or not the first European to travel to the Moon or even land on the Moon will be among the current class of ESA astronauts, depends very much on when SLS and Orion and the other pieces of NASAs Moon architecture will fly.
“We have today three Gateway flights together with NASA that would fly by 2030 or around that time. So that might still be astronauts from the 2009 class, or it might be someone from the new class if the flight is in 2032 or 2033,” Frank de Winne says.
Before you scream at the screen, I realise that NASA did provide funding for the development of Crew Dragon and was involved with the design of the spacecraft. However, SpaceX now owns and operates Crew Dragon and can offer private services with it, which is what really matters in this context.