Talk:European Space Agency

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Contents 1 Bdget comparisons with China and India corrected 2 who wrote this??? 3 Expansion and restructuring 4 Arianespace - ESA 5 ESA-Astronauts 6 EADS Phoenix 7 Accuracy 8 too much France is leading 9 Luxembourg, Greece - admission date 10 Financing the organization 11 Date for operational CEV 12 This article is too long 13 Removed template cleanup 14 First European in Space 15 Energia 16 The latest change from "billion" to "thousand million" 17 ESA Image use? 18 Kliper and 2006-2011 budget 19 AREV 20 laughable budget comparisons 21 ESA flags 22 GA nomination 23 How to prnounce "ESA"? 24 Update needed in "own manned launch vehicles" section? 25 Budget figures for ESA and comparative space agencies

[edit] Bdget comparisons with China and India corrected

The "along with NASA, ESA is in another league" because of it's budget size was grossly misrepresented, since it did not take the PPP (purchasing power parity) into account especially for India and China. I have inserted a note about that. With that correction, the largest budgets are as follows:

1. NASA: ~14 billion Euro

2. China: 9 to 11 billion with PPP of 4 to 5 (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4333158.stm)

3. India: 3 billion (with a PPP of 5.5 to 6)

4. Russia: 2.5 - 3 billion (again their PPP ratio is pretty big, plus they have lot of commercial revenue, giving them a budget bigger than ESA)

5. ESA :

6. Japan :

Note that the budgts of China, India and Russia are growing rapidly, so these numbers are going to be grossly off even in 2 years and need to be updated regularly. One of the shocking events that might happen soon - as early as 2013, is that China's space budget might become larger than NASA's budget in purchasing power parity, while still growing rapidly after that. Welcome to the Age of Young Giants (http://www.sandgun.com/pages/share/marssociety/newGiants.ppt).

• I made some clarifications to the budget section. It is certainly true that PPP is a factor for a true comparison, however not all costs are labour costs and jobs in high-tech industry tend to have higher absolute salaries even in countries such as China, Russia and India. In addition salaries do not even reach 30% of the costs of space programs and raw materials, computers and other high tech materials cost the same regardless in which country you are. Still, a true comparison of space budgets would need to consider even more elements, but it certainly cannot be calculated as direct as you do it by just multiplying absolute numbers with PPP numbers. Themanwithoutapast 17:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

gunjankg

[edit] who wrote this???

eads here, eads there, DW....? who wrote this stuff? Germany is a zero contributor to the Aurora and Vega programmes (as well as the pan european Orfeo), and is almost the only vountry not to have visited ISS (besides Andorra and Monaco). France leads the pace in ESA and is hardly mentioned. Links to EADS all over the place, but none to Alcatel Space or Alenia Spazio?? Today (21 June) Alcatel Space delivered EGNOS to ESA while the Alenia Marsis instrument on Mars Express started operating. Phoenix??? you must be kidding... EADS everywhere because of the clear teutonic flavour of this article, but EADS is French-based in the end!!!!! Just look at the number of Frecnh vs German employees. Also Eurocopter HQ are in Marseille, Airbus and Astrium in Toulouse. Anything serious Astrium does (e.g. Eurostar family of spacecraft) is French. EADS biggest boo-boos however (see ESA enquiry inti Artemis launch failure) are German. Danke, herr komandant!

I wrote "this stuff", and no I am not a German. If you want to contribute something constructive to this article - please do so, but in a different style. As to your allegations concerning "German-EADS all over the place" - not sure what you mean, EADS is a multinational corporation (as you just mentioned yourself) and has a lot of projects going on with ESA, so what? And if you want to mention Alenia Spazio in the section on the ATV go ahead, the same goes for Alcatel Space. And by the way, we normally sign our comments here on the talk page - just use 4~ if you're already signed up (what actually only takes 1 minute). Themanwithoutapast 02:36, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)n in

So that when you look at the number of prime contracts of Astrium (you should really talk abouot EADS for launchers) and Alcatel/Alenia the latter has the lion´s share, yet was until recently not mentioned. That´s what. If this is supposed to be an encyclopedia then it is supposed to inform, and to lend itself to facts. Under Future Projects, the EADS Phoenix stands out like a sore thumb, since all the others have either been already approved or are very likely to be approved.

[edit] Expansion and restructuring

Made same larger expansions- especially budget and history. Some pics here should be checked for copyright vios. Themanwithoutapast 15:51, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arianespace - ESA

Is ESA responsible for the Ariane 5 program, or is it Arianespace? I have to admit I'm not too sure of the real relationship between ESA and Arianespace; perhaps someone who does understand could clarify -- AdamW

Looks like an employer-contractor relationship to me [1] --Ed Poor

Ah. Looking through the history, it seems this has already been dealt with - ESA develops the things, Arianespace gets them into orbit. --AdamW

[edit] ESA-Astronauts

Why no mention of ESA astronauts? I don't understand the difference between ESA and national programs well enough to add much myself. Rmhermen 16:49, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. As far as I know, the European astronauts are indeed organized in the ESA Corps of Astronauts, with no European country having its own corps --UsagiYojimbo

Regarding the list, some of them are now retired (Guidoni, Perrin, etc). Should the list be a list of all ESA astronauts of all time or only the active ones ?Hektor 10:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

When I rewrote the article some time ago I did not make any changes to the ESA astronauts section, I guess the more astronauts (retired or not) we include the better. Themanwithoutapast 23:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the active ones should be flagged one way or another. The number of actual active European astronauts is an interesting piece of information.Hektor 23:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EADS Phoenix

I was just wondering, shouldn't the new EADS Phoenix shuttle be included in this page? Although made by a private company, it certainly seems te be meant for ESA usage.. (or I misunderstood this whole Phoenix thing, please feel free to prove me wrong ;p ) I'd add it myself if I wasn't somewhat insecure of my Wikipedia editing skills (lack of experience, I don't want to mess up the whole page by accident).. -- Kraftwerk

Don't be too afraid of accidently messing-up. There is history and everything can be reverted. Also there is a preview ot view the changes before implementig them. Also there is a separate sandbox to experiment with

[edit] Accuracy

"ESA consists of fifteen member states — that is, it is the product of a merger of (or comprises of) national space organisations from these countries"

Not sure this is correct - I don't think here in Ireland we have a "national space organisation". Our contributions, are, I believe, directly through our Universities and some generic (not space) national bodies (Enterprise Ireland, the economic development agency, may be involved). Zoney 23:36, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree, for some countries there are "National space organization", for other - there are not such. I will try to correct this, but check it afterwards...

[edit] too much France is leading

Italy also makes many contributions (to the ISS for example) - like France is making to the Ariane... I think that maybe "French leading role" ("France is the main contributor" sentence at the end of the membership list) is just an assumption by the writer and not based on hard facts?

I've added a section with budget numbers and contributions by Italy, Germany and France. Themanwithoutapast 01:30, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Luxembourg, Greece - admission date

I changed the date of Luxembourg and Greece from 2005 to 2004, becouse of the information on the page that I also linked there. It states "Greece and Luxembourg are expected to become members of ESA in 2004", but the former wording of the page here was "G and L to became FULL MEMBERS in DECEMBER 2005" - so maybe in 2004 they will become NOT FULL members and a year later - FULL members?

Seems that the map (without Greece) is not up to date...

Following its ratification of the ESA Convention, Luxembourg has become ESA's 17th Member State with effect from 30 June 2005. - internal ESA memo! sofar 09:26:14, 2005-08-05 (UTC)

[edit] Financing the organization

I was surprised to read that almost half of ESA funding is from France. Is there any truth in that? If so, i am proposing that we mentionit somewhere in ESA article. I think its worthy it. Here is the source. [2]

[edit] Date for operational CEV

Bricktop, the article you mention does not give a new date for the CEV to carry out its first operational (manned) flight. As far as I know (and the last press statements: [3] says nothing different either) are they still sticking to their original launch dates of their spiral development plan - for the moment. What they have done is to move the selection date from 2008 to 2006 and to eliminate the parallel design phase of a CEV by both teams - Boeing and Lockhead. In fact phase 1 (now ending 2006) has been reduced to solely an "advertising compaign" between the two competing companies (and their partners). When they decide to go for one of the proposals in 2006 it will take AT LEAST 4 years (minimum) to launch an actual built spaceship into orbit (remember no work (except the proposal) has been done until now). They need a minimum of 2 unmanned flights for testing - this brings us to a manned launch date to 2012 as the absolute earliest date possible. However, as long as they do not announce a new date I think we should stick to the still official dates (+ I added a comment on the new development). Themanwithoutapast 20:59, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ok, the new version is fine with me. Although there are no official new launch dates, Griffin stated repeatedly he wants CEV to fly in 2010 or little after that to minimize the gap between Space Shuttle retirement and CEV introduction. But I also not except first manned CEV flight occur before 2011-2012 – with a development time of 3-4 years (for Lockheed with their CRV and OSP experience) and two unmanned launches. --Bricktop 21:17, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This article is too long

I think this article is too long and should be split in an umbrella article and various topical article: Human spaceflight at ESA, Earth observation at ESA, Space exploration at ESA, etc.194.183.196.141 4 July 2005 15:29 (UTC)

• Don't think so, see peer review (was critized as too short) Themanwithoutapast 4 July 2005 17:06 (UTC)

[edit] Removed template cleanup

As there were no specific reasons given on adding the cleanup-warning, I removed it. Please state specific reasons, otherwise it is impossible to improve the article in the requested direction. Themanwithoutapast 00:41, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] First European in Space

I find this quote very strange "It is therefore not surprising that the first European in space was not an ESA astronaut on a European space craft: It was Czechoslovakian Vladimir Remek who in 1978 became the first European in space - on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, followed by the East German Sigmund Jähn in the same year." As far as i know Soviet Union was european and Yuri Gagarin as well. So, it would be the first European not from the Soviet Union, not the first european.

fixed it - next time if you find something unclear or wrong, be bold and just edit it. Themanwithoutapast 02:46, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Energia

The Manned section references the Energia being the only rocket to launch Kliper. This is problematic, as there have been no Energia launchers built since 1989, and there is no capacity in place to build any today. A thought, perhaps we should delete a lot of this speculation and just redirect to the Kliper page. Mentioning it here first before I wholesale slash & burn. - CHAIRBOY 20:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

No; it references the Energia being the only rocket capable of a direct launch to the Moon, Mars or similar. Ariane 5 and the forthcoming Angara could both be used for launches to low (or in the case of Ariane 5 ECB, if it even enters service, not-so-low) Earth orbit. There, Kliper could be used in Shuttle-like roles, or an engine could be assembled (as in one of the Soviet moon-shot plans) in space and used for interplanetary travel. 134.226.1.136 16:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The latest change from "billion" to "thousand million"

I am aware that there are different interpretations of billion, but writing "thousand million" instead seems very un-scientific. Is there an agreed use of billion in the Wikipedia? --UsagiYojimbo 13:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

thousand million is the same as a billion. i suggest sticking to use of billion. if there are different interpretations of the value why not write it out in full or with scientific notation. --Lti 12:57, 23 February 2006 (GMT+12:00)

[edit] ESA Image use?

Can anyone clarify the use of ESA images in Wikipedia? The ESA web site [4] says (emphasis mine):

The contents of the ESA Web Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for users' personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its website or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Use of material on the website is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.

All material published on the ESA Web Portal is protected by copyright and owned or controlled by ESA or the party credited as the provider of the content, software or other material.

Users may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the content, software, material or services, in whole or in part, without obtaining prior written authorisation. In order to obtain authorisation to display or use any content of the ESA Web Portal, please make a request for authorization by clicking on 'Contact us'.

So does this preclude use of ESA images in Wikipedia? Pretty much all of the above rights would have to be granted if the image license was to be compatible with the GFDL. Any information? Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 17:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, I found {{noncommercial-ESA}}, which pretty much explains it. Looks like the images can't be used. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 17:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

See also: {{ESA-multimedia}} and meta:ESA images --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Asking for clarification at Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#ESA images. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kliper and 2006-2011 budget

The ESA meeting in december 2005 acknowlegded a new budget for the agency, this should be mentioned in the budget section. Rokosmos will hold a closed meeting on the third of february to hand out contracts to companys bidding in on the construction of Kliper, EU countries are also urged to participate in the event.

• I updated that section. Themanwithoutapast 17:39, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AREV

According to this article [5] AREV still exists, and is - in contrast to other test projects - fully funded. Themanwithoutapast 00:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

That's incorrect. You are mixing AREV, an ESA study, with USV-Prora, an Italian national endeavour from CIRA. AREV was not a project, it was an ESA study, of 12 months duration. It was successfully carried out by Alenia and the final presentation was performed some time in late 2005. But there was no follow-on for a further study. You can look for it in the papers of the Ministerial Conference of last year without finding any trace. The only demonstrator under way right now in Europe are Pre-X [6] supported by CNES and DLR and currently in Phase B and the USV-Prora [7] which is an Italian national project. ESA proposes to merge all that (AREV heritage, Pre-X and so on) in the IXV [8] under leadership by NGL Prime SpA.

• • Oh I forgot there is also Expert [9]

Ok, thanks for clearing that up and providing the links. Themanwithoutapast 00:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] laughable budget comparisons

What an interesting budget comparison somebody has tried to write up between ESA and NASA. Comparing the 13billion euro NASA budget to the 3billion euro ESA budget and attempting to scramble the numbers to make them equate is ridiculous. I point specifically to instances where NASA's space shuttle is used in the budget paragraph to demonstrate some sort of efficiency in ESA that NASA lacks or that the development costs of future manned vehicles by NASA is taxing their research budget. Well no kidding, developing and maintaining manned missions is significantly more expensive and risky than purely unmanned work, but how does that make ESA somehow on par with NASA in this area. It is the very fact that NASA supports ISS/Shuttle/Future manned flight that they require such massive expenditures that ESA can avoid. It sounds like a POV pusher is trying to somehow compensate for ESA's lack of manned work by needlesly demonizing NASA. This so called comparison fails to mention the 3 great space based observatories (Hubble/Spitzer/Chandra) or to look at massive GPS/NRO/NAVY related expenditures that the US puts billions of additional dollars into outside of NASA. These comparable expenditures are factored into the European side (Galileo GPS) but not the US. Anyway, why not just say that ESA is what it is (efficient, smaller). Why attempt to equate to the much larger NASA system as if it were on par? J Shultz 03:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

• Fully agree. Except that not all parts of ESA are equally efficient. ESA Science for instance is efficient. ESA Human spaceflight (what's left of it) is very unefficient.Hektor 08:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
• I also think it's a ridiculous comparison. Besides the fact that it totally one-sided, I don't even see the need for it. So the question is who is going to rewrite it? I'd do it, but I don't think I'm enough of an expert on the subject of the two organization's respective budgets to do so. All I could do is erase most of it. --BarqSimpson
• I rewrote the section, not sure if that is ok now. Themanwithoutapast 17:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ESA flags

European Space Agency is a multinational organisation and a string of flags is used by them.
Yesterday I added that string of flags, which are a part of ESA as Ariane, Giotto and Huygens. A user:Shimgray apparantly saw the history section and said: 'Oh my god!', all those huge flags, lets delete them, it's not a Flag Article!
If user:Shimgray had been looking at the recent article instead, he would have noticed that it was a string of small flag. If there is a technical problem with homebuild browsers etc, then let me know!
--Necessary Evil 14:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA nomination

This nomination is on hold for 7 days for these reasons: the history needs to be prose, not links, and the refs need to be in cite standard format. Rlevse 23:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

• 'the history needs to be prose' - not sure what you mean, the history section IS in prose. If you are referring to the list of projects, all of them have rather extensive separate articles, no chance to incorporate them all into the article + 'the refs need to be in cite standard format' - I don't think so, wikipedia does not mandate any standard form for footnotes and this articles has actually correctly formated footnotes Themanwithoutapast 06:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  • remedied your history section point (the external link to the pdfs is now at the end of the history section) and converted the few external links that were not 'standard' cites into such Themanwithoutapast 06:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

you list of items in notes section shows up as gibberish, you still have external jumps, the footnotes like number 6 don't follow any standard wiki footnoting scheme, and footnotes go at the end of a sentence, not in the middle.Rlevse 10:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

please direct me to an article on wikipedia's 'standard wiki footnoting scheme' - I can't find it. Thanks. Themanwithoutapast 18:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

'gibberish' - there was a '/' missing in one of the 'ref'. Fixed that. Themanwithoutapast 18:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

'footnotes go at the end of a sentence': 'Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania[6] signed the five-year Plan for European Cooperating State (PECS), that is aimed at preparing the states for full membership.'... please explain how it would make sense to give a cite at the end of this sentence, if the citation only relates to Romania. Themanwithoutapast 18:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Failed due to non compliance. Rlevse 23:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to prnounce "ESA"?

How do I pronouce the acronym? Is it a single word, Esa, or do I pronouce the letters individually, E. S. A.? Should there be a pronounciation key at the start of the article? Spebudmak 23:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It is normally pronounced as a single word, similar to NASA. Memberstates have different languages so you will have people in different countries pronounce it differently some will pronounce the E like the English letter 'e', in many other countries the E will be more the 'e' in elephant. Don't think we need a pronounciation key as that would only apply to English-speakers and would not be universal. Themanwithoutapast 07:11, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about the pronounciation. As for other languages, the English Wikipedia should indicate how to pronounce things in English. This is particularly appropriate in this case since the U.K. and Ireland are member states -- there must be some natural pronounciation in those countries. If native speakers of another language pronounce it differently, I think that should be on the corresponding article in that language. Thanks again. Spebudmak 18:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update needed in "own manned launch vehicles" section?

In the last part of this section it says: "Jean-Jacques Dordain has hinted that a decision on ESA's involvement in the project could be made as soon as June, 2006" -- shouldn't this be updated to reflect whatever happened since June, 2006? Or if it should be understood that the next sentence reveals this, maybe it just need a rewrite. I didn't fully catch the meaning of that section anyway. --LasseFolkersen 15:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Be bold and edit wiki with information already on wiki. There is an article on the CSTS study and on Kliper that has most of the necessary information. Themanwithoutapast 22:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Budget figures for ESA and comparative space agencies

To the IP who has inserted and modified certain budgetary numbers, these numbers need to be backed up with an external source, it is not enough to just state that "according to Mr.X this is the budget" without providing a specific written source. Themanwithoutapast 20:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)