Tomas Kapler rejected the claim that Europe cannot compete with Starlink because it cannot build rockets and satellites and does not have the money for it. He stated that SpaceX completed 165 Falcon 9 flights in 2025, while Amazon reserved 24 launches of the European Ariane 6, which has already launched 100 of its satellites. He also mentioned the German startup Isar Aerospace, the prototype of a reusable rocket in Sweden, and more than 900 million euros that the European Space Agency invested in a new generation of rockets. For comparison, he noted approximately 400 million dollars from NASA for the development of Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule. Kapler cited examples of European space technologies, including the Galileo navigation system, which he said is used by over 4.5 billion devices, the Finnish company ICEYE and its radar satellites, and the share of Thales Alenia Space in the living space of the International Space Station. He also wrote that Airbus, Thales Aerospace, and Leonardo are merging their space divisions into a company with 25,000 employees, while the EU network IRIS², with 348 satellites, moves towards full deployment. He challenged the claim of a lack of European capital by estimating that European households hold 12 trillion euros in cash and accounts, and Europeans own American stocks and bonds worth 8 trillion dollars. According to him, 300 billion euros in savings flow out of Europe each year. As a sign of change, he mentioned the creation of a single market for savings and investments and Danish pension funds, which he said began to divest from American government bonds. In the field of research and technology, Kapler reminded that three out of the last four Nobel Prize laureates in Physics were born in Europe and stated that the number of applications from scientists working in the USA addressed to the European Research Council has more than doubled. He also mentioned Italian designer Federico Faggin, the London origins of DeepMind, and co-founders of OpenAI born in Poland and Slovakia, and the Dutch company ASML, whose machines are essential for producing the most advanced chips for artificial intelligence. As further examples of European contributions to American space programs, he cited the NASA spacecraft module, which he said was assembled in Bremen, and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope by an Ariane 5 rocket. Kapler concluded that Europe has been repeatedly written off and reminded that Airbus has been delivering more aircraft than Boeing every year since 2019. According to him, Europe has gradually approached greater self-sufficiency in rockets, satellites, capital, and technologies. #Evropa #technologie #vesmír (translated)
