Latest

With German’s election bringing more power to the Greens (Bündnis 90 / die Grünen) and the Liberal Democrats (FDP). I would like to address them directly as they effectively the kingmakers and will wield powerful influence on the future of the German space industry. In this open letter you will find my post election recommendations:…

The German Industry Association (BDI) has recently published a paper with recommendations regarding (Key Component – Small Satellites | LinkedIn). In this white paper BDI argues that the German government should increase the government spending on space to create technologies and foster mass manufacturing of small satellites (<500kg) made in Germany. While I am very…

Episode 10 takes a look on what is #newspace and what is not. In this bonus episode we are looking on two common archetypes of the industry. The beggar who will go to their government and plea for money and the don who will demand it. Let’s have a look. This is not the free…

This month topic in #spacedonewrong is fear. Once again the European Space Agency has chosen a canonical platform which is unfortunately unsuited to meet the programmatic requirements. For me his looks like another case of “lets stick with what we know”. Its Groundhog day: EC/ESA IOD Element 2 has again ended up with a platform that…

If you ever were looking for an overview on European satellite carriers and their suitability for IOD/IOV missions here is one from an study conducted on behalf of the European commission. The study is from 2015 and contains an overview of European small satellites in the nano, micro and mini class… including their technical parameters AND prices!…

Just increase reliability a little! This month’s topic is “over engineering: the ugly child of fear”. In this bonus article we will look how small changes to a mission can have drastic effects on cost and schedule. The DLR TET satellite(s) of the German Aerospace Centre OOV office started out as the quest for affordable IOD/IOV…