ESA - Aurora Program

Palomar · 2004-12-21 08:55:58

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetra … html]Click

*Sweden joins. Italy increases its involvement. :up:

Canada is a "Cooperating State" and is increasing its contribution.

I decided to start a new thread for this. One pertaining to this program is in the wrong folder (Unmanned Probes), the other deals more with launch capabilities and technical issues -- then went off-topic.

Anyway...nice to know the competition is out there and growing.

--Cindy

GCNRevenger · 2004-12-21 09:45:25

Except their program is even more broke and lacking the nessesarry infrastructure and skills base then ours.

SpaceNut · 2004-12-21 09:51:15

Some more from the ESA site:
ESA’s Exploration Programme 'Aurora' gets further boost

The countries participating in the Preparatory European Space Exploration Programme Aurora have recently confirmed and increased their contributions.
This preparatory phase has attracted additional contributions for the period 2005-2006. Sweden has now joined the programme. The subscribed envelope has nearly tripled, from the original €14.3m to around €41.5m currently.

Pretty good size boost.

GCNRevenger · 2004-12-21 10:09:47

Um, thats only like $55M USD. Not even enough to buy a Soyuz flight.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-21 10:12:19

Except their program is even more broke and lacking the nessesarry infrastructure and skills base then ours.

And I hate to be a broken record but Europe will have a demographic crunch before anything fruitful can happen... Most of Europe can't afford a decent military now.... nevermind a space program that would take away from their oversized welfare hammock.

GCNRevenger · 2004-12-21 14:36:04

I don't know about a demographic crunch given the extremely high immigrant birth rates, but European economies are not well off at all... Germany for instance only has 60% of its population employed full time, and theirs is supposed to be the strongest of the continant?

No, even with dirt cheap Russian rockets, Mars is out of Europes' reach barring an economic miracle.

Commodore · 2004-12-21 17:14:45

Immigration is a whole nother problem that Europe will have to deal with. A lot of them don't come out of love for there new home.

Internal security costs will skyrocket.

Euler · 2004-12-21 17:25:50

Germany for instance only has 60% of its population employed full time, and theirs is supposed to be the strongest of the continant?

The US only has 47% of it's population employed. The US also has massive current account deficits while the EU does not. I think that Europe definately can afford a Mars mission, the problem is convincing them to actually do it.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-22 09:52:29

Germany for instance only has 60% of its population employed full time, and theirs is supposed to be the strongest of the continant?
The US only has 47% of it's population employed. The US also has massive current account deficits while the EU does not. I think that Europe definately can afford a Mars mission, the problem is convincing them to actually do it.

% Population employed:

47% USA
48% Japan
42% Germany
38% France
46% UK
36% Italy
33% Belgium

etc, etc..

The US has massive current account deficit beacuse right now NINETY PERCENT of Germany's GDP growth comes from exports. Japan and the rest Europe are just as bad. The only growth they are recieving is dependent on mostly US demand, therefore those countries are happy to finance it becase witout the US they have no growth at all. The entire western world has been too dependent on the US for growth since the early 90s.

The problem is further exasterbated since Europe and Japan have no domestic demand growth, exporting profitably becomes increasingly harder and Harder when hey wont even buy their own products. Exports grow with their crappy economies and our Imports grow with our strong one.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-22 10:17:22

Double post. nothing to see here folks.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-22 10:23:27

I don't know about a demographic crunch given the extremely high immigrant birth rates, but European economies are not well off at all... Germany for instance only has 60% of its population employed full time, and theirs is supposed to be the strongest of the continant?
No, even with dirt cheap Russian rockets, Mars is out of Europes' reach barring an economic miracle.

That would be 60% of their working age population (18-65yo) When applied to the total population it works out to about 42%. Th USA has 75% of it's working age population employed, or about 47% of the total population.

The high immigrant birth rates do not even make drops in the bucket in europe because their native rates are so incomprehensively low. The US has a larger population aged 1-18 than the EU15 does, the only difference is that our population is 294 million and the EU's is 385 million, and the US number is rising whil Europe's is falling.
The US is lucky in that we have both one of the higest birthrates in the western world, and one of the highest immigration rates.

Europe, if trends continue, will have a median age af about 50, one third of the population will be over retirement age, and the EU15 will have shrunk to about 335m, while the working-age population decreases even faster. The rate of decreasse will be such that unless productivity is very high 0% GDP growth there could bee seen as a good year!

Here are the Population projections, now, and 2050
295m 420m USA
128m 102m Japan
143m 99m Russia
385m 335m EU15
82m 72m Germany
57m 41m Italy
32m 40m Canada
60m 66m UK
60m 63m France

And on the last point, fiscally, think the US's Social security problem, and add in poor performing economies, an absolute (not relative) shrinking workforce, and more generous benefit and you will get the scale of the problem it will become.

Gennaro · 2004-12-23 13:37:24

*Sweden joins. Italy increases its involvement.

At least something we do right, I guess.

Grypd · 2004-12-23 14:22:54

Well the United Kingdom birth rate was more than 0.4% greater than was expected and also the death rate down by 1.9% so so much for the demographic crunch.

But it really comes down to any space program that ESA has to how much power will it have to chart the right course. The most recent multi national effort the Euro fighter was hide bound to have all countries involved making components and this did increase costs. Such is the result of international politics.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-23 20:41:49

"Well the United Kingdom birth rate was more than 0.4% greater than was expected and also the death rate down by 1.9% so so much for the demographic crunch."

It doesnt matter, it is still below the replacement rate. Britain is at about 1.6 births per woman, and would need to increase about 30% to 2.1 for population growth to be neutral.

Gennaro · 2004-12-27 23:31:07

I'm not particularly worried about the "big crunch". With a 10% base unemployment rate widely regarded as "normal", today's advanced industrial economies appear to be suffering from an endemic labour surplus rather than the other way around. Given ever increased mechanization and rising productivity, I see no reason for this gap not to widen either, especially without a corresponding increase in demand.

As I see it, the big picture is that less and less people are needed to run the real economy, but instead of my opinion, let's by all means throw out a few facts.

During the 1990's the population in Sweden rose from 8.6 million to 8.9 million, mostly through practically unrestricted immigration. Despite this increase, absolute employment numbers actually dropped during the period, from 4,500,000 to 4,150,000, that is by 350,000 individuals. This should be viewed against the increase of people of employment age, that is the workforce, which rose from 5,400,000 to 5,650,000, in other words, a net increase of 250,000 individuals.

See, we don't have a demographic deficit, what we have are several hundred thousand people the economy either have no need of or who are basically unemployable. More of the same, that is importing even more people to live on welfare transactions, meaning increased taxation, the solution to some looming "big crunch"? I shouldn't think so. At least, we should try getting the people who simply hang out here to work first and we have a lot of those!

I'm pretty sure you can see variations of this theme repeated in country after country in western Europe, albeit perhaps not always as extreme as around here.

BWhite · 2004-12-27 23:56:15

I'm not particularly worried about the "big crunch". With a 10% base unemployment rate widely regarded as "normal", today's advanced industrial economies appear to be suffering from an endemic labour surplus rather than the other way around. Given ever increased mechanization and rising productivity, I see no reason for this gap not to widen either, especially without a corresponding increase in demand.

Shorter work weeks and longer annual vacations also help "solve" this issue. And if we include the incarcerated and those in the military, US unemployment figures begin to approach the EU figures.

The US-ian "right" believes it the height of evil to tamper with the bell-curve that charts wealth distribution, however I believe fewer ultra-rich and fewer poor, with more in the middle makes for a more stable society.

= = =

Do we live to work, or work to live?

Edited By BWhite on 1104213430

Gennaro · 2004-12-28 00:05:56

Shorter work weeks and longer annual vacations also help "solve" this issue. And if we include the incarcerated and those in the military, US unemployment figures begin to approach the EU figures.
The US-ian "right" believes it the height of evil to tamper with the bell-curve that charts wealth distribution, however I believe fewer ultra-rich and fewer poor, with more in the middle makes for a more stable society.
= = =
Do we live to work, or work to live?

Precisely. Thanks for filling in some blank spaces. The so-called "right", not exclusively an American phenomenon, should get lost.

Austin Stanley · 2004-12-28 00:47:30

Do we live to work, or work to live?

I guess this is more of a cultural issue, but I (and I belive the majority of American's) live to work. No matter what the job is, most people here feel a need to be working, to be doing something for a vast majority of their lives. I can certianly vouch for myself, my parents, and the majority of the people I know. This is also backed up by work statistics, Americans work more hours on average than nearly everyone else in the world, including most so called "developing nations."

Not trying to bring jingoism and what not into this, but I wanted to point out an important cultural diffrence.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-29 12:24:31

Do we live to work, or work to live?
I guess this is more of a cultural issue, but I (and I belive the majority of American's) live to work. No matter what the job is, most people here feel a need to be working, to be doing something for a vast majority of their lives. I can certianly vouch for myself, my parents, and the majority of the people I know. This is also backed up by work statistics, Americans work more hours on average than nearly everyone else in the world, including most so called "developing nations."
Not trying to bring jingoism and what not into this, but I wanted to point out an important cultural diffrence.

You are absolutely correct. there was a study posted out not too long ago and found not surprisingly that Amercians are the most productive workers in the world. In the western world we work longer hours than all but the Koreans (Japanese were third), and have the highest productivity per hour after the Belgians and French (who worker *very* few hour and have small percenatgges in the workfroce). Americans take less vacations and sick days and have a higher percentage in the workforce than most countries, all which lead to our GDP per head being 30-40% higher than the other western countries.

The US also has the highest growth rate in the western world with Asutralia, New Zealand, and Ireland, and one of the lower unmeplyment raes, which is especially impressive considering most other western workforces are shrinking.

Vir Stellae · 2004-12-29 14:35:27

"I'm not particularly worried about the "big crunch". With a 10% base unemployment rate widely regarded as "normal", today's advanced industrial economies appear to be suffering from an endemic labour surplus rather than the other way around. Given ever increased mechanization and rising productivity, I see no reason for this gap not to widen either, especially without a corresponding increase in demand.

That is the problem, the only demand increase has been from the US. Europe and Japan have been in a period of stagnancy for more than a decade, now only growing when they can leech it off the US. That is why the US has it's trade gap, because countries invest in our better performing economy to finance it so they can sell to us. The US increasing demand is from our demographic position, not the other way around as you seem to think. Growth plus one of the higher productivty growth is why the US continues to leave its partners in the dust.

The faster growing economies all have unemployment in the 4-5% range, like the US, UK, and Australia.

During the 1990's the population in Sweden rose from 8.6 million to 8.9 million, mostly through practically unrestricted immigration. Despite this increase, absolute employment numbers actually dropped during the period, from 4,500,000 to 4,150,000, that is by 350,000 individuals. This should be viewed against the increase of people of employment age, that is the workforce, which rose from 5,400,000 to 5,650,000, in other words, a net increase of 250,000 individuals.

This likely corresponds to the decrease in demand in Sweden, with the higher prodctivity you sighted, however the most likely reason is utter failure in integrating immigrant, and the currency dilemna in the early 90s which hit sweden especially hard. Sweden's Unemployment was almost nonexistant at like 1%, then ballooned to 10-11%, most probably because of the reasons sighted. The US unemployment rate has been trending downward since the late 70s, you can see this quite clearly when charting the figures listed in the World Almanac.

See, we don't have a demographic deficit, what we have are several hundred thousand people the economy either have no need of or who are basically unemployable. More of the same, that is importing even more people to live on welfare transactions, meaning increased taxation, the solution to some looming "big crunch"? I shouldn't think so. At least, we should try getting the people who simply hang out here to work first and we have a lot of those!

This is where you are quite wrong. the decrease in demand stems from the decrease in poplation, which only exasterbates the employment problem you have posted, leaving fewer employed and thus fewer consumer and demand, an ever-spiraling cycle.

The main point is, that right now the problem is not much, but in the coming decades the rate of decreasse in the working age poplation will truely be remarkable. Right now maybe you see a small increase in the working age population, but soon the rate of decrease will exceed any foreseeable productivity growth. We are talking about it shrinking by _millions_ every year in countries like Germany, Japan and Italy! and the problem will be even worse because who will be retarded enough to invest in those economies if they garantee only a break even on a good year and a loss on every other? We could see these area fall off the map economically in the coming decades..

BWhite · 2004-12-29 15:40:24

On the statistics of employment rates, two earner famiiles distort the figures.

If my wife works and we hire a nanny or pay professional day care, then 3 people show up as employed in the statistics. If my wife does not work, the nanny's work is still performed - - perhaps with better diligence by the children's own mother - - yet none of that makes it into the statistics.

People "employed" as prison guards or in the military do pump up the employment / unemployment statistics yet that hardly seems like a sign of economic health.

Americans are working harder and harder, yet the net worth of everyone except the elite wealthy is generally declining due to credit card debt and increased leverage of home equity.

= = =

Americans "live to work" but who is really collecting the honey these worker bees are producing?

Edited By BWhite on 1104356503

Austin Stanley · 2004-12-30 02:06:43

Americans "live to work" but who is really collecting the honey these worker bees are producing?

I'm not going to argue with this. The Marxists in me tends to agree with you somewhat even. I was just pointing out that the retorical question you are asking is realy not so retorical, it is more of a cultural issue.

Tim · 2004-12-30 19:37:19

I'm not particularly worried about the "big crunch". With a 10% base unemployment rate widely regarded as "normal", today's advanced industrial economies appear to be suffering from an endemic labour surplus rather than the other way around. Given ever increased mechanization and rising productivity, I see no reason for this gap not to widen either, especially without a corresponding increase in demand.

10% normal? Unemployment hasn't been that high in the US since June of 1983, hasn't even hit 7% since June of '93.
http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.e … /feddal/ru

Mad Grad Student · 2004-12-30 23:54:50

Regardless of how pessimistic some predictions of EU's economy for the next few decades are, if the governments of the ESA really sat down and set their minds to putting people on Mars they could do it within the time frame described by the Aurora Program. And therin lies the problem. The EU is perenially one of the most apathetic governments toward manned space flight and they honestly could not care less about who make the first footprints on Mars or if footprints are made at all. IMHO, the ESA will be lucky to have a spiral 1 CEV-equivalent vehicle by 2030, much less euronauts on the red planet.

The United States went to the Moon during one of the most chaotic and trying decades in America's history. During the 1960s our budget had to make a greater stretch to accomidate NASA than it woudl have in almost any other decade. Weither a successful space program gets off the ground is not a matter of economic capibility, it's a matter of motivation. Sorry for sounding pessimistic, but in my opinion the EU lacks the motivation for such a grand project.

GCNRevenger · 2004-12-31 10:10:11

I am a bit more pessimistic given the current drain on the EU's economy for social services, which will likly get worse even with limited pro-capitalist legeslation, but I could see the EU pulling off a medium-term Lunar mission if they really tried hard. A Mars mission beyond flags/footprints is probobly out of their reach given they lack the background even if they did partner with Russia to revive Energia to carry a ship there.

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#1 2004-12-21 08:55:58

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#2 2004-12-21 09:45:25

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#3 2004-12-21 09:51:15

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#4 2004-12-21 10:09:47

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#5 2004-12-21 10:12:19

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#6 2004-12-21 14:36:04

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#7 2004-12-21 17:14:45

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#8 2004-12-21 17:25:50

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#9 2004-12-22 09:52:29

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#10 2004-12-22 10:17:22

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#11 2004-12-22 10:23:27

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#12 2004-12-23 13:37:24

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#13 2004-12-23 14:22:54

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#14 2004-12-23 20:41:49

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#15 2004-12-27 23:31:07

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#16 2004-12-27 23:56:15

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#17 2004-12-28 00:05:56

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#18 2004-12-28 00:47:30

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#19 2004-12-29 12:24:31

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#20 2004-12-29 14:35:27

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#21 2004-12-29 15:40:24

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#22 2004-12-30 02:06:43

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#23 2004-12-30 19:37:19

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#24 2004-12-30 23:54:50

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

#25 2004-12-31 10:10:11

Re: ESA - Aurora Program

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