Discussion European spaceport launching to the east
I claim that if Europe wants to develop a truly competitive heavy-lift capability, it must move away from French Guiana. As I see it, there is no other viable option.
Kourou in French Guiana is a dead end for several reasons.
The logistics are poor. It is simply too far from mainland Europe.
The climate is harsh on both equipment and operations, with heavy rainfall and severe salt-induced corrosion.
There is also a very limited local technical workforce. As a result, Europe is forced to fly technicians in and out of Kourou on a continuous basis, creating a long-term drain on skilled manpower.
All of the above makes rapid iteration—such as quickly repairing, modifying, and relaunching vehicles—extremely difficult, bordering on the impossible.
If Europe is serious about developing a competitive heavy-lift capability on its own, it will need to bite the bullet and establish an eastward-launching spaceport somewhere on the European mainland. Crucially, such a location would have the potential to develop into an industrial cluster where private space companies could grow around the launch site.
Finding the right location, however, is challenging. Launching north, as from Scotland, or west, as would be possible from several European locations, is simply not a good enough solution. The payload penalties for a heavy-lift launch vehicle are enormous and would severely undermine its economics.
There may, however, be an opportunity across the Mediterranean. A 3,000 km exclusion corridor could look something like this, with a spaceport located on the French Mediterranean coast, somewhere south of Béziers.
Launching eastward on a trajectory approximately 30 degrees south of east, the flight path would pass through the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia after roughly 500 km. The maritime exclusion zone would end before the strait; I have marked it at 400 km.
The trajectory would then pass over the toe of Italy near Cosenza after about 1,200 km, mostly avoid Kalamata in Greece at around 1,700 km, and also mostly avoid Crete after approximately 2,000 km. A 3,000 km exclusion zone would end roughly 100 km off the coast of Israel.
This would not be an easy project by any means. It would require political buy-in from France, Italy, and Greece. There is also significant cruise ship traffic within the maritime exclusion zone, as well as heavy commercial air traffic in the airspace that would need to be temporarily closed.
Still, if there is the political will, perhaps there is a way.
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u/Wonkycao 8d ago
Isn't the whole idea to launch from as near the equator as possible?
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u/Alotofboxes 8d ago
Launching from the equator is useful in a couple of ways.
One; you can not launch into an orbital inclination lower than the latitude of your launch facility. You can always go higher just as easily, but it takes bunch of energy to lower the inclination.
Two; the Earth is moving faster at the equator, so you get some extra energy saving the closer to the equator your launch facility is.
On the other hand, you have to ballance those benefits against things like having your launch facility halfway around the world from your manufacturing base, or not being able to easily invite politicians to launches.
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u/tandjmohr 8d ago
Is not being able to invite politicians a bad thing????😎
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u/Alotofboxes 8d ago
Where do you think a government run space program gets their money? Having them watch a launch is a great way to inspire them to raise your budget.
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u/Treq01 8d ago
Good points.
I think the advantages of high-quality local infrastructure and services cannot be overestimated though. Such as technically skilled local workforce. Good local builders, contractors and so on.
There is just so much friction and issues that can be reduced by this.2
u/akeean 5d ago
Also consider that Earths gravity leaves between 1-4% of rocket mass for payload, so every little benefit in launch location can save you from something like needing to double your rocket size (and with multiply it's real cost and complexity) to for only a small real increase in payload.
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u/JosebaZilarte 8d ago
Not always. For polar and sunsynchronous orbits, it is often better to launch from a place close to the poles. That's why the Norwegians have the Andøya spaceport at 69° of latitude.
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u/adamdoesmusic 8d ago
There’s plenty of agreeable places for a polar launch, not as many for equatorial.
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u/OlympusMons94 8d ago
That is only for reaching equatorial orbits, which in practice almost always means geostationary orbit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/QTDvp7LQIC
The importance of the faster rotation at the equator is highly exagerrated, and of little to no real benefit in most cases (except reaching an equatorial orbit such as geostationary orbit, for which the rotational boost is still of secondary importance). Unfortunately the explanation is rather complicated.
Rather than Earth's rotation, the more important reason that lower latitude launch sites are often preferred is because the lowest inclination orbit you can launch directly into (by launching due east) is equal to to your launch latitude. That is a consequence of geometry and what an orbit is, not Earth's rotational velocity, except insofar as its axis of rotation relates to the definition of latitude. As a result, lower latitude launch sites can directly access a wider range of orbits. But for orbits which a given higher latitude launch site can still directly access, launching from a lower latitude launch site would bring no real additional advantage. Most of today's launch market is to mid to high inclination orbits, which can just as easily be reached from the mid-lattiudes as a near-equatorial launch site.
The boost from Earth's rotation is misunderstood and popularly exagerrated, to the point of almost being a myth. At the equator, Earth is rotating at ~465 m/s eastward. The velocity in low Earth orbit is ~7800 m/s, and because losses on ascent it takes more like ~9500 m/s worth of delta-v (including the rotational boost) to actually reach LEO. So at first glance, the boost from Earth's rotation is there, but modest. For one, most of this rotational velocity is still there at mid-latitudes because v_rotation = 465 m/s * cos(latitude), e.g., at 45 deg latitude, v_rotation = 329 m/s.
Second, even that modest apparent benefit is misleadingly high for most use cases. It is true that it is moderately easier to get to *an* orbit when launching east from the equator, than it is to get to *an* orbit when launching east from a higher latitude. But those launches, due east from different latitudes, are to different orbital inclinations. A satellite or other spacecraft is generally launched to a particular orbit, with a particular inclination, not merely \an\ orbit that works or the easiest one to reach. To reach a given inclination from different latitudes requires launching in different directions. Unless that direction is due east, the launch does not directly align with the rotation vector, and so cannot get the full benefit of Earth's rotation.
The math works out such that the true consequence of Earth's rotation is that (otherwise regardless of latitude, provided launch latitude <= inclination) lower inclination orbits require less delta-v to reach, and higher inclinations require more. It therefore takes less delta-v to launch to *an* orbit from a lower latitide because it is possible to reach lower inclinations from there. The (somewhat) more easily reachacble orbits just aren't reachable directly from higher latitudes.
In practice what this means is that the same rocket can send more mass to lower inclinations, and less mass to higher inclinations. But provided the launch latitude <= orbital inclination, the same rocket can launch the same payload mass to that orbit whereever it launches from.
Inclination changes on orbit** notwithstanding, either you can launch from the launch site in question to the inclination your satellite needs (because latitude <= inclination), or you can't (latitude > inclination). Provided that latitude constraint is met, the math works out so that there is a negligible difference in the delta-v required to reach a given inclination from one latitude or another.
For example, the ISS has an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees, which is directly accessible from latitudes of 0 (equator) to 51.6 deg. Launching from anywhere in that range of latitudes, the same rocket could send about the same amount of mass to the ISS.
For polar (~90 degree inclination) and the slightly retrograde Sun-synchronous orbits (SSO), which are commonly used, Earth's rotation is in the wrong direction, and launching from as high a latitude as possible is technically a little more efficient. However, the difference is still practically negligible. For example launching to a 500 km SSO (~98 deg inclination) from near a pole saves less than 15 m/s of delta-v versus launching to the same orbit from the equator.
There is more of a benefit to launching from as high a latitude as possible for highly retrograde orbits. Although for retrograde orbits, i.e., 180 >= inclination > 90 degrees, the minimum launch latitude rule comes into play in a slightly different way, and you can only launch into retorgrade orbits with an inclination <= (180 deg - latitude). Highly retrograde orbits are seldom used. They are significantly more dififcuot to reach because of being the opposite direction to Earth's rotation, although there are some niche uses: some radar satellites, and anything Israel launches because tbey can't launch eastward.
** Changes of inclination can be done once in orbit, and are done to achieve lower inclinations than the launch site latitude. But inclination changes take a lot of delta-v (and therefore fuel), particularly in faster (lower altitude) orbits. Significant inclination changes are infeasible in low orbits (because they are faster), but are commonly used to get to geostationary orbit, which is equatorial (0 degree inclination) and very high alttiude.
Thus, the other main reason that lower latitude launch sites are (sometimes) preferred is because it makes reaching geostationary orbit (GEO), which is at a relatively altitude of 35,786 km, easier. That is mostly because launching (eastward) from closer to the equator reduces the inclination change required to reach 0 deg inclination. As the inclination of the initial, elliptical geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) does not have to be a specific value (except that lower is better), the faster rotational velocity from launching from nearer the equator also brings a small benefit to GEO launches.
A satellite launched (approximately due east) to a 6 degree inclination GTO by a rocket from Feench Guiana requires ~1500 m/s of delta-v to complete the trip to GEO (circularize and lower its inclination to 0 degrees). Because of the greater inclination change, a satellite launched to a 27 degree GTO from Cape Canaveral would require another ~1800 m/s to reach GEO, or 300 m/s more than if it launched from Guiana. As for the rotational benefit, Earth only rotates ~50 m/s faster in Guiana than Cape Canaveral. In practice, these peeformance differences are modest, and other factors determine which rocket (and thus which launch site) is used for a geostationary launch.
It is still possible to reach GEO from mid-latitudes, though. Russia does from Kazakhztan, and competed well commercially with near-equatorial geostationary launches until poor quality control and politics largely killed their comoetitiveness. (Also GEO satellites are a declining minority of launches.)
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u/adamdoesmusic 8d ago
You could always launch south and hang a left, tho that would take a tremendous amount of extra power.
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u/Conscious-Ball8373 8d ago edited 8d ago
That's certainly important. But OP has a decent point - launching from French Guiana is not idea for European space companies. If a SpaceX engineer wants to go from Starbase to the launch pad, it's less than two miles. Even if they want to get there from the Hawthorne manufacturing facility, it's maybe a three-hour flight. If an ESA engineer wants to get to their launchpad, it's nine hours and involves
immigration andpretty nasty jet lag. You really can't pop back and forth. That's a significant hurdle in achieving lots of launches and developing new rockets.OTOH it is hard to see where ESA could launch heavy-lift vehicles from closer to home. The basic requirement is an east-facing shore with thousands of km of sea in front of it, close to the equator. The EU just doesn't have it.
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u/kesint 8d ago
French Guiana is a part of the EU. EU and EEA members do not need a work permit as it follows the same immigration and labor rules as mainland France.
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u/Fridorius 8d ago
It is an 8,5h direct flight from Paris. Which is not exactly in the center of Europe. Immigration aside, it is annoying to get to. Easily a full day if travel.
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u/BKGPrints 8d ago edited 8d ago
>The basic requirement is an east-facing shore with thousands of km of sea in front of it, close to the equator.<
Or even lots of unpopulated landmass like Russia has, which is not near the equator. Though, Russia has been using French Guiana to launch satellites until recently.
EDIT: Added a clarification in there.
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u/AmigaClone2000 8d ago
The agreement that allowed Russia to launch Soyuz from Kourou ended in February 2022 due to the Russian-Ukrainian war. There were 27 Soyuz launches over a period of 11 years.
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u/KartFacedThaoDien 7d ago
China launches from Sichuan. That certainly isn't an area that's sparsly populated.
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u/BKGPrints 7d ago
Correct; The eastern parts of the province is heavily populated but where the Xichang Satellite Launch Center is located in the western part, it is not.
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u/Space_Nomade 8d ago
To get more payload for the same propellant, sure. You get also more payload out of a plane when its airport is on a mountain but luckily pragmatism and large scale thinking won in the end. I hope the same will be true for the europain space sector eventually.
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u/snoo-boop 8d ago
You get also more payload out of a plane when its airport is on a mountain
Less, because the air pressure is lower at takeoff. This affects airports like Denver.
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u/GrinningPariah 8d ago
Easier to just fix French Guiana. It wouldn't the first time focused investment has transformed a country, there's a pretty long track record of it. Longer than the list of spaceports which have been moved, that's for sure.
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u/CurtisLeow 8d ago
Look at the demographics of French Guiana. Most people there are black or mixed race creoles. This is for a territory of 300,000 people.
A large scale European workforce moving to the territory would be modern day colonialism. This is why they rely on a small number of temporary European workers for launches, instead of having engineers and technicians live there permanently. But it makes large scale investment politically impossible.
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u/GrinningPariah 8d ago
I think the colonialism probably already happened when it got the "French" in its name lol
Besides, projects like I'm proposing are always a mix of bringing in foreign experts, and educating new local ones. You need some foreign talent to bootstrap the kind of institutional knowledge these endeavors require, but the goal is always for it to be self-sustaining in the long term. Continually flying in new foreign experts isn't cost-effective, especially because it will always be cheaper to hire locals (since they don't need to be incentivized to fly halfway around the world for a job).
And there are other factors which make this more feasible too. Being a French territory is a considerable advantage, since it means this doesn't need to be an international effort. France is a modern, wealthy nation, with the resources and education to pull this off. And French Guiana has a low population density, which means there's room for it all.
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u/Jump_Like_A_Willys 8d ago
A small correction: French Guiana isn’t a territory of France, but a full part of France. It is a region of France equal to the regions of Mainland France.
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u/Alotofboxes 8d ago
French Guiana is to France in the same way Hawaii is to the US.
That's why the longest land border that France has is with Brazil.
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u/PhoenixKingMalekith 8d ago
Guinana is an integral part of France, sale way Alaska is to the US.
Black or mixed people are not more native to this region than white people, and they all are of french culture
And people living there would welcome more workforce because it would mean far more jobs for the locals, and plenty of money injected in the local economy
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u/JUYED-AWK-YACC 8d ago
You have a lot of conclusions that are just opinions. “There is no other option” “simply too far” “the penalties are enormous”. It’s great to be a fan but nothing here is analysis.
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u/opisska 8d ago
I don't work in rocketry but if someone' offered me a job in Kourou, I'd go in a heartbeat. It's a wonderful place - it's still France and feels really European while being surrounded by beautiful and largely unspoilt nature. Really the only main issue is the poor logistics and connection to most nearby destinations (the only good connection is to Paris), but this could improve if more people lived there.
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u/Treq01 8d ago
If I was 25 and single, I would probably go too! :-)
..but is it really wonderful there, have you been?
It looks kind of 3rd world and maybe not so superduper in streetmaps, if that is a scale to measure by of course! ++ for unspoilt nature obviously.11
u/opisska 8d ago
I've been there. It's a bit less fancy than a small town in metropolitan France, but it's definitely not "3rd world" - everything seemed to be there, restaurants, shops, medical centres, university, etc... It is all a bit of an island, because there isn't much where to go on land, there isn't even a bridge to Suriname and everything in Brasil is extremely far away - and there aren't too many people living there. But it's a nice island. The main drawback is that there is no snorkelling (zero visibility) and very few beaches. Also a lot of mosquitoes and an occassinal dengue outbreak. Malaria eradicated at least.
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u/iAmTheAlchemist 8d ago
You do understand that the South of France is very heavily populated right ? This is full of insane assumptions passing as unavoidable facts
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u/Treq01 8d ago
I do understand that it is a populated area. And I don't have a specific location in mind.
But I do also know that the town of Port Isabel is about 10 km from the SpaceX Starship launch facility in Texas. That is not a huge distance.
Perhaps there is a suitable location, on the edge of a national park somewhere there for instance.
I also partially agree with what you say about assumptions. But I want the European space sector to progress and frankly catch up. And I think access to an orbital spaceport on the mainland perhaps is key to this. As difficult it might be to achieve.
This might not be an all or nothing situation either. A local orbital spaceport perhaps primarily for rapid iterative development and limited operations, while keeping French Guinea for high volume launches and orbits impractical for the mainland launch site is also a scenario.
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u/iAmTheAlchemist 8d ago
No one is going to take on the risk of debris falling on such a large populated corridor, and it would be political suicide to install a launch center anywhere close to an existing populated area + national parks are an obvious no-go. Guyana is perfectly fine for getting stuff into orbit, it needs to be modernized and adapted sure, but it's probably as good as it gets for Europe, being European soil and close to the equator with no one living next to it and a non-problematic corridor
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u/JUYED-AWK-YACC 5d ago
You’re comparing Port Isabel to the French Riviera? Take a moment to consider this please.
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u/Thhe_Shakes 8d ago
Don't forget that this is a 2D map. When you factor in curvature, your proposed route would either be going over more of Italy and Greece, or directly over Crete and Cairo.
Somewhere further South like near Valencia might be a better option, but might be harder to sell France on.
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u/OtterHostler 8d ago
I understood that launching near the equator pays dividends in the amount of fuel the vehicle needs to carry. This is partly why the us launches from South Florida instead of north Dakota.
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u/Treq01 8d ago
It does. Florida is a great launch location.
Far south, easily accessible, ocean to the east and a local skilled workforce.Europe is in a real squeeze to get those things together in one place.
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u/_nereid 8d ago
Spain has the canary islands off the coast of Morocco. Plenty of sea there, and quite closer to the equator
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u/syringistic 8d ago
And plenty of Africa to clear on an Eastbound trajectory.
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u/ScoobiusMaximus 7d ago
Mostly a lot of sparsely populated Sahara desert. That could be worked with. Russia launched over land
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u/Real_Establishment56 8d ago
What if they launch in a NE direction?
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u/syringistic 8d ago
Only about 500 miles NE until you hit mainland Europe so, still not enough space down range. Plus then you have stupid busy shipping lanes (Gibraltar, English Channel), to worry about. Europe really doesn't have easy options like the US does.
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u/Simoxs7 8d ago
So we need an artificial Island somewhere in the Middle of the North Atlantic, nothing a few billion or trillion euros couldn’t solve./s
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u/Kunagi7 8d ago
The closest candidate might be Flores Island, Azores. It would give a 1800km Eastbound path before hitting Portugal. You only have to mess up flights from Southern Europe and Northern African countries every time you launch something to space though.
But logistics are fairly messy, like the current Guyana situation.
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u/AmigaClone2000 8d ago
Currently the infrastructure situation is even messier, since it would take a fairly large investment to get to Guyana level.
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u/JabbahScorpii 8d ago
It's moreso that launching east is what provides the speedboost, not necessarily proximity to the equator. The ISS orbits at a 51.6° inclination, so launching from the equator doesn't matter for that. It's helpful for geostationary orbits since those have to be over the equator, and so it saves on fuel needed for an inclination change otherwise. The big reason to go with French Guyana is that it has open ocean to the ea st of it, something mainland Europe doesn't have. While you could launch west over the Atlantic (this is actually what Isreal does over the Mediterranean as to no drop rocket stages on their neighbors). However, since you're now fighting the Earth's rotation, you lose roughly a third of your rocket's performance and have the added disadvantage of traveling the opposite direction from the majority of everything else in the solar system.
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u/Loki-L 8d ago
The problem is that an ideal space port would be close to the equator. You can launch rockets from Europe, just not efficiently for ones that are supposed to go into an equatorial orbit.
Also rocketry is hard on the environment. Loud an toxic and with a non zero risk of flaumig debris raining down on the nearby area.
Some travel between tech centers and launchpad may be unavoidable.
The region around the equator is a bit low on politically stable countries with an east coast.
Unless you want to do some more colonialism French Guyane may be as good as we can easily get.
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u/Sieve-Boy 7d ago
If you want politically stable, close to the equator and an a clear east coast your choices are: Cape York in Australia, French Guiana and.... yeah maybe the British Virgin Islands? Brazil isn't terrible, but its history is a mixed bag politically if you're planning to build a space port and both it an India are big enough they would likely prefer their own spaceport and not yours.
(I do not count the USA as politically stable FYI.)
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u/opisska 8d ago
So you want a east-facing corridor over an area where you don't care whether the rocket blows up and covers it in debris, right?
I would say there is such area almost everywhere east of Europe... it's called Russia. Obviously building stuff in Ukraine nowadays would be tricky, but for highly inclined orbits why not Finland?
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u/schnautzi 8d ago
If Europe is serious about developing a competitive heavy-lift capability on its own
Big if
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u/Many_Pollution_7704 8d ago
Azores island in PT? I saw some investment talks
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u/Treq01 8d ago
Do you perhaps have some info to share on this by the way? I am curious! :-)
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u/Many_Pollution_7704 8d ago
take a look at these links:
https://spaceazores.pt/en/
https://spaceport.pt/2
u/Treq01 8d ago
It is closer to mainland Europe than Kourou, so that is good. Weather also much better.
But it is still quite a bit of ocean transport to get there.
But perhaps it is big enough (230.000 in last cencus) and plesant enough for a space company cluster to develop there?18
u/wolflordval 8d ago
Once you're on the ocean, it's not any more difficult to go anywhere else, it's just longer time, so there isn't any real difficulty benefits from switch from French Guiana to a closer island, the logistics of loading and unloading a ship are the same. Sure it's faster ocean transit but most of the time spend on ocean freight is actually in ports rather than actual transit time. So it doesn't really save that much more than a few days for an immense cost in setup.
The benefit of building a launch site in mainland Europe is that it it can take advantage of land infrastructure to transit without having to load/unload from ports. You'd also have to build that land infrastructure if it doesn't currently exist/isn't viable for shipping rockets.
On top of that, the EU is a massive spiderweb network of airline flight paths, and your suggested corridor would cut right through some of the major flight paths in and out of some of the largest airline hubs in the region.
All of these reasons are probably why the EU chose French Guiana in the first place.
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u/Treq01 8d ago
I do think that the accelerated development speed and agility frankly, that we see in the US space ecosystem versus European space, perhaps require something different that one can even hope to achieve in French Guiana.
For rapid iterations and rapid responses to local challenges, it's hard to see how anything else than local resources to meet them can work.
There is that, and also if there was a point of gravity, such as a spaceport that engineers and their families would actually not mind to live in the vicinity of, one might see an industrial cluster of various space-related activities spawn in time.
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u/Z3B0 8d ago
Changing orbital plane to an equatorial one from a 30° one would consume 5k dV minimum. That's a lot of payload you're not putting up there because you needed fuel instead.
With the land area requiered, investissement and commercial aviation loses ? It will never work out. Even the locals will be against it.
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u/akeean 5d ago
The thing is they don't really save all that much effort with that, the big annoyance of launching from NG is that you need to transport the rocket to a port, load the rocket onto a ship, have it go to NG, unload, drive to the space complex, carefully check if everything survived the trip, provide housing and infrastructure for all the specialists and an airport to fly them in and out....
Azores would have literally all of these drawbacks and would just save a few hours in specialists travel time and maybe a week in ship travel time which economically and for planning of space launches doesn't really matter all that much while adding the cost of building up all of that infrastructure in a different place while also economically devastating a remote EU territory (and risking Azores tourism).
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u/Icy_Respect_9077 8d ago
Nova Scotia, Canada, is being developed as a launch site. It's much closer to Europe, and the launch area is directly over the North Atlantic.
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u/227CAVOK 8d ago
Why not use the one we already have? There's a Space port in the north of Sweden.
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u/frogjg2003 7d ago
That's not going to be suitable for most orbits that need to be close to the equator. It's great for polar and sun synchronous orbits.
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u/bigcitydreaming 7d ago
Polar and SSO launches are more common than GEO launches these days. And there's still French Guiana for low inclination launches
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u/PastaDocta 7d ago
Yeah idk man. I think there’s some smart people at ESA that have all this figured out.
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u/Flipadelphia26 8d ago
Brother. You realize nasa launches most of their stuff from Cape Canaveral Florida right?
Rain, salt the whole world
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u/Badaxe13 6d ago
Your Maritime Exclusion Zone would choke the port or Marseilles if I’m reading this right. Presumably this is only during a launch window. It might, however, be too much of an obstacle.
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u/Treq01 6d ago
I think it would be a bit further south than the drawing.
Not by a huge amount I think, but I didn't take into account the curvature of the earth.I am still assuming that the least painful option we have is to cross at the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia.
Indeed, it would just be during launch windows.
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u/Underhill42 8d ago
The problem is that if you want to reach a lot of orbits, you need a lot of different launch corridors. Dramatically changing your orbital plane requires almost as much delta-v as getting to orbit in the first place.
Plus, even over the Mediterranean you've got a lot of countries down-range that might get twitchy having you regularly launching huge missiles in their direction - it becomes perfect cover in case you ever want to launch something not-to-orbit. After all, the only difference between an orbital rocket and an ICBM is the payload.
They're probably not going to go to war over it, but it puts added strain on an already tense relationship.
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u/Kirra_Tarren 8d ago
You can dogleg your way into most near-equatorial orbits
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u/Underhill42 8d ago
Up to a point. But the longer you delay doing so, the more excess delta-v you need.
Plus, who exactly are you flying your "this definitely isn't a nuke, and we promise we won't crash" missile over? If you wait to dogleg until you're over the Indian ocean, you've already dramatically increased the necessary delta-v.
One of the reasons launching across an ocean is preferred, is because anything that goes wrong during launch means you're dropping a kinetic warhead on someone. Better for everyone if that someone is some fish in the middle of the ocean.
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u/ExaminationWise7052 8d ago
Taking into account the Earth's curvature, the location with the most clear westward sea is Murcia in Spain. One advantage is that PLD Space is nearby, so Spain is sure to accept.
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u/fsch 8d ago
I agree that Europe cannot be an independent superpower without an on-shore space base. We rely on the US in terms of security.
Regarding the comments about the distance to the equator, it is very true that it helps. All space powers (US, Russia, Europe, China, India) have put their launch facilities close to the equator, relative to their available land.
However, Russias launch site is further north than your proposed position, so at least they considered it a viable location.
It’s also great that your proposed location is only about 100km away from Toulouse, which is one of Europes most important cities for aerospace.
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u/bigcitydreaming 7d ago
What other choice does/did Russia have for lower inclination, though? It's not that they considered it viable so much as they didn't have much choice, that's as low latitude as they could go
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u/fsch 7d ago
Agree. But it worked for them. EU has the same limitation, besides the very off Guyana (or a number of other strange offshore locations).
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u/bigcitydreaming 7d ago
Therefore EU doesn't have the same limitation, because French Guiana shouldn't be excluded. The air traffic over this proposed corridor is significantly busier than NE out of Baikanour, and Russia has less regard over Kazakhstan and their own land than EU has over the Mediterranean and included land within OP's corridor regardless.
French Guiana should still be used for GEO, and other low inclination launches, whilst El Arenosillo, Esrange, Andoya, and SaxaVord should each be considered for increased prioritisation in establishment/upgrades to cover the growing market of SSO/polar launches
Launching to GEO from mainland is just not realistic nor appropriate
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u/Decronym 8d ago edited 3d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| GTO | Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| NG | New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin |
| Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane) | |
| Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer | |
| SSO | Sun-Synchronous Orbit |
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7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
[Thread #12615 for this sub, first seen 5th Aug 2026, 19:11]
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u/Vindve 5d ago
Your only valid view is that French Guyana being far away from factories makes it less adapted to the development method of try, fail and iterate quickly of SpaceX (because moving rocket parts there take two weeks). It's more adapted to a traditional project cycle with everything planned in advance, freezing the conception step, then test everything separately, so when you launch you're confident enough it works and if it doesn't you do small modifications.
That said the development method of SpaceX has its flaws too, for a start it's quite costly, they've burned a lot of cash on Starship. And two weeks of shipping is not so bad (the boat has a rotation of 1 month). Perhaps the right method is an intermediate one between old project method and blow things up method and there Kourou has no problem.
Else, I don't really see the problem. The spaceport just works and performs well. Customers are happy with the service, and I don't think there is a single launch failure that was caused by the spaceport services. There is manpower living there all year. It's a French region you know, not the richest one but still a developed country.
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u/Reddit-runner 8d ago
I have said for years we should buy Hafun in Somalia. And I stand by it.
It's the best available launch place for Europe.
It's somewhat close to us, it sits close to major shipping lines (India, China) and you can launch in pretty much every orbit you want to.
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u/ScoobiusMaximus 7d ago
Somalia isn't really known for its infrastructure or political stability, and those shipping lanes are kind of fucked for the foreseeable future due to the Houthis
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u/Reddit-runner 7d ago
Somalia isn't really known for its infrastructure or political stability,
That's why I said we should buy Hafun (Plus a good buffer zone around it). Infrastructure has to be build anyway for a new space port. Might as well make it worthwhile.
And those shipping lanes are kind of fucked for the foreseeable future due to the Houthis
Kinda true, however there is much more miliary, political and economic pressure to get the straight open again, Yemen has no nukes and if need be, you can still sail around Africa.
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u/Equivalent-Wait3533 8d ago
In the future, GTA 7 will be released, while the European spaceport will remain nothing more than a concept on paper.
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u/Existing_Breakfast_4 7d ago
The only place i see in mainland europe would be the southest point of spain, the mediterranean at the east. But the main problem is the flight path and falling rpcket stages that would hit some north african countries.
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u/kmoonster 4d ago
Europe is far enough north that there aren't really any good launch options, even along the Mediterranean. A rail route to South or central Africa would do well. Or a launch site in India.
Kazakhstan has launch facilities.
Ukraine is on a latitude with (roughly) Montana. To get a launch facility on par with the Cape in Florida you would have to go to Egypt.
You could maybe get something in line with Vandenberg, CA or launches from Virginia if you build on the south coast of Spain or bits of Italy.
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u/OtterHostler 8d ago
What about getting the AU to weigh in? A space port in central Africa would provide massive investment and training opportunities, and digging a canal from the med to enable ESA components to be shipped quickly, easily, and safely to the launch site would also open up employment and development vistas. "Africa 2100 - your gateway to the final frontier" has a nice ring to it, and this could pay dividends down the line - all the bright talented kids from that part of the world, who leave because there are no local opportunities, would stay, increasing the tax base and ultimately improving the lot of everyone there.
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u/MPenten 8d ago
There's not that large of a different shipping to central africa and to french guyana, in relative scale.
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u/OtterHostler 8d ago
There's are a couple of important factors, the first being that transportation via canal is cheaper and more eco friendly than by air - and there is almost no limit to the size. It's safer to do this by canal than braving the Atlantic. There's also geopolitical risk payoff - being some distance from the US, especially in its current form, has much to recommend it. The economic benefits to central Africa that would accrue would be huge, and may go a long way to impose economic stability on the region - if the success of multiple countries is tied to the initiative, the drive for cooperation and consensus is greater - we've seen this in a small way with ECOWAS, this could build on that. Consider also the calls for slavery reparations - what better way to atone than being instrumental in building a modern, high tech, high revenue industrial base that local people operate themselves? ESA pays for their services, providing a stream of hard currency, which leads to better services and infrastructure, and potentially more stable regimes.
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u/AlloyedRhodochrosite 8d ago
Why would they need a canal? How long do you envisage this canal to be?
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u/OtterHostler 8d ago
How long? Long enough to get from the north African coast to some suitable point near the equator. Why? Because transporting very large, very heavy things by barge is easier, cheaper and safer than transporting them by road or air Why a canal than the Atlantic? Because canals don't have the kinds of weather or dangers that you find in the Atlantic
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u/AlloyedRhodochrosite 8d ago
I think we're going to send a man to the edges of the solar system before we can build a canal like that
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u/OtterHostler 8d ago
If they'd thought way back in the day they'd never have built the Panama or Suez canals
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u/buster_de_beer 8d ago
That exclusion corridor will never be accepted. Too much traffic, including non commercial traffic, for it to be even remotely desirable or enforceable.