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New space agency in Europe


Sky_walker

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Poland just today created it's space agency - it'll be called "Polska Agencja Kosmiczna" or in relations with foreign countries: "Polish Space Agency", or short: POLSA.

Poland joined ESA in November 2012 and was one of a few member countries that didn't have their own Space Agency. It's objectives will be mainly in coordinating relations of science institutes and private sector with ESA, scientific research, and starting initiatives on both: commercial and scientific fields - major hope is that it'll help with expansion of the aerospace sector in Poland and creating larger engineering base on the universities.

Here's a longer read about Polish history in space

TL; DR; Communist Poland used to be a part of Interkosmos manufacturing components for space crafts and even sent one astronaut in space. Recently Poland sent it's own satellites - first student cube sat, then cubesat-sized scientific satellite with additional satellites being under construction. Poland for years manufactured various components for space industry - between many Philae lander of the Rosetta spacecraft contains a Polish-made sensor set for measuring soil samples (MUPUS - MUlti-PUrpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science).

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So it's similar to the UKSA, organising projects and companys, building stuff for the Germans and French but never independently launching our own stuff :(

Why the sad face?

ESA is the one busy with launching - and ESA is build of all these national agencies, so basically - everything that's achieved by ESA is also achieved by every member :)

There is no country in ESA that would have an independent launch capability - all of the launch vehicles are build in multiple member countries. Even the smallest Vega that was originally designed and founded mostly by Italians on their own.

And to be fair - Germans, French and Italians in total account for 56% of ESA budget (comparing to 8.1% for UK and 0.9% for PL), so no wonder that major components of the launchers or satellites are build there.

Don't ask me why UK contributes so little to the budget - I have no clue, cause the UK history of space exploration is really long and contains plenty of great episodes... so why the government doesn't seem to be bothered all that much by a space sector remains a mystery for me. Especially now when UK is about to build the space port and perhaps eventually there will be a British-made Skylon.

Edited by Sky_walker
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Why the sad face?

ESA is the one busy with launching - and ESA is build of all these national agencies, so basically - everything that's achieved by ESA is also achieved by every member :)

There is no country in ESA that would have an independent launch capability - all of the launch vehicles are build in multiple member countries. Even the smallest Vega that was originally designed and founded mostly by Italians on their own.

And to be fair - Germans, French and Italians in total account for 56% of ESA budget (comparing to 8.1% for UK and 0.9% for PL), so no wonder that major components of the launchers or satellites are build there.

Don't ask me why UK contributes so little to the budget - I have no clue, cause the UK history of space exploration is really long and contains plenty of great episodes... so why the government doesn't seem to be bothered all that much by a space sector remains a mystery for me. Especially now when UK is about to build the space port and perhaps eventually there will be a British-made Skylon.

To me ESA is just Germany,France and Italy being a parasite to other country's funds and talents and claiming their glory.

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To me ESA is just Germany,France and Italy being a parasite to other country's funds and talents and claiming their glory.

lol

Dat logic.

POLSA? Are you sure it isn't Polish Kosmic Agency, or POLKA?

Yea, pretty sure.

Unless you're trying to make a dumb joke here - in which case you have failed.

Edited by Sky_walker
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To me ESA is just Germany,France and Italy being a parasite to other country's funds and talents and claiming their glory.

Ha, a guy from UK complaining about an European project being a drain on their resources.

Seriously, European politics apart, ESA has done, and is still doing great things.

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Yea, pretty sure.

Unless you're trying to make a dumb joke here - in which case you have failed.

I admit to making a dumb joke. Though I refute the failure! I succesfully made the dumb joke, just nobody laughed, thus exacerbating the 'dumbness' of the joke further.

Personally I am happy for Poland, anytime someone joins the great game of space exploration I welcome them with open arms. Still...shoulda kept that K....

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To me ESA is just Germany,France and Italy being a parasite to other country's funds and talents and claiming their glory.

I wrote two rebutals of this, but they rapidly devolved into rants.

Now I will just say that I would like to understand how you got that opinion, if you would care to explain?

(As long as this doesn't get us into trouble because it would be too political)

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I wrote two rebutals of this, but they rapidly devolved into rants.

Now I will just say that I would like to understand how you got that opinion, if you would care to explain?

(As long as this doesn't get us into trouble because it would be too political)

The thread would probably get closed if this conversation continues and I personally don't want to get into a heavy conversation so let us end this here.

Also congratulations on your space agency Poland.

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You want something with meme potential? Think of Romania. Gipsy vampire warlock astronaut. You can't beat that. :P

And their space agency also got a stupid name - ROSA (Romanian Space Agency). ;)

You are discriminating my country! Be careful what do you say!

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To me ESA is just Germany,France and Italy being a parasite to other country's funds and talents and claiming their glory.

Actually Germany with DASA/DLR may be a prime contributor with regards to funding, but unfortunately that doesn´t mean anything with regards to decision power within the ESA.

Else ESA would already make steps for its first moon mission by now.

Out scientists (i.e. DASA/DLR) made plans for an unmanned moon probe that was supposed to land on Moon by 2018 and presented the project to the other ESA member states in 2012.

Unfortunately the other member states were too cheese-paring and so the funding for the Moon Lander was stopped and I guess we can expect that even North Korea will launch a Moon mission sooner than ESA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_%28space_mission%29#Current_project_status

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