Botswana launches first satellite BOTSAT-1 aboard SpaceX Falcon 9

Don’t want to belittle the achievement but they launched it as in „had it launched by the commercial launch provider SpaceX“, not on a self-developed rocket as it sounds like on the first read.

Of course, even Europe cannot launch cheaply anymore. Arianespace is crawling to space; they are left for dead. The only serious players are the US and China. It's reached a point where it has become like trying to manufacture a state-of-the-art 5nm chip in a developing nation: possible, but at an absurd cost. You might achieve an initial parametric yield of only 10%, meaning only a tiny fraction of the chips coming off the line meet the basic electrical specifications. Even then, the functional yield (the percentage that actually performs the intended computation correctly at the target speed) might be even lower, say 5%. You'd be throwing away 95 out of every 100 chips, and the cost per usable die would be astronomical due to the sheer expense of acquiring and maintaining the lithography equipment, cleanroom facilities, and specialized expertise – resources that are heavily concentrated in a few leading nations and require years, if not decades, to build from scratch.

I mean basically everyone launches their first satellite using a third party launch provider which is usually SpaceX. If there's someone missing credit here it's Endurosat for providing the satellite bus and doing integration work, but the payload and operation which is the novel bit will be Botswanan. It's like you don't have to credit Linus Torvalds or Brendan Eich for their contributions to your first web service...

(Fun fact: not only does SpaceX not care about not getting credit for rideshares, they actively request you don't mention them in advance publicity)

the word sovereign does not appear in this reply

What do you think about RFA?

My problem isn’t that they used a provider for the launch.

I just wanted to clarify because „X launches satellite“ sounds like X launched a rocket carrying a satellite, not that X made a satellite and had it launched by someone else.

Or maybe that’s just me, I’m not a native speaker.

And Isar Aerospace is also European and is set to launch tomorrow (although they seem to think it will explode at some point). But I don’t know if they will be particularly cheap.

Very few organizations and even countries can develop both a launch vehicle and a satellite. Botswana has done fine to develop a satellite that integrates onto a rideshare launch. They aren't working with anything close to the headcount or budget of NASA or even the ESA.

Edit (rather than reply and make the comment chain long): It's fine that you read it that way. I figure that if the article were about a launch vehicle then it would have been the rocket's name in the title, and if the article were about the satellite then it would have the satellite's name (BOTSAT-1). If Botswana had developed both an orbital launch vehicle and their first satellite then I'd bet the headline would have been sensational.

SpaceX didn't spend an absurd amount of money getting Falcon 9 to where it is. It was a lot, but pretty typical, even somewhat cheap, for developing a brand new rocket. Repeating their feat should be even cheaper, since you won't be taking detours trying out parachutes and such before settling on the final architecture. It's a relatively straightforward application of known technology, not bleeding edge stuff like 5nm chip making.

An organization that can produce Ariane 6 should be able to produce a Falcon 9 clone with similar effort. The real problem is overcoming the of the old, slow, expensive way of doing things.

Maybe my comment should have been more clear. I don’t think it’s surprising or bad that they don’t have their own launch vehicle, I just found the headline a bit misleading because it could sound that way. It’s still a great achievement.

That seems an uncharitable read of the GP. I too assumed from the headline that by using the verb launch, it was referring to an indigenous vehicle.

I get what you're saying, something like "Botswana successfully begins orbital operations of its first satellite" would be more accurate, but simply not clickbaity enough.

While I agree with the sentiment, my tiny island nation with a population of 5m people was able to develop satellite launch capabilities.

It’s more a case of does it make economic or strategic sense to do so. For most countries it wouldn’t.

Why do they ask you not to mention them publicly?

> The only serious players are the US and China

Forgot one

https://www.rocketlaunch.live/?filter=roscosmos

Funnily enough the European Launcher Challenge just dropped recently, supposed to be modelled on NASA's procurement process that ultimately lead to SpaceX being a thing. But the EUR169m contracts aren't likely to get you a Falcon 9 clone, and there isn't exactly a ton of private capital for newspace sloshing around in Europe

If anything Europe has the opposite problem: the launch startups are all far too small to do anything on a Falcon 9 scale. SpaceX did't get to Falcon 9 early either. Sure, Arianespace probably could build a Falcon 9 clone, but it's not something they'd want to self fund, and there's quite a few ESA members that don't want to see most of their budget contributions go to funding the development of a foreign launch monopolist...

I assume because they don't exactly need the promotion, and a ton of small companies on rideshares mentioning SpaceX in advance of missions they then fail to successfully operate (usually through no fault of SpaceX's) isn't good publicity.

How much of that US/NZ effort was NZ though?

No, it's not just you, the phrase "launches first satellite" in the title is very similar language to what would be used about a country developing launch capability. For example, when headlines say "North Korea launches first spy satellite", the part of that which is big news is their ability to launch a satellite, rather than their ability to build a spy satellite.

(eg.) https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-flags...

> Very few organizations and even countries can develop both a launch vehicle and a satellite.

I would remove the last three words from that.

Launch vehicles are hard. Satellites are easy. This is a cubesat, even.

It's standard language used by the press. As explained further up the comment chain, very few nations have the capability to even put a satellite into orbit.

The notability is that they have a satellite up for their purposes; they're not trying to claim that they did the launch themselves.

If this were some random corporation, none of you wouldn't have blinked an eyelid at a title like "Megacorp successfully launches first satellite" when all but 3-4 companies in the world rely on someone else to do the launch.

There's more hair-splitting going on here than in a hair salon.

But you did mean to belittle the achievement, just like when people say, "I don't mean to offend you but ...", they know they are going to offend you and still choose to by saying what they wanted to say.

I like passive aggressive tone

Your tiny island nation (New Zealand) with a GDP an order of magnitude bigger than Botswana's?

Sure, developing a single satellite isn't something that makes a lot of sense in a first order economic assessment. They are definitely not going to be able to sell the data they collect for the millions of dollars they spent on the program. And they definitely spent more on the satellite than they would have spent buying equivalent imagery from commercial providers for the next few years. There is almost no chance that they will have a satellite with competitive technical specs.

But nobody is comparing Botswana to NZ. This is their first satellite. Having a satellite program at the national university is a point of national pride. It will inspire their young people and encourage them to study STEM. It gives valuable practical experience to their people, some of whom might go on to start a space systems company and bring high tech business opportunities to their country. This is a step toward moving part of their economy from being based on natural resources (diamonds, the value of which are subject to the whims of a cartel that they don't control), to being based on knowledge.

SpaceX tired of winning

russia is poor now that their entire economy is shaken by war, I doubt they would even get competitive in the future

even I would award third place to India or CNSA

we talking about Botswana here, not disrespect to botswana but you can't launch rocket with some serious publication first

we know that china would have rocket back then because scientific advancement, you cant skip steps

If it's so easy to clone it, where are the clones?

I've been reading about Airbus' reusable/recoverable SpaceX-killers for over a decade now. They've yet to have anything to show for their work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeline_(rocket_stage)

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33006056 ("Airbus unveils 'Adeline' re-usable rocket concept" (2015))

- "...Airbus says it has been working on the concept since 2010 and has even flight-tested small demonstrators..."

(That BBC article predates the first Falcon rocket landing).

Luckily for you, the linked site has upcoming schedules to trivially look this up. India has 6 launches upcoming in 2025, Rosskosmos has 8 and Russian military has one more. So Russia is launching 50% more than India in 2025.

Don't get me wrong, that problem of overcoming the old, slow, expensive way of doing things is huge for any established launch organization. I don't expect Airbus or ULA to get there. But it's not because the technology is so difficult that they can't do it. A new rocket company with a couple billion dollars in funding would have a good chance.

> Edit (rather than reply and make the comment chain long):

Sorry to go meta here, but this is just rude, both to OP and to other readers.

For OP, you're effectively pre-empting what they say with your own counterargument, and even more so you're removing the ability for them to counter your counter. You're essentially using the edit feature to end the conversation and ensure you have the final word.

For other readers, you're introducing confusing non-linear flow.

Just reply. It's not hard, and as you can see below you didn't actually prevent a subthread from forming.

roscosmos launch is because they still get contract from NASA to International Space Station

But it's also the same language used in headlines for dozens of "launches first satellite" articles that don't involve novel launch capability, including countries (Bahrain and Senegal were recent) as well as satellite companies. Confusing maybe, especially if you think Botswana might actually have spaceports or domestic launch capability, but common practice.

It's even used in trade press articles about Falcon 9 launches of satellites operated by countries that once had homegrown launch capability and are actively investing in regaining it... https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/air/update...

> Sorry to go meta here, but this is just rude, both to OP and to other readers. ... You're essentially using the edit feature to end the conversation and ensure you have the final word.

I've noticed this more and more, especially on more controversial topics (which this is certainly not).

Adam makes a statement, Betty responds. Adam responds, and Betty edits her initial response and conversation ends, likely because Adam didn't see the edit.

Note that in doing so, they'd be reaching where SpaceX was a decade ago, and by the time they got there, it seems pretty likely that full reusability will be working a year or so from now, at least for basic earth-orbit flights.

India’s ISRO is definitely a serious player.

> SpaceX didn't spend an absurd amount of money getting Falcon 9 to where it is

That's part of the genius of SpaceX's approach, which culminated in achieving what no one else has achieved on a comparatively shoestring budget.

Credit where it's due: Elon Musk (a) comprehended enough of the technical challenge to ask great questions (and see through BS answers), (b) set and maintained a ruthlessly efficient operational vision, (c) repeatedly took existential financial risks to achieve the next milestone, and (d) set a company vision that motivated people to work extremely hard to achieve what was previously impossible, and (e) worked his butt off solving problem after problem alongside employees.

Love or hate him, very few leaders have ever existed who led companies to accomplish similar feats.

Why remove it? It doesn’t change what they say.

So true. I think most people don't realise how hard it is really to build a engine that works.

These types of countries can't even keep power, internet WAN, mobile RAN/Core, infra up on a consistent basis. I knew it had to be something like this. Yes, mask off. Yes, I am tired.

I am not saying that this is the case with Botswana but it could also be a matter of priorities. At least North Korea is able to do orbital launches while the living conditions of an average citizen is less than ideal.

Because it’s not clear which of the two things makes doing both hard.

Developing a basic satellite is very straightforward at this point and there are countless unrecognizable companies that help do this.

Plenty of small nation states have the financial resources and a government ministry-level "space" department that has the money to launch up to like, a 6U size cubesat, but don't have their own launcher. This is in fact more normal than not, if you look at a map of countries which have their own locally developed, frequently-in-use launchers capable of sending at least 100kg to low earth orbit, vs those which do not.

Isn’t that fine? Not all of those conversations have to be taken to the end.

I'm curious, which "type" of country are you saying Botswana is?

As far as I'm aware of Botswana does not have the power outages of its neighbour South Africa …

Perhaps you're right, maybe it is a mask off moment for you …

“Botswana, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, has recently made considerable strides in developing a reliable electricity supply network to support its growing economy and improve the quality of life for its citizens. However, occasional power outages and load shedding do still occur during peak demand periods or when there are unforeseen challenges, such as equipment failures or extreme weather events.” https://www.sinalda.com/world-voltages/africa/voltage-botswa...

> can't even keep power, internet WAN, mobile RAN/Core, infra up on a consistent basis.

You could say this as well about significant parts of Appalachia in the US and other impoverished regions of the US, and many first nations reserves in remote parts of Canada too.

Companies frequently do this kind of thing when they don’t want you to use them as promo material through an implied partnership.

Because spacex also makes satellites, they don’t want confusion about which satellites are theirs. “MyCompany Partners with SpaceX to launch new communications satellite” is not something their PR team wants to deal with disambiguating.

Yes, and it would surprising if someone claimed those First Nations launched a satellite.

It's like saying "it's really hard to build both a nuclear reactor and a quadcopter".

It's technically true but makes the second one sound a lot harder than it really is. A hobbyist can make a cubesat, and if they do something clever they might even find a grant to pay for the launch.

Launch vehicle development program: $1 billion

Cubesat: $100k

You remove it because of the 4 orders of magnitude.

Could also be because rate limiting. People need to conserve their number of posts per day.

Mm, as long as the edit is clear it seems like a good way to avoid unproductive arguments.

Adam makes a statement, but the responses show the statement was unclear and/or leads into tangential arguments. An edit can clarify the initial statement for future readers without getting the original poster stuck in the back-and-forth necessary to escape whatever quagmire the unedited version created.

I really liked Peter Santellos video on Appalachia. Really beautiful landscape and small towns. There was affluent housing there too and pretty sure they would have cell service?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEyPgwIPkHo5If6xyrkr-...

But Appalachia are not launching satellites. They DO have a space telescope!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope

Very nice video also showing nice landscapes and towns :)

Exploring the Secret US Government Town with No Internet & Phone Service (100% Disconnected?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWJBAGrG0ms

>and many first nations reserves in remote parts of Canada too

Ok, but it would be suprising if an article said they are launching a sattelite?

Yes some people get rate limited here, I think it’s the default. I’ve edited comments like this simply because I couldn’t respond, even after like an hour. I think I emailed the mods here and they removed the limit, but I still try to conserve posting when I can, even deleting responses that weren’t very good, sometimes.

I took “launch” a bit less literal. They launch a product, an initiative, whatever.

Imagine you're having an in-person conversation with someone in a crowded restaurant. Rather than addressing their next response to you, they wait until you go to the bathroom. Then they turn to everyone at the next table and say, "that guy doesn't get it, but fine."

I personally think that in a no-holds-barred debate, you don't bother trying to convince your interlocutor of anything. You focus on persuading everyone else in the room. But it's rude to treat every polite conversation as a smackdown debate. Such a strategy can also backfire by turning off your intended audience, as evidenced here.

> baby being fed this equality all countries are good blergh blergh bs all my life.

Nobody in this thread has made anything like those kinds of sentiments. The very fact that we are taking note of Botswana's satellite nearly 70 years after Spitnik 1 makes it quite obvious how much less developed they are in aerospace. I would think that especially if someone is against such things as foreign aid to non-Europeans, and culturally relative assessment of intelligence, that they would be in favor of seeing countries like Botswana take steps to develop home grown expertise in engineering, reducing the need to rely on outside largesse, and coming a step closer to achieving developmental escape velocity.

Not to sound rude, but I don't know what your normative culture is or why any of us should care what you think is rude on the internet when you lack the self awareness to know that etiquette has no objective basis and is always contingent.

You could skip the disparaging characterizations and make your case for why you think it would be a good guideline. Ie, because it is confusing and non-linear, not because of a bunch of motivations you've inferred about a stranger.

> etiquette has no objective basis and is always contingent

But what it's contingent on is what's actually manifest rather than some speculative hypothetical that seems a contrivance to nullify the applicability of any etiquette anywhere.

FWIW, the previous commenter's points that adding edits to an existing post in order to reply to comments further downstream is confusing and impolite behavior. It's useful on Reddit in response to malicious use of the ill-advised 'block' feature, but doesn't fit on HN.

I agree that it's poor form at least in the context of HN - we want to be able to trace the "commit history"

Where’d you read that this is a cubesat? The article implies it’s not:

> These included BOTSAT-1, 26 satellites as part of the Transporter-13 rideshare mission, and a trio of CubeSats for NASA’s Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission; Arvaker 1, the first microsatellite for Kongsberg NanoAvionics’ N3X constellation.

A lot, but I do take your point.

It is not our only space venture. Our universities are churning out aerospace engineers. It annoys STEM academics that the space industries keeps "poaching" the best grad students.

To the best of my knowledge, the company is not a strategic priority for New Zealand, we do not absolutely need to launch our own satellites. It is purely a commercial venture. They had no choice but to make it a joint effort.

If it was not a joint effort they would have far fewer customers and a extremely limited supply chain.

Quite a while ago when I met an MP who seemed interested in space. I asked if anything could be done to keep/inceltivize future space ventures fully on-shore. They shrugged their shoulders and said no.

Your quote actually proves the previous posters claims that Botswana can’t keep power up on a consistent basis. If you go to the Botswana Power Corporations Twitter page, you get the daily schedule for what areas are going to have their power shot off because they’re unable to meet demand.

It’s great that they’re making improvements in this are and that they’re not as bad as South Africa (assuming your claim is accurate, I haven’t compared the two). But the previous poster’s claim that power can’t be kept up on a consistent basis is accurate.

Yeah, and that's exactly what makes the title into clickbait.

"BOTSAT-1 is a 3U hyperspectral Earth Observation satellite"

3U is a cubesat size, the most common one.

You can tell it's a cubesat from the picture in the article, and even better from the picture linked at "collaboration with EnduroSat". https://www.endurosat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BotSat-...

It’s because hackernews rate limits users just because someone else downvoted you

So you actually can’t finish the conversation when it has the utility to finish it

Building rockets as cheaply as they did is the impressive part.

The EU can certainly throw money at the problem but that doesn’t necessarily manifest cheap rockets. It’s a product of leadership and culture. My experience with the EU is one of a top heavy bureaucracy that’s not overly conducive to this type of cowboy rocketry. Consider the absence of an EU version of Silicon Valley, it’s just computers and with the internet people can program from anywhere…

This is exactly why I do it

Didn't the USA basically use German tech to launch their first space rockets?

> Don’t want to belittle the achievement but (...)

Yeah, but you kind of are.

> (...) they launched it as in „had it launched by the commercial launch provider SpaceX“, not on a self-developed rocket as it sounds like on the first read.

Yes, it's the kind of thing that even NASA does nowadays.

Cool feat by Botswana. Outstanding.

> Imagine you're having an in-person conversation with someone in a crowded restaurant.

You're not in a crowded restaurant chatting with someone. You're in an online forum broadcasting messages to the vast nothingness.

But why does it tire you that Botswana created a satellite, whatever other struggles they may have aside? What's your connection to Botswana?

Is NZ possibly the worst country to launch from (due to geography and geometry)?

Yes, I know you can launch from other locations, and my question is more of a curiosity.

From 1 highschool program in 2006 (TJ3SAT) there's now over 50 high scool programs launching cubesat style satellites. Some use base kits, making the launch even easier. Sure, it's amazing they have a bootstrapping engineering community in Botswana, but this isn't more sophisticated than a high school program with money to pay for the ride up.

To compare what NASA does to this seems like a soft discrimination of low expectations, which is so common when referring to developing countries.

> From 1 highschool program in 2006 (TJ3SAT) there's now over 50 high scool programs launching cubesat style satellites. Some use base kits, making the launch even easier. Sure, it's amazing they have a bootstrapping engineering community in Botswana, but this isn't more sophisticated than a high school program with money to pay for the ride up.

I think you're trying very hard to grasp at straws to belittle a whole country, while being completely oblivious to the domain.

For reference, Ireland launched its first satellite on 2023. Does this give you the right to shit on Ireland's achievement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_satellites_by_co...

This isn't twitter. You're in a highly moderated forum in which both moderator and participants are bound by rule and custom to maintain civil behavior, in the best interest of everyone involved.

Even if you weren't, you should still act as if you were in a crowded restaurant. Without agreeing to conventions for how a conversation should be conducted, you can't have any productive conversation at all. So what would be the point? If you ever sense that you're in an online forum broadcasting messages to the vast nothingness then you are truly only wasting your own time. (Which is why this is the only site I ever post on). At that point, just stop, put it down, walk outside and engage in any kind of real interaction you can find.

It's certainly not the worst, since it has plenty of empty ocean to the east and west. A necessity for kind of safe launches. Of course a location closer to the equator would be nice, but it could be worse.

Just remember that the best place the EU came up with is in south America. Places like mainland Netherlands probably qualify for the worst places to launch orbital rockets from.

That's funny. Go read up about cubesats friend.

> This isn't twitter. You're in a highly moderated forum in which both moderator and participants are bound by rule and custom to maintain civil behavior, in the best interest of everyone involved.

You're trying to make a storm in a teacup. OP literally edited his post to clearly state its fine if anyone interprete something differently. This is hardly outrage bait.

Try to direct your energy to something worth your time. Loudly complaining about vague subjective notions of netiquette in a moderated forum is certainly not it.

It depends on what orbit you want. Due to the latitude you'll end up pretty inclined by default - which is bad for equatorial orbits sure, but a good start for polar ones. At a public session I went to several years back they spoke of specifically trying to attract polar launches for that reason.

"Try to direct your energy to something worth your time. Loudly complaining about vague subjective notions of netiquette in a moderated forum is certainly not it."

Maybe try not to tell other people what is important for them? That is part of the same debate, how we communicate and to me it also matters a lot.

> You could say this as well about significant parts of Appalachia in the US and other impoverished regions of the US

And the reaction here if say West Virginia launched a satellite would be the same: why are you wasting money doing this when <some statistic about widespread poor infrastructure and poverty>.

Really? The rate limit must be pretty generous, because I've never hit it, and I've had a few comments downvoted heavily.

Users get rate limited because their account is new, or as you alluded to, they're not productively adding to the conversation (as evidenced by vote ratio at least).

It seems like the system working as designed, to be honest.

You misunderstand. It's not specific to Botswana. Just that type of country.

> Don’t want to belittle the achievement

You literally did.

> as it sounds like on the first read

That's your interpretation, the title literally says: "Botswana launches first satellite BOTSAT-1 aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 "

Titles on HN often get updated

The threshold gets more sensitive if other users have ever flagged you before and there’s seemingly no way to make the threshold less sensitive without mod intervention

so entire accounts can get brigaded in an opaque system that we never know is updated or not

its overfitting.

its like how people within the US thinks the system works because we’ve never had a military coup, instead of looking at how the system hasnt worked

It was from a university.

> EIRSAT-1 (Educational Irish Research Satellite-1) is a European Space Agency-sponsored 2U CubeSat developed and built by University College Dublin

> The mission of EIRSAT-1 is to advance education in space science and engineering across the whole island of Ireland through collaboration between student teams, higher education institutions and high-tech companies.

Actually it looks like most of the first national satellites listed are operated by colleges and universities, not high schools.

Yes because most high schools with money to hitch a ride with spacex are in the USA. So they aren't first launches, which is besides the point. The point is that launching a cubesat is nowhere near the complexity that NASA (or any other real space program) operates at, and it's actually at the level of a US rich high school. This is no detriment to anyone, it's just what it is. I'd say with enough money for the spacex ticket any "tech maker" youtuber has enough sophistication to launch a cubesat too. Also I never mentioned the satellite you reference.

See, wasn’t it easy to clarify your point?

Roscosmos is dead to international commercial partners, but are still putting a great deal into space. Third place behind SpaceX and China.

The old slow way of doing things is deeply embedded in the organizational DNA of Arianespace (and ULA.). It would actually be easier for a brand new company to do it than one of these legacy behemoths (particularly Arianespace, which is dragged down by the international way in which they build.)

Arianespace is so thoroughly broken that they genuinely believed that reusability, if they could even accomplish it, would be bad for their business because it would reduce the number of rockets they build. Bonkers.

Blame HN for having systems, rules, and filters to prevent long comment threads between two people. It's probably for the best as HN doesn't have the best interface for "two people chat back and forth for three days" but even if it isn't the optimum system, we as commenters are utterly powerless to change it.

Hi, I've been here almost a decade and have over 10k Karma. I am not allowed to post more than 4ish comments per several hour period.

It is not an automated system. I was punished years after creating my account, and after accumulating strong positive karma. It only took like one flagged comment for the punishment to be put in place, imo it was not a significantly out there comment or set of comments either, and it is now years old and it's pretty obvious these punishments have no automatic expiry or re-evaluating date.

This is despite plenty of other members of the community posting about 10x the amount I was at the time with zero repercussions, and despite the fact that I've gotten only a couple gentle warnings in particularly heated topics, which I demonstrably took to heart.

There is no justice or fairness inherent in HNs systems, and assuming so by default is less than great. The team is tiny, the rules are most likely set in stone from the early 2000s, the tooling is basically just whatever they can cobble together, the rules are purposely opaque, and Dang is a mere mortal full of his own biases and experiences that are impossible to fully prevent from affecting his decisions. I think he puts genuine effort into his work, and despite the occasional complaint I'd give him probably a B+ or better, but there are probably hundreds of HN commentators who were given a punishment, hopefully for good reason but don't take that for granted, literally reformed or just changed over time, and nobody even informed them they were punished or COULD have that punishment removed.

I have not emailed dang to get the punishment lifted because sometimes the limit is helpful to limit how distracted I am at work. Other times it completely prevents me from doing the exact kind of useful and productive conversation that HN insists it wants.

Money doesn't change hands for Russia launching astronauts or NASA launching cosmonauts. They're basically bartering for the sake of knowing the station will be manned even if one side gets grounded.

Its not clear which is hard, yet there are hundreds in the comments pointing it out.

'that type of country' is wrong to spend any money on a space program, is the root of your argument? Just to be clear?

It's not clear from the original bad phrasing.

"Money doesn't change hands for Russia launching astronauts or NASA launching cosmonauts"

did you see my parent comment or not??? I am not trying to question their ability for them get to space, it doesn't matter if you CAN go to space but you didn't have money for it

its clear that NASA and Roscosmos collaboration days is numbered and would not continue in the future because geo politic

How is it a better start for polar orbits than any other launch site on Earth?

Not the OP, and not sure why its particularly suited for polar, but its a good location for these reasons:

1. Good atmospheric conditions. 2. Low air traffic. 3. Low/flexible/favourable regulations. 4. Good locations for ground infrastructure (in part because of 1. and also because everywhere is by the sea). 5. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, tertiary education geared to support the industry.

Also, and I don't know for sure this is a factor, but we have a number of specialised industries such as building large things from carbon composite (yachts) and radio communications for example.

I think option 3. is a big one. The govt. attitude is usually "give it a go", rather than a default "no".

Thanks. How big a factor is it that you aren't circling Earth's axis as quickly as most other places, and thus launches lose some boost? That's what I was wondering originally.