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395 points vinnyglennon | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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echoangle ◴[] No.43485519[source]
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.
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mainecoder ◴[] No.43486164[source]
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.
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aaronblohowiak ◴[] No.43486382[source]
What do you think about RFA?
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1. echoangle ◴[] No.43486471[source]
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.