Somewhere in Bremen, an Airbus engineer watched the coverage of the Artemis II launch and waited to be mentioned. She is still waiting. She didn't supply the lemon-soaked paper napkins.. the spacecraft she helped build kept four astronauts alive across a million kilometres of deep space. 33 engines, propulsion, power, oxygen, water, thermal control, the works.. and NASA's commentary managed to convey, with quite remarkable consistency, that this was an American operation that had, in some vague administrative sense, involved paperwork from abroad.
*leans forward slightly, the way one does when a genuinely good grievance has just been placed on the table*
The European Service Module (ESM).. built by Airbus, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), designed and delivered by people who are, unmistakably, NOT American.. was, in the most literal possible sense, the part that kept four human beings alive in deep space. The bit between the astronauts and the void. You'd think that might warrant a namecheck.
You would be wrong.
NASA's coverage of Artemis II was thorough. Hours of broadcast. Extensive press materials. A genuinely impressive quantity of patriotic music. And somewhere in all of that, ESA's contribution achieved a kind of quantum invisibility: present in every physical sense, mentioned in approximately none of them.
It's not even that they were vague about it. Vague would suggest they'd tried. This was more like a conjuring trick performed in reverse.. instead of making something appear from nothing, they made the most vital part of the entire mission simply... vanish.
*drums fingers*
Airbus delivered the module. ESA signed the partnership. And NASA stood in front of the rocket and said, essentially, "we built a thing," to an audience that had no particular reason to doubt them.
The module was assembled by Airbus in Germany, with contributions from more than twenty companies across ten European countries. Britain, for its part, delivered the inner gimbal motor of the solar array drive mechanism.. the component that actually orients the solar wings so they track the Sun throughout the mission. Which is, when you think about it, rather more important than it sounds. The solar arrays are what power the entire spacecraft. The gimbal motor is what keeps them pointed at the Sun. Without it you have four very expensive decorative paddles.
The trans-lunar injection burn (the one that actually sent the crew toward the Moon) was so precise that two of the three planned trajectory correction burns were cancelled entirely. ESA's own director called it a demonstration of European know-how "to its finest." They had to say that themselves, on their own blog, because nobody else was going to.
The Europeans, to their immense credit, have responded with the restrained dignity of people who know exactly what they did and have decided, for now, to keep that information mostly to themselves and anyone who reads the technical footnotes.
Which is, if you think about it, the most European possible response to being erased from a press conference.
*leans forward slightly, the way one does when a genuinely good grievance has just been placed on the table*
The European Service Module (ESM).. built by Airbus, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), designed and delivered by people who are, unmistakably, NOT American.. was, in the most literal possible sense, the part that kept four human beings alive in deep space. The bit between the astronauts and the void. You'd think that might warrant a namecheck.
You would be wrong.
NASA's coverage of Artemis II was thorough. Hours of broadcast. Extensive press materials. A genuinely impressive quantity of patriotic music. And somewhere in all of that, ESA's contribution achieved a kind of quantum invisibility: present in every physical sense, mentioned in approximately none of them.
It's not even that they were vague about it. Vague would suggest they'd tried. This was more like a conjuring trick performed in reverse.. instead of making something appear from nothing, they made the most vital part of the entire mission simply... vanish.
*drums fingers*
Airbus delivered the module. ESA signed the partnership. And NASA stood in front of the rocket and said, essentially, "we built a thing," to an audience that had no particular reason to doubt them.
The module was assembled by Airbus in Germany, with contributions from more than twenty companies across ten European countries. Britain, for its part, delivered the inner gimbal motor of the solar array drive mechanism.. the component that actually orients the solar wings so they track the Sun throughout the mission. Which is, when you think about it, rather more important than it sounds. The solar arrays are what power the entire spacecraft. The gimbal motor is what keeps them pointed at the Sun. Without it you have four very expensive decorative paddles.
The trans-lunar injection burn (the one that actually sent the crew toward the Moon) was so precise that two of the three planned trajectory correction burns were cancelled entirely. ESA's own director called it a demonstration of European know-how "to its finest." They had to say that themselves, on their own blog, because nobody else was going to.
The Europeans, to their immense credit, have responded with the restrained dignity of people who know exactly what they did and have decided, for now, to keep that information mostly to themselves and anyone who reads the technical footnotes.
Which is, if you think about it, the most European possible response to being erased from a press conference.
My cousin is a project leader in Airbus he thought this was hilarious. He didn't have any involvement in the ESM-4, but should he have been credited as he works for the company that worked on it?
