Great Video ! Have you visited the State of New Mexico, the rocket friendly state ? This is the state where Germany has borrowed the work of Prof. Goddard from Roswell, New Mexico ! Maybe you can catch aliens landing in New Mexico with your trailer... Also Spaceport America launches flights to space and to return to the long runway ! Also the Sierra Space Dream Chaser is contracted to allow the spacecraft to land at Spaceport America ! The Tech developed to return to the moon to stay, can take US and the world to Mars and beyond ! tjl

A visit to PLD Space is due. PLD is the only European private company which has already launched a vehicle

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What a brilliant video! RFA is a perfect example of the intelligence, hard work and passion to what you do! Dr. Brieschenk: „We are a group of automotive engineers building a rocket, rather then a rocket company building a rocket“.

OMG cannot express with buzzwords, or in a tech-rational manner... This was a superb hour of Rocket Geek content. Thank you Tim for all of your hard work!

European rockets?🤔

I love this. Exploring smaller enterprises with lots of potential shows just how big the world is. One company/system I would like you to cover if possible is Reaction Engines with their S.A.B.R.E. (Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine) design. An air breathing rocket engine that can potentially sustain SSTO is the holy grail of orbital launch. At Mach 5 (or potentially greater) when in air breathing mode, the engine has a similar ISP of the RR Olympus engines at 3,600 seconds (basically 1 hours), and a power to weight ratio of 14:1. Insane numbers by any measure, and at hypersonic speeds. The concept is old but the tech required is only now getting the technology it needs to work, primarily the Precooler, arguably among the most technologies of this century. The ability to cool air by 1,000C in 1/100th of a second has applications far beyond transportation, ranging from cars, ships, power grids, and computers, and could transform our world. As of recent their website had many pages taken down that explained how their systems worked, likely because the British MoD and the US DoD are seeing the importance of such a technology and its vulnerability to espionage.

Nice format, great questions and a good conclusion. Thanks Mr. D

I would love to see these two have a sit down conversation.

Germany building rockets... Again? Last time they were meant to destroy London. Just saying

I've been waiting for this one a long time, been following ISAR for quite a while and I might go to see their first orbital launch attempt! Excited to watch the video

I love how you had to prove to the engine guy you knew what you were talking about and that moment he was shocked and got excited to talk about the engine

I feel like these two companies are similar to spacex vs nasa Both legitimately great with very different ways of doing things

Robert Goddard built and flew the first gyro stabilized liquid fueled rockets in the U.S.A. The Germans built on his designs for the V2.

Haha did you call Europe is made by German naz and ussr soviet

Beer Tanks can Fly!!!!!! 😁

I think many companies are copying SpaceX strategy of effectively 10 of the same engine with the upper stage having a larger expansion ratio. It just shows how much money is required to develop engines. I am very surprised RFA is going for an oxygen rich mixture, as that sounds risky and will not enable reusability unless they are using some completely new alloy. Then again they aren't exactly conventional with their beer keg 1st stage.

Why was the concentricity tolerance for the Arian rocket redacted?

Until Europe figures out reliable and reusable rockets, no. They can’t compete

Great episode! Keep up the great work!

Why not fiber placement vs filament winding for the tank? Have you tested a production tank? I can remember some big 'booms' at Marshall when a composite tank blew. I think the company doing it at that time gave up on it. hard to do the cryogenic temperatures.

Does anyone know if you can send questions to the spacewalk podcast from Instagram? I was going to ask about ISAR's materials for the fairings, they kept mentioning that the material is very strong and I believe they said rigid. What is sort of the balance point between flexibility and rigidity that has to be considered when choosing rocket materials for when it faces different directions and strengths of wind guts as it pushes up through the atmosphere? Pretty long question, was just wondering after I heard them mention it.

Fantastic video.

Finaly learning there is something here in Europe as well (Space launch oriented) . Was waiting for vid like this!

What a thumbnail! Great concept, love thee title, I will be back for this later.

One inch concentricity, using some non-contact optical tools would allow this to be dynamically corrected as the weldments are made. Why take the risk when this is cheap technology?

Don't tell usa government contractors you can make rocket cheap. How can they rob the tax payers then

34:30 in 7 Stunden nach Hamburg von Augsburg und dannoch mit nem Lkw hahah? never

No offense to my countryman, but dude always using the merkelraute while taking was so distracting🤣

Thank you so much for highlighting European space companies. So refreshing and interesting ❤

They can't... Directed by Robert B. Weide

My money is on RFA over isar in terms of longevity.

Excellent video Tim, up to your usual high standard. Thanks for covering European commercial spaceflight startups.

Great job, Tim! I especially enjoyed the RFA parts and the CEO, a German version of Napoleon Dynamite. Thank you

That was amazing! I loved the comparison of the two approaches. I have no idea which one is going to prove correct, but the RFA guy's enthusiasm for cost-cutting was a lot of fun to watch.

I feel like optimising the efficiency and integration of the manufacture process is going to be a lot cheaper in the long term than using off the shelf components for everything Sure, RFA will make one really cheap rocket, but ISAR are going to be able to make dozens of very cheap rockets

This is a brilliant video. Great to hear from these european engineers. Picking these two companies with two completely different engineering approaches was fascinating. I was thinking the RFA guys were automotive engineers with the way they were talking about parts procurement, then theu confirmed it and went even more automotive lol. Adapting existing battle tested parts to rocketry could mean huge savings in both money and engineering time. The Isar approach is something I can definitely appreciate as a former engineer turned software engineer though too. If you rely too much on suppliers or external packages it can slow you down when you hit a problem or need to do something it's not designed to do. Plus you're at the mercy of that company continuing to exist or maintain it's prices. It will be really interesting to see these two companies grow and develop. Bavaria has an awful lot of engineering and automotive talent so they're in the perfect place. Both approaches have a lot of merit. Advanced in house manufacturing with high tech automation vs sourcing off the shelf readily available parts with robust supply chains and economies of scale. A very interesting battle of ideologies.

Im German and i never heared about both companies. I have to watch an American space enthusiast to be introduced to my country's own rocket manufacturers.

Amazing episode.

Tim, if you're still in Europe, be sure to check out SpaceForest in Gdynia, Poland. These are quite interesting rockets🚀🚀

Does RFA use autosar?😂

The European launch market has been dead for the past few decades, it's so depressing as a European watching ESA getting bare miminum budget to sustain the non-existing activities. The European space program is so low on the monetary priorities of Europe, it barely registers. So depressing.

Fantastic video Tim! The RFA Ceo seems really a great guy and super focused! So great to have you interviewing them all, thanks!

There is no room or need for more small-sat launchers, or any launchers really. This thing is just like the Dot-Com era bubble. SpaceX can handle all the worlds payloads, and there is also RocketLab to take up any slack (they at least have years of experience getting to orbit). All these little companies running on venture capital are gonna be extinct in a few years, many already did go extinct. Its cool to see them all trying, but the reality is, its just for fun.....none of these companies matter

You need to talk about latitude (french rocket company)

WAKE UP NEW TIM DODD VIDEO DROPPEDDDDDDDDDDD

Finally, a new video!

Funny how the mention of high-pressure, high reliability valves hits in light of ULA's launch scrub last night (Though I saw a photo of the valve mechanism and see they're totally different). Another great video!

Great as always. Hoping to intern at the spaceport in shetland next summer, you’ve inspired my interest for the last 5 years and your positive influence can’t be overstated! Hope to bump into you in Texas next summer, coming to watch starship. Lots of love from Scotland 😘

The automotive suppliers are loving this, they are going to need to find new customers as the ev transition continues to reduce part count