EU Fast-Tracks SpaceX Rival Built for Committees, Not Orbit
The European Commission is preparing expedited antitrust approval for Project Bromo, a satellite joint venture among Leonardo, Airbus, and Thales. Officials frame it as Europe’s answer to SpaceX.
The companies signed a memorandum last year, plan roughly 25,000 employees and €6.5 billion in combined revenue, and hope to begin operations in 2027. Launchers stay outside the deal. Ursula von der Leyen has already endorsed the concept as the kind of industrial champion Europe needs.
Eric S. Raymond called the announcement the funniest he has seen in weeks. A vast bureaucratic machine will grind, consultants and hangers-on will collect comfortable salaries, and white papers will fly like confetti.
After a decade of expensive activity the consortium will have produced roughly the output of a wet fart. The prediction rests on a long record of European aerospace projects that consume money and political capital while trailing private competitors that design, build, and fly without waiting for cross-border committees.
SpaceX reached orbit and then dominance through repeated private risk-taking, rapid iteration, and the discipline of losing money when hardware fails. European industrial policy prefers protected scale, political alignment, and process.
Past efforts at sovereign satellite systems and launch vehicles have repeatedly delivered delayed, over-budget results that still leave Europe dependent on American capacity. Fast-tracking antitrust review removes one regulatory gate; it does not create the engineering culture or capital discipline required to close the gap.- DTP