European Space Agency to Start a Manned Space Program?

This past Wednesday (Feb. 16), the European Space Agency held a space summit conference in Toulouse, France, to discuss its long range plans for topics such as space exploration and addressing climate change.  

Before the summit began, a group of European astronauts who have flown into space on vehicles from other countries issued a manifesto (.pdf) calling for the agency to develop its own capability for manned spaceflight rather than depending on Russian or US rockets and capsules.  The first German astronaut was Sigmund Jähn back in 1978, who flew aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the Salyut 6 space station for a week.  More relevantly, two Europeans flew on both the Crew-2 and Crew-3 missions to the International Space Station: Matthias Maurer on Crew-3 and Thomas Pesquet on Crew-2.  Relevant because both praised the Crew Dragon vehicle's smooth spaceflight as well as the reusable nature of the rocket and both were involved in the manifesto.  

Released publicly on Wednesday, the document says that European leaders must soon decide whether the continent will accelerate its efforts to remain in the "leading ranks" of spacefaring nations.

"While Europe is still at the forefront of many space endeavors, such as Earth observation, navigation, and space science, it is lagging in the increasingly strategic domains of space transportation and exploration," the manifesto states. "Europe’s Gross Domestic Product is comparable to that of the United States’, but its joint investment in space exploration does not reach even one tenth of NASA’s.  

As of now, Russia has the Soyuz crew vehicle, China has the Shenzhou spacecraft, and NASA has SpaceX's Crew Dragon. In the coming two years, India is planning to demonstrate a manned launch system to low Earth orbit.  In principle, in addition to the Crew Dragon, NASA also has Boeing's Starliner capsule - currently scheduled to fly No Earlier Than this May.  We can also add the Orion capsule that tops the Space Launch System, which is currently expected to conduct its first test flight this summer, as well.  The US could potentially have four manned launch vehicles within two years, counting Starship. 

The manifesto continues:

"If we miss this unique chance to challenge the status quo, we will have to continue procuring human space transportation from other actors, with no guarantees that our needs and values will be a priority," the manifesto states. "We will be paying customers in a position of weakness, repeating the mistakes of the past in other strategic domains, which left us dependent on external players for our energy requirements or Information Technology development. Our inaction would further impact European industrial competitiveness: European taxpayers’ money would be used to advance industrial competitors from abroad."

They picked a good time to bring this forward.  The ESA has a new new director-general, Josef Aschbacher, and he's pushing for more ambitious programs.  Since those astronauts behind the manifesto technically work for him, it's entirely possible he's using them as the great PR assets astronauts tend to be and this is all his idea. 

As always, the arguments against doing this come down to "what's in it for me" among the different member states.  Developing a manned system is expensive and time consuming; is it really the smartest use of funds?  What launch vehicle would they use?  The Ariane 6, something else already in the fleet, or do they need to develop something new?  Who would develop the capsule itself?  How long in development are we talking?  Five years?  Ten?  

The Crew-3 launch vehicle and Crew Dragon capsule a few days before the launch.  SpaceX photo.  The launcher and capsule were designed separately, not as a launcher/capsule system; neither took 10 years.