MaiaSpace was honored to host Mr. Marco-Alexander Breit, Deputy Director General Aerospace, Maritime Industry, Security and Defence Industries at Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz; Mr. Walther Pelzer, Director General of the German Aerospace Center (DLR); as well as Dr. Christine Schmitz and Felix Lerner from Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz and Annette Cosler-Paliern and Christian Müller from German Aerospace Center (DLR).
They could see first-hand our proto-factory in Vernon (Normandy) where all sub-systems of the first European reusable and more eco-responsible mini launcher are integrated and tested.
Visiting the factory and the stages separation test bench was a perfect occasion to show our test&learn, iterative approach, allowing us to go fast and target a first flight and the start of commercial operations in 2026.
Interesting discussions were held on how Europe can combine its long-lasting technological expertise and excellence in space activities, with the agility of newcomers, in order to test new launchers development models, mainly driven by cost-reduction targets and obligations of results, and away from geo-return rules. We, at MaiaSpace, are convinced this is the recipe to create European space champions of tomorrow. And we try to implement this combination, not only with our partners, more than 50% of whom are European, non-French traditional space players or newcomers. But internally also, with one third of our ~250 MaiaSpacers bringing past-experience from incumbent space players.
Last but not least, we explained how leveraging reusability allows us to be competitive on a larger launch market segment, while preparing the future with scalable technologies that can be implemented on rockets of various size, for limited additional development costs.