The European Space Agency (ESA) is less a space agency than a therapy circle for European ministries. On paper it’s about science, exploration, and satellite technology. In practice it’s a glorified clearinghouse where 22 member states throw money into a pot and then spend years fighting over who gets which slice back. The result is a constant parade of technically competent programs delivered years late, always branded as breakthroughs, and almost always structured to maximize industrial “fairness” rather than efficiency.

The politics make everything worse. France insists on launchers, Germany insists on Earth observation, Italy insists on telecom, and smaller states insist on crumbs to keep their labs busy. Every ESA council session is a group negotiation in which science goals are secondary to making sure no country storms out. That’s why Ariane 6 took a decade, why Galileo was late and flawed, and why every new program comes wrapped in the phrase “juste retour”, the sacred rule that everyone gets contracts proportional to what they paid in, regardless of competence.

Science missions survive because they’re too boring for politicians to ruin completely. Rosetta and JUICE prove ESA can do world-class planetary exploration when given money and left alone. But the moment big-ticket infrastructure is involved, the industrial carve-up begins and the timetables die. Human spaceflight is even more embarrassing. ESA builds modules for the ISS and Orion, always subcontracting to NASA, always pretending it’s a “partner” when really it’s a glorified supplier. There is no coherent astronaut program, just a roster of payload specialists sent up when the Americans or Russians feel generous.

ESA’s current obsession is IRIS², the “sovereign” LEO constellation meant to counter Starlink. It has all the hallmarks of classic ESA theater: big ambitions, no clear business case, and a procurement process designed more to satisfy Airbus, Thales, and OHB than to produce usable broadband. Brussels calls it strategic autonomy. Everyone else calls it subsidies with extra steps.

So ESA is not useless. It funds brilliant science, it keeps Europe in the launcher game, and it provides jobs for tens of thousands of engineers who might otherwise decamp to Silicon Valley. But it is not NASA, it is not SpaceX, and it never will be. ESA is the embodiment of European politics: cautious, consensus-driven, allergic to risk, and perpetually surprised when faster, leaner competitors lap it.