Can a merger save Europe’s space race?

‘Bromo’.

It sounds like some new brand of masculine-scented laundry powder, but it’s actually the codename for a satellite-making joint venture, merging the space divisions of Europe’s aerospace heavyweights Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo.

This planned new French-headquartered company’s 25,000 employees will be spread across 30 European sites, bringing in an estimated $7.5B a year.

But why?

First, Europe’s space industry has been getting creamed lately.

Musk’s SpaceX alone blasted 84% of all the world’s new satellite mass into orbit last year. Europe’s Ariane? Maybe ~5%.

Ditto, Musk’s Starlink internet satellites alone now occupy 65% of all active orbital slots up above. Europe’s entire fleet? Barely 10%.

So Europe’s space players are feeling the burn: Airbus recently axed 2,000 space jobs!

Meanwhile, China is hustling hard to catch up to the US — it just doubled its entire 2024 payloads to orbit by May!

So this European merger is about building scale and efficiencies to survive and compete.

Second, Europe is still figuring out how much it can — or wants to — rely on the US.

When you take Putin’s latest invasion, America’s varying response, Trump’s alliance scepticism, and DC’s America First approach to tariffs and tech regulation, you get European leaders racing towards a more sovereign stance on just about every issue.

And space is no exception, with Putin’s invasion offering an example of what’s at stake when you lose independence: European players have mostly watched from the sidelines while Starlink has enabled (and occasionally curbed) Ukraine’s self-defence comms.

But… can this euro space-merger work?

There are reasons to wonder — sure, it could give us the best of both (say) Italian industry and French ingenuity. Or it could give us the worst of both Italian red tape and French overruns. And of course, whether this joint venture (JV) is even allowed depends on EU antitrust officials in Brussels, who’ve scuttled previous satellite mergers (after lengthy reviews, naturalmente).

But there are also reasons for hope, too: this entire Project Bromo is inspired by MBDA, the European missile-maker born out of a big 2001 merger. It’s now got a multi-billion dollar order portfolio.