A lot has happened in space since 2010, and not just because of Elon Musk. But the German state had little ambition for a long time. Now the government has formulated new goals for German space travel – and wants to strengthen space founders, for example.
When the federal government wrote its last space strategy, Rainer Brüderle (FDP) was still the responsible federal economics minister. In addition to the German Aerospace Center (DLR), German space travel mainly consisted of the Airbus predecessors EADS and OHB. Young start-ups like Isar Aerospace and Ororatech, which build small rockets or place fire alarms in space, came years later, and a certain Elon Musk was just launching his first in the USA Falcon-9-Rocket. In short: German space travel was very different from today – and hardly commercial. 13 years later, the ministry under the Green Robert Habeck is now developing a new space strategy that is intended to do justice to the paradigm shift.