Quote:
Originally Posted by Hokieman
But doesn't Europe have a lot more private dollars going into it's program? I though it was a lot more commercialized than the US.
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ESA is funded by the governments (note the plural) of it's 17 member states. The EU has nothing to do with it (yet), which might be a good thing.
If you consider how much NASA spends on the shuttle program and on all those educational and outreach centers all over the US, NASA probably doesn't have that much more money to spend on non-shuttle type space efforts. ESA doesn't have those costs, they also benefit greatly from purchasing technology from NASA, JAXA and RSA instead of having to develop it all themselves.