frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/isar-aerospace-second-launch-norway-andoya-spaceport-spectrum-rocket
121•bookmtn•1h ago

Comments

blini-kot•59m ago
Plesetsk is also european soil.
seszett•51m ago
Kourou as well, although maybe a different definition of European.
sisve•40m ago
Would maybe call it European territory but not soil. But yeah, as you say it's how you define it.
kylecazar•43m ago
They're using "Europe" as political shorthand for Western Europe
MisterMunchkin•45m ago
How can it be the first European rocket? There’s the ESA! Are you telling me we have all these organisations and none of them have ever launched from their own continent?
dmaa•44m ago
They launch from Guiana afaik
echoangle•36m ago
French Guiana to be exact, which is a different country
loeg•42m ago
Europe isn't on or remotely near the equator, which is somewhat favorable for launches.
smitty1e•10m ago
> The German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space Center in northern Norway today

To speculate, they could be targeting a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit

Achterlangs•39m ago
ESA launches French Guiana. Since it is cheaper to launch closer to the equator with the extra speed provided by the earth's rotation.
artisinal•29m ago
Really comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator.

It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.

ChrisArchitect•36m ago
Isar Aerospace launch into orbit [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1DUqLjecc (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580325)
milleramp•29m ago
Made with imipolex g?
verzali•26m ago
Fantastic job!
hypfer•26m ago
This is a huge success, but it I think also tells us that the EU is further decoupling itself from the US. Slowly but steadily.

Which is obviously the right thing to do, but it's interesting that it's not just a hypothetical anymore.

shevy-java•23m ago
That's good. The way how the USA changed makes any "alliance" void. Just look at how today the USA tried to hand over land of Ukraine to Putin, with incompetents such as Kushner. Agent Krasnov is serving all but the US population here - and he regards the EU as an enemy in addition to that. So, no more support to that crazy country. Canadians learned that lesson, the EU still has to learn it.
ericmay•7m ago
> Just look at how today the USA tried to hand over land of Ukraine to Putin

Was it the land that Russia currently controls and Ukraine is very unlikely to retake? There's a spectrum between ideological behavior and pragmatic behavior. If Ukraine gives up this land and achieves peace, maybe it's worth it. I'm not suggesting it definitely is but at least the US is trying to negotiate or find some sort of solution, even if it's not going well.

In retrospect the US should have prepared for war and been willing to fight to uphold what was agreed to with Russia but that would have been a hard sell.

> So, no more support to that crazy country.

Nah Europe will still support it. Nothing will change there. But if you want things to change, we can completely withdraw from NATO, move bases back from Europe where we see fit, and un-sanction Russia while no longer providing support to Ukraine in any fashion and no longer sell weapons to Europe. That would be a disaster for Europe, which is why I tend to think comments like this are either ignorant, or pro-Russia/Iran/China with the intent to further inflame whatever tensions exist.

ph4rsikal•17m ago
shevy-java•24m ago
The sooner Europe cuts itself off from the US crazy billionaires, the better - on all levels (software and manufacture processes are the two biggest issues). Today we already could see the US surrender team crawling up to dictator Putin. Enough is enough - agent Krasnov needs to be isolated.
capocasa•13m ago
This is such a breath of fresh air
tristanj•18m ago
French Guiana is not a colony, it is a region of France. People who live there have the same constitutional rights as anyone living in mainland France.

It has the same status in France as Alaska does in the US.

BSDobelix•13m ago
>Really comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator.

>It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.

That's the dumbest comment i read since a long time, thanks.

sisve•22m ago
For satellites that should be in Sun-synchronous orbit Andøy is a great place to launch from
mytailorisrich•33m ago
The French used to launch their rockets from Algeria. Their first satellite was launched from there. Since then they moved to (French) Guiana.

The UK launched from Australia.

xixixao•24m ago
Article says Western Europe, but Norway is in Northern Europe.

“First rocket to launch from Europe outside Russia” would have been perfectly correct.

setopt•8m ago
In the political sense, «Western Europe» is typically taken to be «NATO Europe», and «Eastern Europe» is «Warsaw Pact Europe». Which is different from a strict geographic definition.
hypfer•23m ago
> How can it be the first European rocket?

Not at all. You've missed the "Private" in the headline. And that it apparently is.

It is indeed a huge success but it also underlines how far ahead the rest of the world is.
hypfer•16m ago
I'd honestly rather like to use this opportunity to talk about that this is a success than returning to our regularly scheduled doomer loop.

A rocket launched into orbit from Norway. That's insane progress and worth celebrating.

ericmay•11m ago
I'd prefer to use this opportunity to talk about this as a success as well without this America decoupling nonsense doomer loop too.

Does anyone know if folks in Germany are posting about the huge ego and phallus shaped memes for this company doing something that SpaceX and Blue Origin were also doing? I'm guessing not, because the lens is "decoupling" and not "America bad" like so many felt inclined to report when our private companies were successfully launching rockets.

Anyway, congrats to the team at Isar. I like to celebrate these successes around the world as further space exploration, colonization, science, and economic development benefit us as a species and there is a lot of room for a lot of competitors.

hypfer•8m ago
You know.. the things I get flagged for, and then you post stuff like this.

I'm not even sure what to make out of that dismissal opener other than that you've apparently didn't like whatever I wrote.

The Real Luxuries In Life

https://feld.com/archives/2026/09/the-real-luxuries-in-life/
316•tosh•3h ago•127 comments

LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03344
57•canjobear•1h ago•15 comments

Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/isar-aerospace-second-launch-norway-a...
123•bookmtn•1h ago•34 comments

Finite time blowup for an averaged three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation (2014)

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-blowup-for-an-averaged-three-dimensional-na...
29•gmays•1h ago•9 comments

Learn Programming with OCaml

https://usr.lmf.cnrs.fr/lpo/
114•elvis70•4h ago•45 comments

The "$60 Gaming PC" – AMD BC-250 (2025)

https://devquasar.com/hardware/the-60-gaming-pc-amd-bc-250/
220•networked•8h ago•71 comments

Balrogg: Demonically compacting (up to 15%) lossless Vorbis/Opus recompressor

https://github.com/iczelia/balrogg
33•palaiologos•2d ago•7 comments

Visualizing Rust's Vtables: How dyn Trait Works In Memory

https://sofiabelen.github.io/projects/visualizing-rusts-vtables-how-dyn-trait-works-in-memory/
86•torutofu•8h ago•7 comments

Isar Aerospace launch into orbit [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1DUqLjecc
42•stefan_•1h ago•6 comments

Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

https://collusion.wiki/
2037•moultano•1d ago•1494 comments

Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2026-85046
722•negura•23h ago•417 comments

Space industry lacks workers needed to rebuild satellites lost in war: report

https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2026/09/04/space-industry-lacks-workers-needed-to-...
30•billybuckwheat•1h ago•39 comments

Nitter has more working instances than before the takedowns

https://codeberg.org/mv12star/shitter/wiki/Instances
574•Cider9986•21h ago•265 comments

Steffen's Polyhedron

https://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Steffen/Steffen.html
40•pavel_lishin•2d ago•3 comments

Delidded Intel I9-14900KS CT Scan

https://www.lttlabs.com/articles/2026/09/02/delidded-intel-i9-14900ks
31•willx86•3d ago•0 comments

Terpstra Keyboard

http://terpstrakeyboard.com/
103•cl3misch•11h ago•48 comments

Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem

https://www.anthropic.com/research/formalizing-fermats-last-theorem
730•jlebar•1d ago•471 comments

Stopping the Unstoppable: When an unstoppable force meets a dashpot snubber

https://practical.engineering/blog/2026/9/1/stopping-the-unstoppable
33•crescit_eundo•4d ago•3 comments

How Swiss tables work in Go built-in map

https://victoriametrics.com/blog/go-swiss-table-map/index.html
3•valyala•2d ago•0 comments

Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

https://wikiworkersunited.org/announcements/2026-09-04-us-wikimedia-foundation-workers-overwhelmi...
228•robin_reala•5h ago•93 comments

A bizarre Commodore 64 peripheral, a mime, and some pretty bad ads

https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/spartan-and-the-mime/
61•rfarley04•9h ago•4 comments

Singapore subway (mrt) information display types

https://www.sgtrains.com/technology-infosys.html
35•gregorvand•3d ago•7 comments

Statichost.eu – European static site hosting

https://www.statichost.eu/
426•p4bl0•1d ago•192 comments

Can AI design circuit boards yet?

https://eebench.org/blog/can-ai-design-circuit-boards-yet/
351•iopapa•1d ago•203 comments

A Million Falcons Went Missing. Here’s How They Were Found

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/falcons-migration-angola-falcopolis
58•bryanrasmussen•3d ago•26 comments

.gitignore Everything by Default

https://packagemain.tech/p/gitignore-everything-by-default
124•der_gopher•8h ago•138 comments

AI handles incidents, engineers lose touch with their systems

https://www.sylvainkalache.com/blog/ai-handles-incidents-engineers-lose-touch-with-their-systems
347•sylvainkalache•13h ago•304 comments

Git hosting that never leaves Europe

https://pushin.eu
293•sevenseacat•15h ago•144 comments

Write Software in Latin (2025) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGZpaqMha0o
34•akkartik•2d ago•14 comments

Show HN: Open-Source eInk Bike Computer

https://opentrailpaper.com
379•stingrae•1d ago•117 comments