[thawawaycold]

lol you don't know the half of it. Working with ESA for anything but the most trivial project is beyond frustrating; it's basically 99% about producing swathes of documentation, which in itself is more akin to philosophy and semantic dissertations over obscure standards than actual technical work.

ESA is so risk averse that it's even weird for a space company

[mauriciolange]

A good counterexample is the Arctic Weather Satellite project. It was defined as a new space process at ESA, so documentation required was reduced at the minimum, and risk acceptance was increased. Absolutely successful, on time, on budget, contractors happy, end users happy. But it is a small project and still difficult to replicate at large and to spread the mindset to other sections at ESA. Source: me. I work at that project as ground segment engineer.

[prettyeyes83]

agreed, but what would you argue are the reasons for this mindset? i imagine the main cause is structural, ie. having to deal with all the member states?

[thawawaycold]

not just the members states but also all the other behemoths stakeholders like Airbus, Thales, OHB and so on, which need to make sure that new missions are as easy to adapt to their preexisting flight heritage as possible

[rapsey]

A bureaucrat is not allowed to spend money on anything risky and must never allow for money to be used on something other than the intended use.

So the entire process must be micromanaged to death with documentation, which results in the money mostly being spent on the documentation.