Thoughts from Bob Zimmerman.
They’ve been courting a lot of American companies with money, but as with Luxembourg, there are strings attached. The investment requires that the companies locate there. Pretty sure I’d rather live in Luxembourg than the Emirates, though.
I’ve visited both the UAE and Luxembourg…I lived in Germany not more than a 45 minute drive from Lux city for 3 years…I’d go over for lunch often enough.
And I agree with you. Lux all the way..
The UAE has been trying to establish an industrial base for a while. They do it with joint ventures that put facilities in their country or in this case, give their people experience. Not much subterfuge that I see. This is in contrast to the Saudis that just write a check and import the equipment and the people to keep it working.
It looks just like the way NASA would go about developing a similar payload, with the same people.
Not that I’m going to book a summer, or winter trip there.
SES Astra(the “original” Luxembourg space company) was largely founded under American influence in particular Clay Whitehead of Hughes. In fact for almost the whole time Whitehead continued to live in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA and worked out of the Hughes offices’ in El Segundo only travelling to Luxembourg for board meetings.
One of my brothers-in-law lives in the UAE, but has a summer home in Estonia. On the Cato Institutes human freedom index, UAE rates well below even Ukraine, while Estonia consistently rates above the United States. One of these days, my wife and I are going to visit him in Estonia – but not the UAE.