Why European Astronauts Have To Hitch A Ride to Space

In the last week the Director of ESA has called for Europe to stop mucking around and actually develop a human spaceflight capability, my words not his. Europe has one of the best funded space programs in the world and yet decades on from flying its first astronaut ESA has yet to develop a way to launch crew without relying on the USA or Russia.

But in the 1980's they spent a lot of money and time trying to develop a small spaceplane named Hermes, which ultimately failed after the International space station removed any need for independent access to space.

A great deal of the Hermes imagery is from this site:
http://www.capcomespace.net/dossiers/...

The Kerbal Hermes spacecraft is part of the KNES mod
https://spacedock.info/mod/1470/Knes

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