Which is a problem for NASA, inasmuch as the association between the tropes of human destiny in space & fascism are probably even stronger now in the public eye than it was in Von Braun’s heyday.

But perhaps even more so for ESA, if the next move is to try to persuade people that an independent human spaceflight programme is the way forward.

I’ve been asked to do media around Artemis & have largely turned it down, because I have felt very conflicted about not wanting to give any succour to the current US govt. Missed opportunities to discuss the ESM as a result, of course.

And overall, ESA’s part is just lost in the noise of US flag-waving.

The power of a Nobel prize winner very adept at playing politics, to be sure, but good for science?

There’s also an element of truth in that it’s a bit of an insider club, with the same groups getting experiments approved all the time, partly because they already know the ropes & partly because they then sit on the committees deciding future strategy & experiments.

I haven't read the english AFP article, but I can tell you that BFM (main tv news) invited someone who spoke long about ESA's work on this mission (I can't remember his name but I'll try to find the video).

There's also other articles like the one from RFI (RAdio France Internationale), interview with Philippe Berthe :

Artemis II: «Sans le Module de service européen, la mission est impossible»
https://www.rfi.fr/fr/science/20260331-artemis-ii-sans-le-module-de-service-europ%C3%A9en-la-mission-est-impossible

What's puzzling to me is, that so little of what's done on the ISS ends up being discussed during lunch, or over the post seminar pizza. Whereas so much other research, often in very far removed fields tends to be brought up.
It's a quite remarkable situation: Crewed space flight is a very "popular" topic; almost everyone in the 1st and 2nd world knows about it and that "a lot of science" is happening there.

But among my earthbound researcher peers it's discussed very little.

I'm well aware of the experiments that are done on the ISS (or back in the day on the STS and Mir). Heck, a couple of years ago some hardware for a medical study went up to the ISS what was in part built (or rather modified from the commercial system) by colleagues of me (optical coherence tomography to investigate the eyesight problems astronauts develop in microgravity).

1/

After all, didn’t the Tories propose a fully UK Crew Dragon flight, but to be paid privately, not by the govt? Shades of Project Juno.

Ask your golf friends whether they’d be willing to pay an extra few percent income tax to fund an independent European human spaceflight programme & a wider boost to education, universities, government R&D, tech incubation, & science needed to support, justify, & benefit from such a programme.

I suspect you know the answer already

But it didn’t go anywhere in the end, perhaps underlining my point about there continuing to be less appetite / desire / need for Europe to be autonomous in this regard.

Space bubbleers struggle to accept this, of course, saying it reflects poorly on Europe. But does it really?

Of course, I’m deliberately avoiding saying whether the cost-science benefit ratio is worth it compared to robotic missions, but arguably the two pots of money aren’t really fungible. Science is a by-product of other human spaceflight, not the primary goal.

That there’s a lot of material from the former goes without saying, but there is plenty from the latter too. That said it tends to be less “cosmically awesome”, relating to human & plant biology, materials science, fundamental physics, etc., less immediately exciting than stars, planets, & galaxies.

Here's some food for thought: Where are the scientific publications that are coming out of the actual crewed space flights?

When you look at robotic missions (deep space probes, space telescopes, research satellites, etc.) it's easy enough to find your paper alerts being flooded with published results. There's a also a lot of publications on the engineering side.

But when it comes to crewed space flight? There's a lot less there. We're talking of several OOM discrepancy.

So nothing short or medium term by that route, hm.

Do European governments & the European public believe that an independent human spaceflight capability is desirable & affordable?

IMO, it’s perfectly ok if the answer to that is no. But the current model appears very broken.

At least not in the way that superpowers like the US & China are, where it’s part of soft power propaganda & national myth-making.

After all, there are many other priorities on this planet, arguably more pressing than going to the Moon, such as climate change, security, & resource management, areas where space also plays a critical role though.

Yeah, it's lazy af.