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The John Batchelor Show

HEADLINE: Callisto: Europe's Decade-Late Response to SpaceX GUEST: Bob Zimmerman 50-WORD SUMMARY: Callisto, a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and JAXA project proposed in 2015, was meant to be a prototype "grasshopper" to prove vertical takeoff and land

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

HEADLINE: Callisto: Europe's Decade-Late Response to SpaceX GUEST: Bob Zimmerman 50-WORD SUMMARY:Callisto, a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and JAXA project proposed in 2015, was meant to be a prototype "grasshopper" to prove vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL), competing with SpaceX. A decade later, little has happened, and the first hop is not expected until 2027.
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Transcript

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0:00.0

Building a coffee business?

0:01.9

Serving the best Americano in town is up to you.

0:04.1

But winning back time and growing your business, leave that to sum up.

0:07.1

Take orders and payments anywhere with the new SumUp terminal.

0:09.9

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0:13.4

And with the SumUp point of sale system, you'll always know when you're running low on your best selling blends.

0:17.9

Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more.

0:20.5

This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Bob Zimmerman about Callisto. best-selling plans. Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more.

0:26.3

This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Bob Zimmerman about Callisto, a European Space Agency project that is only a decade behind times. Bob explains more of this tonight.

0:36.9

All right, we've talked about Callisto a bunch of times.

0:39.2

Callisto was proposed in 2015 as an answer to SpaceX's first landing of a Falcon 9 first stage.

0:48.4

And it was supposed to be a European Space Agency and Jack's a joint problem project to launch a prototype

0:57.2

grasshopper essentially to do test hops to prove vertical takeoff and landing. That was in 2015,

1:05.4

where a decade later, and nothing has happened. They pretty much have not done anything. They hope to do the first

1:12.3

hop in 27. You know, in the meantime, of course, Falcon 9 has launched hundreds of times,

1:18.2

reused its stages, dozens of times, multiple stages. And there are plenty of other companies

1:24.4

building their own reusable rockets and hope to fly operational next year. So this is government

1:30.2

inaction.

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