A while back, my Twitter-turned-real-life friend and new columnist for The Currency Joe Haslam retweeted an article from The Spectator which basically labelled the European Space Agency (ESA) as a defunct, bureaucratic and good-for-nothing agency. Our conversation led to Joe asking: Why does Europe not have its own launch capabilities such as those offered via SpaceX? This is a great question, and since I am at the time of writing in London discussing similar topics at the Financial Times’ Space Investing conference, it is one that I will answer (albeit much later than I had originally hoped) through this week’s…