Anybody who is watching this industry knew this. Ariane 6 is really just a slight upgrade over Ariane 5. The Ariane 5 ME is mostly what the parts that are now i

Anybody who is watching this industry knew this. Ariane 6 is really just a slight upgrade over Ariane 5. The Ariane 5 ME is mostly what the parts that are now in Ariane 6 came from, otherwise Ariane 6 would have taken much longer. This was approved in 2014, and the rocket wont be really operational until 2024. So 10 years for a really simply upgrade. Some of the parts now on the Ariane 6 have been in development for 20+ years. Even if right now, Europe decided to do a huge new rocket projects, it would be 10 years minimum. But this is not likely going to happen. Many didn't even want to spend the money for Ariane 6. An agreement on a real large reusable rocket is politically not feasible anytime soon, an no country, not even France is gone do it alone. Of course a real reusable rocket is gone cost more the develop then the Ariane 6, a slight upgrade over Ariane 5. Ariane 6 cost 5 billion and that ignores a lot different costs for infrastructure and development of sub-components over the last decades. So a decade is actually an incredibly optimistic prediction, 2 decades is more likely and that is far from certain. And even if they do so, they will never have a large share of the market. They will battle a whole host of other companies, RocketLab, ULA, Relativity for things that SpaceX will be excluded from (Amazon and so on).