3 ms·
It's not blindness, it's institutional inertia. Ariane 6's design was selected in 2014. At the time, Falcon 9 1.0 was flying for 4 years, had less than 10t of
by boricj 2y ago
It's not blindness, it's institutional inertia.
Ariane 6's design was selected in 2014. At the time, Falcon 9 1.0 was flying for 4 years, had less than 10t of payload and the first landing and recovery of a first stage wasn't for another year.
Given than the Ariane program is about independent European access to space for institutional launches, efficiency and costs are secondary concerns. Each country pays for a share of a program and expects a corresponding industrial share. Launches aren't priced to expect a financial return, even if Ariane 5 was an unexpected success for geostationary commercial launches in its time.
ArianeGroup produces three main things: Ariane 6, Vega and the M51 missile used on French SSBNs. It's there so that the French can lob nukes without asking the Americans (unlike the Brits) and that the Europeans can lob institutional satellites in space without asking anyone else. It's not there to be SpaceX, to be profitable or to be efficient.
- panick21_ 2y agoAfter Ariane 4 there very much was hope for commercial success of Ariane 5. If anything it fell short, but was saved by robust GEO market. Going away from Ariane 5 style smaller rocket was a huge failure and its part of the seed that lead to the situation we have now. Had the Ariane 5 been a competitive design capable of competing with Soyuz on the low range and compete for big GEO birds on the high end, it would have been far better for European space policy. A design like Atlas 5. Capable of launching without boosters or with booster for GEO. That would have been smarter then using a combination of Soyuz and Ariane 5.