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by nordsieck
1140 days ago
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> I think it's unrealistic to expect a multi-national government funded organisation to offer a commodity service at a competitive price. Except that they used to. They certainly beat the pants off of ULA (nee Boeing/Lockheed Martin) when it came to competitive GEO/GTO launches. > But does it really matter? If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium. It's a lot nicer to have a European rocket program that happens to make lots of money on the commercial market so that the member states basically don't have to fund it. The current situation, where ArianeSpace doesn't win that many contracts, so it has to be heavily subsidized by member states is much more difficult. When it comes to politics, there are always more hungry mouths than there is available bread. |
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If everybody is a fool, and you are the best of them you can be successful. But once the race really starts and its not just US govenrment funded monopoly against European government funded monopoly, its gone be difficult.
> The current situation
Ariane 5 had some commercial success but rocket development was always funded by member states.