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Europe Spaceworthy Again

Posted by michael on from the watch-out-for-patriot-missiles dept.

Soft writes "After last february's retirement of the Ariane 4 and last year's failure of the uprated Ariane 5 EC-A, an Ariane 5G ("generic") successfully launched two communications satellites tonight. Stories at SpaceflightNow and the BBC. Atlas, Delta, watch out, we're still game!"

5 of 13 comments (clear)

  1. That's fine by kriston · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You need not worry about too much competition from the Titan program unless you have heavy-launch capability. The US doesn't even have enough Titans to launch the next-generation spy satellites even if they were finished in time to replace the existing spy satellites. There is a good piece on this in a recent issue of "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" (http://www.bulletin.org/).

    Kris

    --

    Kriston

    1. Re:That's fine by kriston · · Score: 4, Informative

      Naturally it's actually http://www.thebulletin.org/.

      Kris

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      Kriston

  2. More significantly ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    India has decided to stick with Ariane for it's next two satellite launches.

  3. I've been waiting to launch Europe into space by Rares+Marian · · Score: 2, Funny

    Reasons:

    1. Bunch of ingrates
    2. Tony Blair; there's only room for one GWB in this world
    3. Trendy electronic music, wait is Aphex Twin from Europe? Damn!

    --
    The message on the other side of this sig is false.
  4. not the same engine that blew up by rsdavis9 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I read somewhere that this used an older first stage engine that had successfully flown before. The malfunction of the previous flight was with a new advanced first stage and it had to be destroyed when it went off course. So they havent even flown the problematic engine yet. So I guess this flight proves nothing as to whether ariane is space worthy again.

    bob