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Ariane 5 Has No Chance, Says Elon Musk
Dupple writes with some remarks by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, as reported by the BBC, on the Ariane 5 launch vehicle: Musk is anything but a disinterested party, but he has some especially harsh words for the ESA rocket: "'I don't say that with a sense of bravado but there's really no way for that vehicle to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. If I were in the position of Ariane, I would really push for an Ariane 6.' Ariane's future will be a key topic this week for European Space Agency (Esa) member states. They are meeting in Naples to determine the scope and funding of the organisation's projects in the next few years, and the status of their big rocket will be central to those discussions."
It's a scam in the same way that all heavyweight electric vehicles are in the real world. Half a billion dollars of Federal "loans" has produced resource intensive toys with poorer than advertised range and performance, that catch fire, the batteries brick themselves, and even even if everything worked, the majority of the electricity used to charge them is still coming from fossil sources and will continue to do so until well after the extant Teslas are being shoved into landfills.
If they worked, and if we had enough grid capacity to charge them and if a lot (a lot) more electricity came from renewable sources and if those renewable sources weren't themselves a financially and fossil-energy subsidised techno-welfare scam... then they'd be just dandy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.