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Airbus Attacked By French Lawmaker For Talking To SpaceX
schwit1 (797399) writes A French lawmaker lashed out at Airbus for daring to consider SpaceX as a possible launch option for a European communications satellite. "The senator, Alain Gournac, who is a veteran member of the French Parliamentary Space Group, said he had written French Economy and Industry Minister Emmanuel Macron to protest Airbus' negotiations with Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp. for a late 2016 launch instead of contracting for a launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket. "The negotiations are all the more unacceptable given that, at the insistence of France, Europe has decided to adopt a policy of 'European preference' for its government launches," Gournac said. "This is called playing against your team, and it smacks of a provocation. It's an incredible situation that might lead customers to think we no longer have faith in Ariane 5 — and tomorrow, Ariane 6."
French Lawmakers have bigger balls than american lawmakers who encourage companies to off shore jobs
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Hurry up and surrender so you can go back to eating cheese and drinking wine.
It can't be any more humiliating than your quick surrender to Germany.
We already know that whenever there is a headline that contains "French Lawmaker" it is going to be an idiotic remark that is inconsequential to anything. We might as well just ignore whatever French Lawmakers say.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The complaint here is that a government owned corporation and subsidized company is daring to send business to somebody else other than a government owned and subsidized company. Did anybody expect a different kind of reply?
Maybe we can follow this up with another nice story about H1Bs that will draw 250 responses, 90 plus percent on the protectionist side.
If you own your own car, and it is standing in the driveway why hire one?
Airbus is a big company that has to play out in the big world. Perhaps it's not that they have lost faith in Ariane, but that the SpaceX cost is lower by a substantial margin.
Its called protectionism. Its also true that a single launch can keep 100 million US dollars in a country or out of a country depending on where it goes. Given that it amounts to +- 100 million, thats a total of $200 million, and I can see a lot of politicians doing this. And yet even though Europe engages in protectionism like this, the US is blindly offshoring jobs, and the Canadian Government is fighting with regions within Canada over a European trade deal (the Europeans want broader access while giving up nothing in order to sign the deal, the regions affected don't want to lose millions in business for nothing, and the Federal Government wants to push the locals instead of negotiating harder with Europe. Stupid.
If they had to run a company they'd run it into the ground instead of towards success. That's why they're politicians. Airbus, not the most efficient of global corporations, can remain a profitable concern only by making rational commercial decisions. If that means negotiating with a non-European supplier then the good French senator Alain Gournac ought to find out why Ariane 5 (or 6) were deficient and figure out how to make them competitive. But that would require the Monsieur Gournac to pull his thumb outta his ass and do some real work. Non, pas acceptable!
I bet the same guy will cry hoarse should a future US contract be awarded to Boeing instead of Airbus, under a hypothetical "America first" policy.
The summary neglects to mention that Airbus is also the prime contractor on the sameself Ariane 5 they're snubbing.
All governments prop up their launch industries. Yes, this includes the US government supporting SpaceX: they wouldn't have made it through their early difficulties without NASA support. Elon Musk readily acknowledges this, its more his libertarian fanboys wanting to hold up as some paragon of the all-conquering private sector.
That said, Ariane 5 is now looking a bit subsidy heavy, despite it being a very commercially successful launcher for years. This is why they are trying to make Ariane 6 much cheaper. If this doesn't work, or rather can't be made to work without an unacceptable subsidy, ESA really needs to look towards Skylon.
... he probably also hopes that other countries around the world will consider buying and using products and services that originate in the EU. Just so long as people in the EU can't shop around. Like he hopes others will do, and wind up spending money in France. I'm trying to think of a better word than "hypocrisy." How do you say "Greenpeace" in French?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
SpaceX's costs to put a similar payload into the same orbit are much lower. Ariane 5: http://www.spaceflight101.com/ariane-5-eca.html. SpaceX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy.
"Gonna play the sue me, sue you... blues!"
lawmaker has no significance.
he's a people representative, a senator.
as a senator, he can tell his advice to the government
what will the US people (or representatives) reaction if Boeing has discussions with Ariane Espace to launch a satellite ?
apparently it is okay now to just exclude france from any contract openly.
Thanks france.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yea 'Merica!
Why is Snark Required?
Except that Airbus is not government owned and it's no more subsidized than any other aerospace firm.
It would be more accurate to say that a French politician is complaining that the French subsidiary of a Dutch multinational corporation is choosing an American launch vehicle instead of one offered by the German subsidiary of that very same Dutch multinational corporation.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Next year, if spacex continues their launch increase, they will be the leaders. And considering that spacex will be able to cut their prices in half while doubling number of launches, it appears that nobody will catch up for some time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ariane 5 has 73 successful out of 77. F9 is 13 out of 13. By end of next year, spacex is expected to be over 30 launches.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah, got to just love the spell checkers on android.
That IS pretty damn funny.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5
You are confusing Airbus with Airbus Defence and Space. Airbus is not involved at all in SpaceX decision.
Except that Airbus is not government owned and it's no more subsidized than any other aerospace firm.
Airbus is exclusively an aircraft producer, not spacecraft. It is true that this part of Airbus Group is the most commercially oriented.
In fact, it generates 70% of the Group's profit. However, the other parts of Airbus Group, and in particular Airbus Defence and Space,
which is the only relevant part to this discussion, are 90% dependent on government in practice.
of a Dutch multinational corporation
Airbus Group is not a Dutch multinational. It is simply registered in Netherlands for corporate tax-benefits.
French politician is complaining that the French subsidiary
Your wikipedia link to "French subsidiary" is a link to Airbus. Airbus is an aircraft producer, not spacecraft, so it is not
involved in SpaceX decision at all. Airbus Defence and Space is involved in this decision.
by the German subsidiary
Airbus Defence and Space is not a German subsidiary. It consists of independent companies from France, Germany, UK
and other EU mignon-states. These companies like to pretend on paper they are unified. France has the largest share of ADS, then Germany, then UK.
is the rest of the world gonna realize that the french are just too annoying to put up with anymore? What the world needs to do is to completely isolate france from the rest of the world economically, comunications wise, and physically (no one alowed out, only french speaking morons allowed in) and in all other ways.
You are confusing Airbus with Airbus Defence and Space. Airbus is not involved at all in SpaceX decision.
You are correct, my mistake.
Airbus Group is not a Dutch multinational. It is simply registered in Netherlands for corporate tax-benefits.
Sorry, but regardless of the reason for being registered in the Netherlands it still makes it a Dutch multinational corporation. But I'll compromise and call it a Dutch registered, French headquartered multinational corporation.
Airbus Defence and Space is not a German subsidiary. It consists of independent companies from France, Germany, UK and other EU mignon-states. These companies like to pretend on paper they are unified. France has the largest share of ADS, then Germany, then UK.
Yeah, no. According to ADS's own website those companies were consolidated into ADS as a German based division (i.e. subsidiary) of AG.
And regardless of who owns the shares, government or otherwise, AG is still a publicly traded company that owns ADS.
So I will amend my original post to say that a French politician is complaining that the German division [wikipedia.org] of a Dutch registered, French headquartered multinational corporation [wikipedia.org] is choosing an American launch vehicle instead of one offered by the very same German division of that very same Dutch registered, French headquartered multinational corporation.
Feel better.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
ADS as a German based division
It is technically correct that ADS headquarters (paper shuffling office) are now in Germany. This was done in recent restructuring of EADS into AG. They have to share stuff between France and Germany, to make the corporate/political leaches happy, so Germany got ADS headquarters. But in day-to-day engineering work, largest share of space activities (factories) of ADS are in France, then Germany, and then UK. And these three branches of ADS are very competitive between each other. For instance, processes in French branch, differ from processes in Germany, and they actively try to sabotage each other. UK is a wannabe feeding of breadcrumbs thrown to it by the big boys. How ADS appears on paper does not match day to day work of engineers at ADS. In any case, what is today's AG organization, will not be tomorrow's as AG has been restructured so many times, that engineers working there no longer care about it.
You keep talking about the work. I'm talking about the politics and the accounting. We're both right.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.