Slashdot Mirror
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."
Europe (including large contribution from France) is a world leader in space launch. Arianespace is holding around 60% of commercial launch market. But Europeans are really worried about SpaceX grabing a large part of the market.
(Disclosure: I am French :-) )
Uhhh, you realise that Ariane 5 has launched many many many missions successfully, and has a better reliability record than the US's launch vehicles, right?
SpaceX is in fact the untested upstart in this situation.
It's not "now", it was already the case before. Like for the air refueling tanker for the air force a few years ago.
Just to be sure that you understand correctly my previous comment, in the air refuelling bid, it's when the european (mainly French/German) Airbus/EADS did win the contract that the US decided to cancel it and restart it (so that Boeing get a second chance)
Yea 'Merica!
Why is Snark Required?
Uh, give another go at history. The British army was the homeland army in the US and the actual resident armed force. Yours was a secession war that effectively created your national identity (or officialized it, depends on the point of view). The only real foreign attack you had on your soil was Pearl Harbor, and that wasn't an invasion.
There was this war in 1812 when the British and a bunch of natives from Canada burned down the White house. During the war the US did have enemy soldiers on US soil. But that war ended in a stalemate. One of the things that did happen, though, is that the US was discouraged from further attacks on Canada and it paved the way for Canada to become an independent nation while keeping British ties.
Actually no. If you look at same time periods, america has a much better record than Europe. However, you are right that over the last 10 years, Europe has had more private launches. But spacex has been 100% successful with the 13 f9, and is on track to do more than 15 launches next year.
so u can pretend that spacex is not a threat, but the launch world sees it correctly for what it is. More so, come next week.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.