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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."
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!
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.
an idiotic remark that is inconsequential to anything.
Is it? I'm really surprised that Airbus had the chutzpah (or political naivete).
You see, Airbus gets quite a bit of help from the governments of Europe -- subsidies, contracts; I wouldn't be surprised if they had a major hand in the mergers that formed the company in the first place. Most likely, the lawmaker is thinking of Airbus as being little different from some wayward administrative division in his own bureaucracy, now in need of a rebuke for not supporting the government's agenda.
It's strange that the US pretends that space expeditions are a private enterprise and they expect everyone else to do the same. It's a French national/European project as is the Arianne programme. Of course they're going to use their own programme to pay their own people with money that came from their own tax-payers. That's what democratically elected governments are supposed to do, not implement stuff like NAFTA, TPP, etc. to impoverish your own people for personal financial gain and funding for party political campaigns.
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.
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.
Well, France (through Arianespace) actually IS the world leader in commercial space flight. At about the same level as Russia, depending on the metrics you use. The US are actually far behind.
Then why do you elect them?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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.
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.
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.
There's always the War of 1812 and the Burning of Washington..
-R C
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
When did America ever overthrow a King? And which nations King?
Seems so many Americans think they had a successful revolt where they marched on London, burned Parliament and hung the King when in reality they seceded from the British Empire (or whatever it was officially called) with lots of French help and even then they couldn't even beat the local French, who also helped burn down the White House a few decades longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
No, because he gets a cut of the $200 million, and zero of the $10 million.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I am a big fan of SpaceX but it is hard to compare this. You can't realistically lump in all of USA made boosters and compare them to a single rocket. But you can compare each company and rocket family individually.
Ariane 5 has been flying in various configurations since 1996, and after the first disastrous failure due to a software error, and 4 failures in its first 14 launches, it has over a decade without a single failure for 63 launches in a row.
Falcon 9 has a perfect record for 13 launches, but is much younger, only flying since 2010, so it is more difficult to compare reliability. However rockets tend to fail more early on. (see Ariane 5 for an example)
Both are excellent launch platforms, but it is likely that SpaceX's cost is less which makes it popular. Once they have the reusable system going, Falcon may become unmatched in price per launch.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Hmmm.
Europe's Ariane 5 has 2 failures and 2 partial failures on 77 launches.
ULA, has Delta IV has 1 partial failure on 28 launches
ULA has Atlas V has 1 partial failure in 51 launches.
And then SpaceX HAS been 100% successful, except for a test sat by orbcomm. But, even they were satisfied with the results. But, if you like, give them 1 partial failure on 13 launches
3 partial failures on 92 launches vs. 2 major failures and 2 partial failures on 77 launches.
I will take the numbers on the Americans, over Europe.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Except the orbital rocket is useless for satellite launches. So it doesn't really count.
If you instead focus only on rockets that are launch commercial GEO payloads, then the only american product is SpaceX. Every now and then ULA does a commercial GEO launch, but its a tiny volume.
The really important factor is both ULA, Ariane and the Russians are old school space. SpaceX is silicon valley space, and so far, they model is making every competitor sweat. Like Elon Musk said in the first years of SpaceX, rockets have evolved little since the 70s. In a lot of ways SpaceX has evolved space affordability by leaps and bounds since the F9R rocket became fully operational and enabled SpaceX to launch (less than 4 ton) GEO satellites.
If the Falcon Heavy achieves the same success as F9R, it will undercut every SpaceX competitor in price even without reusability, and with first stage reusability its game over for every rocket currently operational in the world. SpaceX will be able to offer prices at least 50% cheaper than any competitor (in most cases 70-80% cheaper).