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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.