[cwizou]

> But at what cost? Arianespace hasn't publicly disclosed the cost for an Ariane 6 launch, although it's likely somewhere in the range of 80 million to 100 million euros, about 40 percent lower than the cost of an Ariane 5. This is about 50 percent more than SpaceX's list price for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch.

I'm slightly surprised it's only 50% more expensive than a dedicated F9 launch. I would have thought it to be much worse. Non reusable means low cadence : there are only five Ariane 6 flights scheduled for 2025. Commercially, it's not great, but the article goes on explaining the importance of having a pure EU solution.

But it's certainly a bit of a cope out to for Arianespace, while sovereignty is definitely becoming an issue, reading the article, it's pretty clear that they are pushing that PR angle a bit too hard. That allows them to shove aside the many many fumblings around reusability that happened in the previous years. They do have a new CEO since January, though.

It looks like they finally started assembly a few months ago for a "hopper" test vehicle for basically what would be a F9 class launcher (expected to be operational in the 2030s) : <https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Fu...>

ESA is also pushing for studying a heavier reusable launcher : https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Fu...

[orwin]

Falcon9 cost is 70Million commercially, Soyuz 50 Million (it was cheaper for EASA when soyuz was based in Guyana, but still).

Since SpaceX seems to be aligned with russia in the forseeable future, i don't see why we should use SpaceX instead of Soyuz if sovereignty is not an issue.

[hagbard_c]

> Since SpaceX seems to be aligned with russia in the forseeable future

Why do you think this to be the case? Or, to rephrase it, do you actually think this to be the case?

[jszymborski]

> But it's certainly a bit of a cope out to for Arianespace, while sovereignty is definitely becoming an issue, reading the article, it's pretty clear that they are pushing that PR angle a bit too hard. That allows them to shove aside the many many fumblings around reusability that happened in the previous years. They do have a new CEO since January, though.

I think you're underestimating the urgency with which Western nations are trying to reduce their dependency on the US, who have over-night become isolationist and frankly hostile to other Western democracies.