[chrizel]

You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus. Why should Europeans build their own aircrafts? Today I think a lot of people are happy, that Airbus exists to compensate for the problems that Boeing has. Competition is good and will lead to better solutions in the long run.

[rsynnott]

While I don't disagree, Airbus's origin was more or less the opposite of that; it was a merger of existing aircraft manufacturers. Both Airbus's creation, and Boeing's merger with McDonnell Douglas _decreased_ competition, and arguably neither should have been allowed.

[rob74]

Not sure about Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, but for the many European aircraft companies that first cooperated under the Airbus name and then (much later) merged into a single company, there wasn't really an alternative (unless you consider bankruptcy an alternative). Even in the late 1960s, when the original A300 was designed, that task was more expensive than any individual European manufacturer could shoulder, and without a new product, they would have quickly faded into irrelevance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus#1970%E2%80%9...

[JumpCrisscross]

> You could argue the same with Boeing vs. Airbus

You couldn't. Boeing and Airbus have pursued different strategies, both in design and production. There is very little actual duplication between their work. To the extent there is, it's in each de-risking different technologies and then the other, after seeing the results, rapidly catching up.

This is partly a reflection of commercial aviation being a relatively mature market. Both in the pace of required innovation (and regulation). And the fact that the difference between branching out and marching forward is difficult to know ex ante.

Put another way, the next steps in launch vehicles are relatively constrained. The goals aren't particularly unknown, just the path. For aviation, on the other hand, the goals are quite varied.