>Compared to NASA's Senate Launch System, Ariane 6 is shaping up to be a paragon of on-time, under-budget aerospace engineering excellence.
Kinda, but that's also somewhat beside the point. The true differentiator is that the US didn't ONLY go for SLS, it also (in a fortunate, far from guaranteed happy turn of events) funded Commercial Cargo and Crew in a very serious way. So now in 2023 whatever happens with SLS in the end, it no longer actually matters that much strategically. SpaceX is there, and indeed is the big reason why SLS will likely ultimately get killed in the end. The EU in contrast has stuck to its big government pork guns, even right up to this year! "European launch chief insists there be no competition with Ariane rockets" [0] from January for example. And while there are at last some minimal halting steps towards getting a commercial market going, again it's still absolute pocket change compared to what NASA did ("Nearly two decades after NASA, China and Europe eye commercial cargo plans" [1]), it's not the serious accelerator Europe really needs.
Europe absolutely has the population, economy, technology and manufacturing chops to support a serious space effort, but it's not going to come purely from existing institutions anymore than it did in the US. The EU really needs to at least get a serious parallel track going.
Kinda, but that's also somewhat beside the point. The true differentiator is that the US didn't ONLY go for SLS, it also (in a fortunate, far from guaranteed happy turn of events) funded Commercial Cargo and Crew in a very serious way. So now in 2023 whatever happens with SLS in the end, it no longer actually matters that much strategically. SpaceX is there, and indeed is the big reason why SLS will likely ultimately get killed in the end. The EU in contrast has stuck to its big government pork guns, even right up to this year! "European launch chief insists there be no competition with Ariane rockets" [0] from January for example. And while there are at last some minimal halting steps towards getting a commercial market going, again it's still absolute pocket change compared to what NASA did ("Nearly two decades after NASA, China and Europe eye commercial cargo plans" [1]), it's not the serious accelerator Europe really needs.
Europe absolutely has the population, economy, technology and manufacturing chops to support a serious space effort, but it's not going to come purely from existing institutions anymore than it did in the US. The EU really needs to at least get a serious parallel track going.
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0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/european-launch-chie...
1: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/china-and-europe-both-...