ArianeGroup to cut 2300 jobs
Capitalism in space: Faced with a significant loss of market share, taken by SpaceX, the European rocket manufacturer ArianeGroup has announced it will reduce its staffing by 2,300 jobs by 2022.
A joint venture by European aerospace company Airbus and the French group Safran, it currently employs 9,000 people in France and Germany. Constructor of the Ariane rockets, the European Space Agency workhorse, ArianeGroup also produces ballistic missiles.
Ariane 5 rockets are soon to be replaced by the Ariane 6 which will be an estimated 40 percent cheaper to make, under pressure in particular from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
But European buyers have so far ordered only three Ariane 6 rockets ahead of the first scheduled launch in 2020.
The article at the link, produced by a French news service, is somewhat amusing. It repeatedly blames the lack of demand for the Ariane 6 on the U.S. government, which provides business to SpaceX. It doesn’t mention that ArianeGroup’s Ariane 6 rocket meanwhile is being built with government funds from the European Space Agency, and once completed in the 2020s will have a launch price that exceeds that of the Falcon 9 today. No wonder it hasn’t garnered many customers.
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Capitalism in space: Faced with a significant loss of market share, taken by SpaceX, the European rocket manufacturer ArianeGroup has announced it will reduce its staffing by 2,300 jobs by 2022.
A joint venture by European aerospace company Airbus and the French group Safran, it currently employs 9,000 people in France and Germany. Constructor of the Ariane rockets, the European Space Agency workhorse, ArianeGroup also produces ballistic missiles.
Ariane 5 rockets are soon to be replaced by the Ariane 6 which will be an estimated 40 percent cheaper to make, under pressure in particular from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
But European buyers have so far ordered only three Ariane 6 rockets ahead of the first scheduled launch in 2020.
The article at the link, produced by a French news service, is somewhat amusing. It repeatedly blames the lack of demand for the Ariane 6 on the U.S. government, which provides business to SpaceX. It doesn’t mention that ArianeGroup’s Ariane 6 rocket meanwhile is being built with government funds from the European Space Agency, and once completed in the 2020s will have a launch price that exceeds that of the Falcon 9 today. No wonder it hasn’t garnered many customers.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
It’s very much a canard for Ariane to complain about the US gov’t. I’m not aware of any *paid* US gov’t missions flying on Ariane rockets.
Seems silly to complain about business that Ariane never had, nor were they ever going to get.
We can cut Ariane some slack. What SpaceX has done isn’t just a simple innovation in chemical rockets but a paradigm shift. These types of shifts are not things that can always be anticipated.
Now that Ariane is aware of the shift, they can choose to change. But change to what? What is the purpose of ArianeGroup?
Everything depends on how they define their purpose. Since they are not entirely a business, their purpose wont be to act like one. Their purpose could be to serve their government’s interests, in which case the cost of launch and attracting commercial customers might not matter.
The Ariane “case” against SpaceX is pretty much as follows:
1) It costs SpaceX about the same to launch a GEO comsat as it costs us.
2) We barely make any money at current prices.
3) Therefore, SpaceX barely makes any money launching comsats.
4) SpaceX charges more for U.S. government launches than for commercial comsat launches.
5) Therefore, that price difference is government subsidy and the only thing that keeps SpaceX going.
Problem for Ariane? Of these five propositions, only 4) is actually true. U.S. government launches come with a lot of hoop-jumping and paperwork. SpaceX charges about 50% above the standard commercial rate to cover all this. CRS missions to ISS cost about double the standard commercial rate as SpaceX is also providing the payload (Dragon) as well as the launcher. The same will be at least as true of Dragon2.
Other aspects of Ariane’s ludicrous “case” are also self-negating. SpaceX’s increase in launch cadence has been driven mostly by doing more commercial launches – not the pattern one would expect to see if government launches were really the firm’s sole source of real sustenance.
I think, at some level, the worthies at ArianeGroup must understand that this “case” they put out for public consumption is simply garbage. But they’ve been seriously rocked back on their heels even if, unlike the luckless Russians, they haven’t yet been put entirely out of the game. They need to say something for the European general public and the Euro-politicos. This is what they’ve decided to say.