Starship has successfully launched more than Ariane 6. The only reason they aren't launching payloads right now is because they want to nail down reuse first.
There's less info on New Glenn, but a lot more footage has come out since David Limp took over. And the DoD thinks Blue Origin has a good enough shot at launching this year that they added them to NSSLv3.
> Right now, Europe has a functioning rocket program under their own control.
> I think it's understandable for an engineering community to talk about the tech, but people seem to be forgetting the geopolitics.
Sure.
But that would have also been true if they'd just kept Ariane 5.
A lot of people are dumping on Ariane 6 because ArianeGroup spent a bunch of money and time to make a rocket that's not that much better than the previous one. When they could have made an actually competitive rocket instead.
Lol.
Starship has successfully launched more than Ariane 6. The only reason they aren't launching payloads right now is because they want to nail down reuse first.
There's less info on New Glenn, but a lot more footage has come out since David Limp took over. And the DoD thinks Blue Origin has a good enough shot at launching this year that they added them to NSSLv3.
> Right now, Europe has a functioning rocket program under their own control.
> I think it's understandable for an engineering community to talk about the tech, but people seem to be forgetting the geopolitics.
Sure.
But that would have also been true if they'd just kept Ariane 5.
A lot of people are dumping on Ariane 6 because ArianeGroup spent a bunch of money and time to make a rocket that's not that much better than the previous one. When they could have made an actually competitive rocket instead.