Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Ramenastern t1_ixjmhw1 wrote

There is that aspect to it, but it should be kept in mind that Ariane for the most part is a commercial operation, carrying commercial payloads, so it does have to be fairly competitive.

6

CosmosExpedition t1_ixk8xvd wrote

Ariane is too big to fail. Even if it was hemorrhaging money, either the French government would bail it out or a plan between the major European powers would probably be made to bail it out.

4

toodroot t1_ixks6v5 wrote

Arianespace is hemorrhaging money.

−2

toodroot t1_ixky2oa wrote

Yes, that on-time completion of Ariane 6 really helped their financials! That plus the Amazon order means they didn't need any launch subsidies in the most recent ESA budget.

Oh, wait.

3

CosmosExpedition t1_ixl1x7i wrote

Let’s completely ignore publicly available financial data because… reasons! Arianespace is not hemorrhaging money. There is no debate here.

Sorry.

−1

toodroot t1_ixl7bxy wrote

The article says that Arianespace expected to break even for 2021, including a subsidy.

How did 2022 turn out? Well, Arianespace had to give OneWeb some of their money back, Ariane 5 launched twice and one launch only had a single satellite, Vega C will probably launch twice, and woo hoo, 1 Soyuz launch in February.

3