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Ramenastern t1_ixjqxd3 wrote

Reply to comment by panick21 in Berlin to Back French-Built Rockets in Race Against Musk by Soupjoe5

>Typical European, making this super awesome expensive thing, and then losing all that performance failing to do something that is comparatively easy and low tech. They have no mindset of iteratively improving, identifying bottlenecks and systematically improving those.

I'm not even disputing the assessment itself, but "typical European" is just unnecessary nonsense. A unit of Airbus builds and develops the Ariane 5 and 6, respectively, another unit of Airbus made a bit of a hash of the A400am military transport, while their commercial unit is currently absolutely dominating their US counterpart (which is also struggling in their military and space divisions) partly by doing exactly what you claim Europeans are unable of: iteratively improving, identifying bottlenecks and systematically improving those.

My point being - it's not about nationality/continent, it's about the capabilities of the organisation in question.

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panick21 t1_ixjtyba wrote

I am European and I was mostly talking about the rocket program.

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Ramenastern t1_ixl44p5 wrote

Thanks for clarifying, that didn't come across immediately for me.

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luvpaxplentytrue t1_ixk45pf wrote

How is airbus "dominating their US counterpart"? Where is the US "struggling in their military and space divisions"? This is complete nonsense.

The US exceeds the EU in space technology in almost every category. The ESA has a higher failure rate, less innovation, more cost, etc. ... Europe doesn't have any advantage over the USA in space technology.

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CosmosExpedition t1_ixkakit wrote

That comment from /u/Ramenastern was one of the more ignorant bits of wannabe analysis I’ve ever read on this sub lol

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Ramenastern t1_ixl3vzg wrote

Oh, you'll love Scott Hamilton's analyses of the state of Boeing commercial, then. Or even Richard Aboulafia's.

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Ramenastern t1_ixl3t55 wrote

>How is airbus "dominating their US counterpart"?

Have you seen market shares recently, especially in the narrowbody sector? Have you seen sales figures and delays for the 777X? Have you seen how Boeing tried to lobby away the CSeries instead of innovating, scoring an impressive own goal in the process as it ended up giving Airbus the CSeries platform? Have you heard about the MAX debacle and the one year delivery stop for the 787 due to quality issues? Are you aware of the previous 787 screw-ups that led to a) Airbus selling more A330s after the 787 was offered than before (noting the A330 was the plane the 787 was supposed to kill) and b) the programme hardly ever being able to recover its R&D costs?

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toodroot t1_ixkt7x0 wrote

The unit of Airbus that designed the A380, which had the wrong length wiring due to a French/German software mismatch, and then was only built for 14 years before running out of orders? I mean, Boeing commercial aircraft has had some disasters, but so has Airbus commercial. You definitely don't want to be the person throwing stones out of your glass house.

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