Atheism doesn't propose such a thing. It's just the philosophical standpoint that denies the existence of deities. That's all. Topics such as afterlife, souls and other metaphysical stuff is outside of its scope. There are schools of Buddhism that deny the existence of god but believe in reincarnations.

Atheism isn't a believe system. Same as "not stamp collecting" isn't hobby. Not believing in god doesn't mean a person can't believe in other supernatural stuff (UFOs, chakras, whatever).

BTW, the view that you describe about reality not existing outside of your own mind is called solipsism. That position stands on epistemological shaky grounds though.

If the left are alive and well, it doesn't reflect at the voting booth. The current opposition for example is dominated by a centrist party. The classical leftist parties barely get enough votes to enter parliament, if at all.

Yeah, going full kerolox in the first stage would have been better. I think it was because of politics, in particular pressure from the French. They were (and still are) leading the project. They wanted solid fuel to subsidize their military rocket developments, and kerolox would have made that unnecessary. This was the constraints I was talking about. In aerospace often times politics are more important than the engineering itself.

In A6 you can see this too. At the beginning it was envisioned as having a purely solid first stage, but the Germans wanted to keep building large tanks. Basically it was planned as a larger Vega, but instead we've got a shrunken A5.

True. But A4 had one major problem: the fuel. Not only was extremely toxic, difficult to handle and ecological concerning, but the French were transitioning to solid fuel for their SLBMs. The supply of hydrazine would then become a problem. A new design became necessary, one that could use the the solid fuel rockets the French were developing. Essentially they copied the approach the Americans were using for the shuttle system: A big, low thrust first stage burning hydrogen with some big strap-on boosters for the initial kick.

They hoped the solid fuel would keep the costs down, in combination of dual launching satellites. The market caught up with them though. The Russians and the Chinese opened their market and sold launches much cheaper.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the A5 was badly designed. It made sense with the constraints the Europeans were working with. But like the shuttle the system didn't became as profitable as they hoped for.

Countries have a strategic need for independent access to space. Navigation, intelligence and communication infrastructure in space has become vital, and if states have to rely on other countries they become dependent on them. So, Europe is going to build rockets whether F9 or Starship exists or not.

Europe just got lucky with the Ariane 4. It was the F9 of its days: cheap, reliable and accessible. It paid for itself which made it popular to politicians who have to explain the funding to the tax payers.