Is that correct? Are/were Arianespace designs based on Russian rockets? I know that the US used Russian engines for years.
Basically Ariane 5 was only worth flying for double GEO launches. That was Okish because this was during a time period where there were a pretty decent amount of GEO launches. Europe had the tiny Vega rocket as well.
However between those two things the Russian Soyuz launched by Arianespace and Russian Proton rocket were successful.
> Are/were Arianespace designs based on Russian rockets?
Europes own rockets, like Ariane 5 and Vega are not meaningfully derived from Russian designs. The are more a product of copying from the post-Apollo, Shuttle area in US space flight. Basically Ariane 5 was suppose to be the base of a European Shuttle.
This is why Ariane 5 is so big, instead of doing the sensible thing and making a mid-sized rocket to take over all the market, they made a huge rocket so it can fly a big space plane (Hermes). And then of course they canceled the space plane but didn't reevaluate the rocket.
The Ariane 5 uses hydrogen core stage with side booster, so its basically like the Shuttle. Notably why these European designs can never be reusable like Falcon 9. The Core stage is way higher energy then the Falcon 9 Core stage.
Vega, Vega C, Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 all use solid fuels, something that Russians don't use much. Its basically a lot of research done by France on the ICBM program that is being use here.
> I know that the US used Russian engines for years.
This was a post cold war development of course. By that point Europe had started development on their own hydrogen engine and didn't have much interest in RP-1. Hydrogen and solids were the way to go, or so they thought.
I wish Europe had just picked up the Nk-33 and built a medium sized rocket with it.
You are ignoring that Airbus is also getting additional government contracts. Arianespace gets massive infrastructure subsidy, they are gone get at least 5 billion all said and told for Ariane 6, and that does not cover the last 20 years of sub-component level development for things like the engine and the solid fuel. Lots of the testing and development for sub-components is all done in govenrment funded institutions that all have their own public funding.
In addition to Arianespace has received lots of 'contracts' for development of things like engines, carbon fiber second stages, different re-usability prototypes and the list goes on.
And when all that is done, Ariane 6 will STILL GET GOVERNMENT contracts, such as launches from ESA, EU governments projects like Galileo and countries own launches.
SpaceX actually likely lost money on development of Dragon 1 and Crew Dragon. The had incredibly competitive bids and the govenrment got absolutely amazing deals by anybodies accounting.
For Arianespace to claim SpaceX is subsidized and that's why they can launch cheaper is simply the height of hypocrisy and and Arianespace actually knows that they are outright lying when they say that.
The reality is Arianespace and Europe dominated the market for 20 years and barley made any technological or price progress in that time. Even in the 2010s they mostly launched Russian rockets developed in the 1960s. If that's not a complete failure I don't know what is.