Also looking at the recent article about internal ESA issues, it seems that it is very corrupted by the lack of external control (being exteritorial corporation) and two tier "caste" system. I'm imagining a fossilized organization, where higher caste is busy engaged in the internal politics, securing their positions and preventing lower caste to gaining any benefits, suppressing any good ideas from the lower rank employees to prevent them showing you are not good enough. Not saying that all them are like that, but even some significant amount can grind whole company to a halt. Throw in malicious compliance, bureaucracy etc. and we have a picture.

Sounds quite a bit like the EU itself.

Unfortunately very similar, yes.

> The big difference is that ESA is essentially a government entity, much like NASA

The relationship between ESA and Arianespace is not necessarily that fundamentally different to that of NASA and SpaceX. Arianespace is only partially state owned (it's a join venture of two publicaclly traded companies) and in some ways it was the SpaceX of the 80s and 90s.Ariane 4 was very competitive and at some point had the majority of the commercial satellite launch market.

Of course like the rest of Europe stagnation has set in and it was left behind over the last 10-20 years.

Note that an approach similar to Arianespace has worked quite well in the past, you have probably heard of it: Airbus. Imagine a world without SpaceX: Arianespace would be considered quite successful. I wouldn't say that Arianespace is weak (relative to the rest of the competition) - it's just that SpaceX is very strong.

Note that they are with... some? success trying to greatly reduce costs as a response to SpaceX. Have you heard of any other launcher company trying that recently?

> Arianespace has worked quite well in the past, you have probably heard of it: Airbus

Airbus owns 50% of Arianespace so it makes sense.

> Have you heard of any other launcher company trying that recently?

I guess the issue is that it's such a big market and there isn't a lot of competition and everything is partially or mostly subsidized by governments (through NASA or ESA) how all have their own agendas which introduces a massive amount of inefficiencies. It's not like Ariane 6 would have ever been developed for entirely commercial purposes.