ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehearsal

Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by mschuster91 on Thursday November 23, 2023 @08:57PM (#38399963)

Because Europeans are waaaay more risk averse. Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years.

We have completely lost visionary people ever since the fall of the USSR. Our politicians are mere managers (and often enough, they're extremely bad even in that role), our economy leaders largely only care about their own bottom line, and while our universities generally churn out decent graduates, they completely dropped the ball on innovation, research and actually retaining staff - made more difficult by the fact that we don't have absurd amounts of money sloshing around from donations, estates and other sources.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by spookie on Thursday November 23, 2023 @10:23PM (#38400376)

Please take a look around ESA endeavours before making such cynical claims. For one, take a look at ESO.

Comparing private companies to public funded ones is such a ill founded idea... I can't even begin to comprehend the optics of most in this thread, if I'm being honest.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by sofixa on Friday November 24, 2023 @04:26AM (#38402046)

> Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years

"Non-response". Renault had electric vehicles on the market in 2012 (Zoe), same year as the Tesla Model S. The BMW i3 came out in 2013. Different focus, slightly slower research for some groups to get a common platform (e.g. VW), but it's not like there was absolutely nothing and it took 10 years for European car manufacturers to realise EVs can work.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by di4na on Friday November 24, 2023 @05:41AM (#38402540)

Tbf, i was working at one at the time. Finding the space in the chassis for the battery and adapting it and suspension to the weight of an EV meant they had to develop platforms for EV nearly from scratch.

Without any idea of the market demand. At the current cost of developing new Platforms (a few billions), you could understand being risk adverse. Low sales would have killed the whole companies.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by sofixa on Friday November 24, 2023 @05:55AM (#38402650)

Especially for companies such as Renault who could share some R&D costs with Nissan, but are still quite small and a wrong bet can bankrupt them.

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Re:ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehea... by martin8412 on Friday November 24, 2023 @07:29AM (#38403293)

Considering what happened when Renault announced massive layoffs, I'd not be too happy jeopardising the company either.

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