> They are planning some form of reusability in the future, just because they have to, if they want to drastically reduce costs [0].

That looks promising at least.

> A thing that is not happening is letting private companies innovate in this space in Europe, as Ariane is still mostly government funded in the EU.

I'm not sure how true that is. I was part of an ESA project around ~2009, and some of my friends are in the space industry. It seems to be mostly private sector companies working together with ESA. You're right that it's not the same as SpaceX, but I don't think it's the case that ESA isn't "letting" private companies innovate.

Ariane 6 is a worthy competitor to the Falcon 9 -- if it hadn't become partially reusable. If it had reached the market 15 years ago, it could have been relevant.

Ariane Next could be a worthy competitor to the Falcon 9R, if they manage to get it to market by, say, 2020. Looks like they're planning to be about 15 years late to market there as well.

They've also got a fully-reusable Starship competitor in the works -- can't be bothered to dig up the link for it, sorry -- which if the schedule holds, should hit the market about 20 years after Starship enters commercial service.

> A thing that is not happening is letting private companies innovate in this space in Europe, as Ariane is still mostly government funded in the EU.

To name a few (albeit not all private): Avio (Italy), HyImpulse Technologies (Germany), Isar Aerospace (Germany), MaiaSpace (France), PLD Space (Spain), Rocket Factory Augsburg (Germany) and Latitude (France).

There are a couple of companies in the UK and Germany developing new rockets https://moontomars.space/space-companies/top-10-european-spa...

But yes SpaceX got a lot right and it is dominating the market even from US competitors

It's good that Ariane exists, but it would be better to have competition

>as the organization did not believe it was a good direction.

Kinda infuriating -- almost arrogant -- we're behind the US in space technology yet the ESA is insisting it knows the right way forward when a very promising path was actively being set and yet they outright dismissed it.

Ariane Espace isn't the ESA. The ESA put money into the Ariane program, it's not the same. Ariane Espace is a French commercial company with many links to ESA, but its primary mission is to ensure France's civil and military access to space. This has been extended to other European countries, but France holds more than 60% of the shares, the launch site, the transport and assembly infrastructure, and is responsible for the defence of the site, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianespace

The French government wanted a reliable way of sending heavy observation satellites into geostationary orbit. This explains many of Ariane's design choices. Civil and commercial activity are just extra or bonus way of cutting costs.

For example, one of Ariane lesser-known activities is to produce ballistic missiles for the French strike force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M51_(missile)

Good answer, the european space program is just a spinoff of the french ICBM program nothing else; it also explains the reluctance of other countries to finance it, like anything approaching the french military industry, because you know french are imperialistic, I known, I'm french \s.

Imperialism, I call that General de Gaulle's France! Anyone who says otherwise is a traitor to the homeland, American or Russian bootlickers! \s

More seriously, France often has a non-aligned or sovereign vision of its programmes, which makes many European countries uncomfortable, as they don't really want to assert any form of independence from the USA.