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A comment on Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket powers into space. Parent comment

Re:Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket powers into space by Rinzler89 on Wednesday July 10, 2024 @06:45AM (#40925575)
>Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized

All major aerospace companies and projects are heavily subsidized in every country otherwise they would never survive or even be born. Like how much profit did NASA make over its lifetime?

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Re:Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket powers into space by Cthulhu_ on Wednesday July 10, 2024 @08:20AM (#40926085)
NASA is a government agency though, so it doesn't have profit generation as its target. And that's fine, neither does the US army or any other government branch except for the tax office.
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Re:Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket powers into space by ambicapter on Wednesday July 10, 2024 @10:20AM (#40927211)
Right? At a certain point, governments are the only entities that can afford to send things to space. "Highly-subsidized" here just means "government is 99% of company's market base".
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Re:Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket powers into space by pfdietz on Wednesday July 10, 2024 @11:34AM (#40928089)
That certain point is in the past. Today, all sorts of private entities send things into space. As launch gets cheaper, private activities in space will dominate, if they don't already.
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