> Arianne 6 is not about competition, but about strategic independence at the first place
That’s what the Starliner folks said. The fault in their argument was ignoring scale effects.
Ariane 6 buys Europe zero practical launch independence, other than maintaining the workforce (and accompanying skill set). If SpaceX blocks Europe, it’s game over for any constellation operator and, in all likelihood, the European commercial space sector.
Ariane 6 hopes to do 10 launches per year by 2030. That’s a few weeks’ Falcon 9s today. Each Ariane 6 launch requires subsidies to be competitive, and that’s assuming Arianespace’s forecasts hold. (They haven’t.) Every one of those euros could be used, instead, on R&D.
Ariane 6 uses cryogenic fuel. It has no landing system, mass-manufacturing site or refurbishment elements. That means that none of the foundational technologies for reusable launch are being worked on. (Ariane 5E would have been a strategic hedge. But Paris wouldn’t have it.)
It is completely irrelevant how much Falcon 9 cost if political leadership of USA is unreliable and unstable. Flacon 9 could be flying for free, but if you could lose access to it any time, it is like it does not exist.
> Flacon 9 could be flying for free, but if you could lose access to it any time, it is like it does not exist
The point is Ariane 6 enables nothing new. If SpaceX blocks Europe for some reason, with or without Ariane 6, Europe isn't going to have a LEO constellation. Keeping Ariane 5 (5ME [1]) and developing a reusable platform would have been a smarter use of resources. (It aso wasn't particularly daring, either, over the last decade.) Instead, the ESA gets stuck with SLS but for Brussels.
Falcon 9's fuel is cooled slightly, if not cryogenic (RP-1 becomes denser when cold), and of course Starship uses cryogenic methane. And they both use liquid oxygen, although that's an oxidizer, not a fuel.
You can't have that strategic independence in the long term is your capability falls more and more behind others in terms of technology and costs. This also has a ripple effect on your industry at large: Would European companies use this European independent launch capability if it was costly and obsolete? No. Would the European military be able to compete against adversaries? No.
An extreme illustration: would you say that Spain had strategic independent seafaring capability if it had maintained fleet a galleons to this day?
> Would European companies use this European independent launch capability if it was costly and obsolete?
If USA will go hermit mode like at the end of 19th century, then they will have no other choice. And we certainly have signs of US wanting to go into isolation.
SpaceX is the only medium-heavy lift provider in the West with free space on their manifest right now. Sure they're constantly launching Starlink, but their entire offering is that if someone else needs to launch a payload, they'll just repurpose a launch that would otherwise be carrying Starlink (since external launches come with a profit, while Starlink launches are at internal cost).
Vulcan's capacity for a year or so is already booked, and Ariane 6 is also fully booked for several years out. Others in the class are approaching first flight, but still lacking enough information to book a launch on.
Ariane 6 is booked for years, SpaceX use most of their launches to put Starlink satellites in orbit. They have a lot of capacity to sell more launches, actually.
