Ariane boss insists Europe’s new rocket can compete with Musk’s SpaceX

The new Ariane 6 rocket system will be competitive with Elon Musk’s SpaceX despite it lagging behind on reusable technology, said André-Hubert Roussel, CEO of Ariane Group, which runs the aerospace project.

The long-delayed Ariane 6 system should finally launch in the fourth quarter of 2023, and Roussel said that while it won’t include such cost-slashing technology as SpaceX it could eventually be possible to carry out a launch every two weeks, though only up to 12 in a full calendar year.

“Ariane 6 is the guarantee of autonomous access to space for Europe,” Roussel told POLITICO, while confirming tentative plans to carry out a maiden launch of the next-generation rocket by the close of next year, though the first full-scale commercial launch will only happen in 2024.

SpaceX has transformed the commercial satellite and spacecraft launch market over recent years with the advent of reusable technology which cuts the cost of production and increases the frequency of launches.

While Musk tweeted on Thursday that SpaceX had carried out 48 launches so far in 2022, Roussel insists Ariane 6 already has 29 launches booked including a major deal with e-commerce giant Amazon.

There’s a lot riding on the new Ariane rocket because Russia’s war on Ukraine means the backup Russian-made Soyuz system can no longer be launched from Europe’s spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana.

Because the launch of Ariane 6 has been delayed, and its predecessor Ariane 5, a long-standing workhorse of the commercial launch market, is fully booked, a series of missions have been pushed back.

The Paris-based European Space Agency has been looking at alternative options, including launching some European satellites with SpaceX instead.

But Roussel says that Ariane 6 will be ready for the launch of French military satellites and new Galileo spacecraft, part of the EU’s own geolocation constellation, and warned that Europe shouldn’t simply replace dependence on Russia with America.

“America is a strong ally but nevertheless it’s a dependency and that’s never good,” he said.

He wants the Continent’s space ministers to back plans to develop technologies that would make up Ariane 7, which would include reusable technology and could also allow human spaceflight, when they meet in Paris in November.