I think I have almost never used one, but I knew somebody who commuted to school across the lake.

There is actually public transport across the lake. And its included in the same standard ticket. That should really be on the map.

VG has raised a shit ton of money that they are burning.

Not sure why its complex, one company has money the other doesn't.

Neither has a future, but one still has money.

> This was the constraints I was talking about.

A self imposed constraint is not a constraint.

> In aerospace often times politics are more important than the engineering itself.

And it often makes the difference between a great design and a not so great one.

I am European and I was mostly talking about the rocket program.

I defiantly agree they should not have continued with the A4.

> Essentially they copied the approach the Americans were using for the shuttle system: A big, low thrust first stage burning hydrogen with some big strap-on boosters for the initial kick.

Lessen Nr.1, copy from Von Braun or the Soviets, not post-Apollo NASA.

> in combination of dual launching satellites.

This was actually a major mistake, it limited the number of launches, limiting their options for mass production and they were not able to dominating both mid and large market.

> It made sense with the constraints the Europeans were working with. But like the shuttle the system didn't became as profitable as they hoped for.

I disagree that it made sense. If they can develop a GG hydrogen rocket, they could have developed a GG RP-1 rocket.

That requires banks to lend those companies money, or investors to pay that until they get some money from the contracts. Given that these companies are unproven this is unlikely to happen.

Maybe for some tiny projects, and that would make sense to build up the industry, but not for really serious stuff.

People need to understand. The Ariane 6 is literally a slightly upgraded Ariane 5 that was already planned. The engine of the upper stage for example had been in development for decades. And the same goes for the boosters. Vulcan was just slightly upgraded from 2.0 to 2.1 and that was also part of Ariane 5 ES development.

And despite that, Ariane 6 development is gone end up costing some 5 billion$. That is more then the whole cost of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, re-usability development, Falcon Heavy and Raptor development combined. And that 5$ billion does not include all the cost for all those parts that had been in development already.

In addition, from the start of development in 2014ish, it will take them almost 10 years for this slightly improved Ariane 5.

This is just the same show over again. They are designing a rocket now, to compete if what SpaceX had a few years ago. In about 12 years when this rocket might actually fly and then a few years after that when they have actually managed to reuse a singe one, we will all laugh again because they did the same thing again, plan to beat the competition they can currently see.

Seriously, their engine for this rocket is still a gas generator, competing with the Merlin (and likely not well) they are not even approaching Raptor.

The Vinci engine they have spend 25 years developing looks impressive, but then you realize they have so totally mishandled their upper stage build, that all that performance is lost. Even traditional aluminum upper stages should have been much lighter. Typical European, making this super awesome expensive thing, and then losing all that performance failing to do something that is comparatively easy and low tech. They have no mindset of iteratively improving, identifying bottlenecks and systematically improving those.

Europe doesn't really have the space companies willing to take that risk in real numbers.

And then the developed Ariane 5 and it was mostly a bad idea badly designed opening the market up to get their ass kicked.

Wow what a deranged comment.

Reminds me of the plastics