Arianespace Chief Sort of Grudgingly Compliments SpaceX
Jean-Yves Le Gall
In an appearance before the French Senate, outgoing Arianespace Chief Executive Jean-Yves Le Gall — who is expected to take over the French space agency CNES next month — almost had something nice to say about Elon Musk and SpaceX.
In his 10 years as chief executive of Arianespace, Le Gall has been routinely withering in his disparagement of SpaceX, saying the company has not shown it is able to launch successfully with sufficient frequency to succeed in the market.
But in recent months, Le Gall has modulated his view of SpaceX. As he prepares to take the reins of CNES, an event likely to occur by mid-April, he even complimented — in a back-handed way — SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
“SpaceX has been mainly financed by the U.S. government,” Le Gall said. “But it was started by someone who was willing to invest his own money. I think Mr. Musk invested something like $400 million. It is said that a SpaceX IPO [stock-market introduction] would generate between $2 billion and $4 billion in investment. When you invest $400 million and take out $4 billion 10 years later, you’ve made a good investment.”
During his appearance, Le Gall spoke about the need to accelerate development of Ariane 6, which would replace the Ariane 5 and Russian Soyuz rocket now launched from French Guiana around 2021.
Ariane 6’s lower development costs are supposed to be accompanied by lower operating costs. Le Gall said the Ariane 5 facilities at the Guiana Space Center are huge, while competitor Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., operates its Falcon 9 rocket at a launch pad the size of a football field.
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8 responses to “Arianespace Chief Sort of Grudgingly Compliments SpaceX”
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It’s funny how people who argue against SpaceX go from one argument to the next as the company proves them wrong. First it was just outright dismissal, now they’ve moved on to “not enough flights.” Not to sound too much like a SpaceX fanboy but it’s like that old Gandhi quote ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win’
Arianespace is doomed.
2021? Arianespace is doomed.
Le Gall would do well to consider if selecting solids for Arianne 6 was a good idea, something that Elon Musk explicitly discussed previously.
If SpaceX achieves their goals of the next few months (two flights in three weeks from SLC-40, first stage powered return and water landing on Flight 6/CASSIOPE), then Le Gall will be choking on his cafe au lait…
Ha-ha. If outsourced to SpaceX, Arian 6 could fly in 3 years. Not that Musk would take that job.
Yes, and would cost 1/10th as much AND would produce a rocket that would give Europe an independent manned spaceflight capability.
It’s no secret or magic on how to do it. Private financing.
Bob Clark
The truth is that SpaceX has been very lucky so far. Both first Dragon missions nearly failed. You don’t last very long in this business if you rely on luck.