Europe's Venerable Ariane 5 Rocket Faces a Bittersweet Ending on Tuesday - Slash...

Europe's Venerable Ariane 5 Rocket Faces a Bittersweet Ending on Tuesday

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• The summary could have been a bit more worked on...

  Europe's space agency faces some difficult questions.

  Europe's space agency is not facing difficult questions. It is facing delays in the Ariane 6 launche...

  and the difficult question is whether to cut their losses and move to reusable, so they can compete with SpaceX.

  After spending tens of billions on Ariane 6, this is a hard choice indeed, since it would mean spending another tens of billions developing a new launch vehicle.

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    I don't see that happening. SpaceX achieved their market position by pulling a Count Rugen and sucking away their employees' lives. That doesn't work in Europe.
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                  For that one, don't forget that there are also states without sales tax. Many municipalities inside those states might have their own sales tax, but there will be some areas that have none at all. The other thing you can do is just don't buy any items that have sales tax on them. Staple food and medicines fall under that category. So do things bought with food stamps and, since you're already below the poverty line to avoid income tax, you may be eligible.

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                  You do use them though. Among other things, you use them so that the kids who go to school every day don't all end up as "roving bands of armed thugs shooting people for no reason or whatever."

                  As for the five miles you drive every month, do you have any idea how much five miles of road even costs? Actually, another important question there. The fact that you say you drive five miles a month suggests you have a car. Why on Earth do you have a car if you only drive it five miles a month? Owning a car costs wa

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        Oe noes taxes!

        I assume you're living it large and posting from a libertarian paradise some failed state right now? I mean of course you're not, you're posting from a country where civilization is purchased with taxes while whinging about the taxes.

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                Just trying to follow this thread is a little difficult. Where exactly did you establish any similarity between believing that human sacrifice will make the sun rise (note: I'm not aware of any culture that actually believed you had to throw a virgin into a volcano to get the sun rise, I think you're thinking of the tradition of hunting someone down through the snow and chopping off their head at the winter solstice so that the sun will rise again) and paying taxes? One is a religious/superstitious notion a

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        Until very recently I lived in SoCal my entire life. I love SpaceX's stuff. But I've met too many people who worked there to ever want that kind of experience.

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        When I was young and dumb that kind of life sounded thrilling. I love spaceflight and had a SpaceX recruiter contact me earlier in my marriage, but took a "boring" IT job in finance instead (I'm not saying SpaceX would have hired me but it doesn't really matter).
        
        When my wife had some medical issues pop up, I had no problem taking off all the time I needed, leaving a little early sometimes to make appointments with her or just do errands or be around more often. Then she died suddenly from a medical emergen

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          Oh my ! My condolences for your loss.

          Good that you were at her side.

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    You're under the impression that Arianespace is in the business of launching cargo into space. They serve 2 purpose: to underwrite French and Italian solid rocket production line for military while also having the secondary effect of attaching to commercial rocket for launch and to spread jobs across member states. The fact that they sometimes launch 7 times a year (their record) was a side benefit.

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  Ariane 6 is modernized to compete with Falcon 9 circa 2014, 9 years ago when SpaceX haven't landed their first booster yet. It wasn't clear at that point SpaceX would be a serious contender for their business as at that time SpaceX is only capable of medium launch. They just want a cheaper version of rocket to Ariane 5 which was build to launch cancelled Hermes Spaceplane. Ariane 5 was just a bit overbuilt for just sending a satellite to GSO, but for sending a big and small satellites in pair, it was a