French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu warned European countries against cooperating with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Instead, the politician advised his colleagues to focus on supporting the European Ariane space program.
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“Some European states may be tempted to cooperate with SpaceX to the detriment of our Ariane program and therefore our strategic autonomy and our industry,” Lecornu said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimance.
According to the French minister, in recent decades, representatives of EU countries have not worked sufficiently effectively in the space sector and “have found themselves hostage to outdated approaches”, losing leadership to SpaceX.
In particular, Lecornu admitted that in Europe they were skeptical about Musk’s ideas on the use of reusable space rockets, considering them impossible.
“We had industrial and financial opportunities, but we lost them due to risk aversion or simple arrogance. “It is time to wake up,” said the minister.
At the same time, the head of the French armed forces recalled that terminals of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system were deployed in the overseas region of Mayotte in mid-December to coordinate the efforts of rescue teams to eliminate the consequences of the hurricane.
According to Lecornu, “you have to be pragmatic in case of emergency.” In addition, the French authorities had to use technologies that “they do not yet have.”
Author:
Akhmed Sadulayev
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
