Arianespace is the launch provider you call when you want European ministers to nod approvingly, not when you care about cost or cadence. It was born in the Cold War as Europe’s insurance policy against depending on NASA or the Russians. For decades it coasted on Ariane 4 and Ariane 5, reliable heavy-lifters that carried half the world’s GEO birds to orbit. That era ended the moment SpaceX started undercutting prices and doubling flight rates. Arianespace went from king of commercial launch to a nostalgia act almost overnight.

The Ariane 6 program is the perfect case study. It was supposed to be a quick, cheap answer to Falcon 9. Instead it became a drawn-out European group project, with Germany, France, and Italy bickering over workshare while the design ossified. By the time Ariane 6 finally flew in 2024, SpaceX had already made reusability boring and was launching Starlink by the hundred. Ariane 6, expendable and overpriced, looked like a museum piece on its debut. It will fly a trickle of European institutional payloads and the occasional contract from operators who value politics over price, but it is not a commercial comeback.

Vega, the Italian light launcher, hasn’t fared much better. Technical failures and supply chain headaches gutted its credibility. Its upgrade, Vega C, stumbled early, and the commercial smallsat market it was built to serve has already been vacuumed up by SpaceX rideshare and emerging micro-launchers. Arianespace sells Vega launches, but only governments are really buying.

Politically, Arianespace survives because it is the flag carrier for “European access to space.” Paris will never let it die, Rome will never abandon Vega, and Brussels will keep funding “transition support” packages to keep the industrial base employed. The company’s true job is not competing with SpaceX, but keeping Airbus, Safran, and Avio factories humming. Commercial operators know this, which is why almost everyone who isn’t contractually obligated has migrated to Falcon 9.

So Arianespace today is not a business in the conventional sense. It is a jobs program with a rocket attached, and a stage on which Europe can pretend it still competes in commercial launch. It will limp along on ESA science payloads, EU defense satellites, and a few loyal GEO operators, but the days of market dominance are gone. In the 1990s Arianespace owned commercial launch. In the 2020s it is a heritage brand, subsidized for political dignity while Elon Musk turns reusability into an assembly line.