[MadIvan]

I leave the comparisons between French rockets and their automobiles to you lot. ;)

Regards, Ivan

[reagan_fanatic]

[ArcLight]

Oh, get off it, guys. I'm a space buff, and I hate to see one of these go boom. Unless, of course, it belongs to our buddies in the Axis of Evil.

Indeed, I think the wrong rocket blew up. Those North Korean Scuds would have given off a lovely light...

[Saturn_V]

I hate seeing this, since I'm peripherially involved in the commercial space industry. Nothing like taking a bird you put 3-4 years of your life into (most commercial spacecraft are built essentially by hand from scratch) and losing it to a launch vehicle failure. And before we all go sneering at the Ariane V, no one's immune to LV failure (the US included) - most rockets run a success rate of between ~80-90%. So, every 5 to 10 launches or so, you lose a quarter billion dollar satellite - that's a non-trivial risk. Factor in a brand new rocket, as in this case, and the insurance companies start getting worried. Of course, if it's reliability you're looking for, try a Soyuz or Proton (which, its last failure notwithstanding, has a pretty good commercial success rate). Granted, you'll be working with the Russians (who have some facinating ideas on safety - and Baikonur's not exactly the vacation spot that Kourou is), and the payload to GTO isn't quite up to the new Ariane 5ESC-A (10.5 tonnes, I think)...

-SV

[Imal]

Hold muh wine bump.

[VaBthang4]

You know it makes you wonder...


How many of their friggin ICBM nukes wouldnt make it passed three minutes?

"Sacré bleu!! We just Nuked Paris!"

[lavaroise]

There is a French engineer ego trip involved. They usualy prevent you from doing your job so they can get the info but then they never communicate the info they have. Hence when there is a safety problem the little guy notices, he does not mention it.

[jjm2111]

Only the French would actually produce a car called "Lemon."

[Orbiting_Rosie's_Head]

I fondly recall the day my brother-in-law rolled up in his new Reneault Alliant to show it off. After the obligatory walk-around and his short speech on the wonders of this car, I asked him to take me for a ride. The door handle came off in my hand.

[Grampa Dave]

Good!

Knowing the French, they probably had intel satellites on board that were purchased by al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq and ?

They would have been more than glad to take pictures of our troops, bases and ships and sent them to the Islamofascists.

[rockfish59]

Gays In Space!

[Scott from the Left Coast]

HOLD MY BRIE!

[tracer]

The symbolic irony of this all is absolutely stunning....