That's the only good answer of the thread. ArianeGroup is mainly the SLBM program of France and after that a way to maintain european know-how in rocket buildin

That's the only good answer of the thread. ArianeGroup is mainly the SLBM program of France and after that a way to maintain european know-how in rocket building and for nearly 20 years was the main space launch company in the world before Space-X. All those companies success and failures (be that Space-X or ArianeGroup) are linked to their political environment and how much money can be spent on their launch market. Space-X could use the technique of launching many and fail as much because they had the contracts to do it and years of tangential R&D by Nasa. The ecosystem explains everything and the relative intelligence of american or european engineers nearly nothing.