Ariane has / had a similar reputation to Airbus, the only problem with it is that SpaceX lapped everyone. There were some really bad European projects in IT though, like that big search engine project, Quaero, that didn't deliver any end-user product in eight years and was then cancelled.

>Or will it more be like our Ariane missiles? It's rude to call it a missile just because they launched one on the wrong azimuth recently. ;-)

Also given the success rate of the related Vega rocket, it would not be a very dependable missile anyway.

Yes, isnt it normally called a launcher?

I am sure most of the money will somehow get into the hands of Airbus, Siemens and so on