Comment TFA and comments miss the point (Score 5, Insightful) 184
As correctly quoted in the TFA main point of this project is to make up for the bad strategic choices that Europe made 10-15 years ago on that topic (and believe me, Europe made bad strategic choices in the past 10-15 years on a LOT of topics).
So this may seem stupid, but if Europe doesn't make the move, when Donald Trump Jr is elected in 2032 and decides to bar the EU from space, what will Europe do?
Don't see this project as a copycat of Musk, see it as a seek to preserve independent access to space.... Oh, and about the efficiency of ArianeGroup, please remember that it's a subsidiary of Airbus that seems to perform a bit better that Boeing in the past years...