CHRISTINA MACKENZIE / PARIS
Arianespace needs to reorganise if it is to avoid more setbacks such as December's Ariane V ECA launch failure, according to Jean-Paul Béchat, president of France's Snecma group. Béchat says that the French government has asked EADS and Snecma for ideas "on how to tighten up the sector".
Philippe Camus, co-chief executive of EADS, said earlier this month there would be "structural developments" in the aerospace and defence sector (Flight International, 14-20 January) but did not specifically mention Arianespace.
In the wake of the failed first flight of the new 10t payload version of Ariane V in December, Béchat says "the organisation needs to be tightened up".
He partly blames the loss of flight V157 on the "split of responsibilities" among different European companies and on the technology involved.
Béchat adds that one possible option is to change the capital shareholding of Arianespace. Snecma owns 7.8% of Arianespace: the rest is owned by aerospace companies and banks in 12 European countries, and by the French space agency Centre Nationale d'Études Spatiales.
He points out that part of the Ariane V's Vulcain II engine is made by Volvo Aero in Sweden then sent to Astrium in Germany and finally to Vernon in Normandy where Snecma integrates the engine. Béchat believes this process could be partly responsible for the failure.
"This division of responsibilities is an inheritance from the period 20 years ago when space was still a new adventure, but we should now move into a much tighter, industrialised organisation," he says.
"The failure of V157 was a very hard knock but [it may help] to clear the decks," he says.
Source: Flight International
