"France must continue to be a great space country", declared Emmanuel Macron while visiting the ArianeGroup site in Vernon (Eure) on Tuesday, where 30 million euros will be invested, in particular to develop the new rocket engine. .
"When there is more competition, we have to organize ourselves better, innovate more", said the Head of State, alluding to the "acceleration" of American competition, notably with SpaceX, and Asian in the space industry.
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The company of billionaire Elon Musk is already using reusable rockets when Europe postponed the first flight of its new Ariane 6 rocket until 2022 and is considering the technologies to be implemented for the next generation of launchers.
In this context, Emmanuel Macron recalled that the recovery plan, announced in September to deal with the consequences of the Covid-19 crisis, would devote 500 million euros to this industry to "accelerate the projects" in progress "to the next two years ”.
"France believes in this adventure, in this sector of excellence of today and tomorrow" but we must "go faster in this global competition", he insisted alongside ministers Bruno Le Maire ( Economy) and Sébastien Lecornu (Overseas), ex-mayor of Vernon and ex-president of the departmental council of Eure.
The space industry "has had difficult times" and "each time, it has taken up the challenges by being more innovative and by accelerating", according to him.
New generation Prometheus engine
He specified that of the 30 million euros that will be invested on the Vernon site, 15 will be devoted to the new generation Prometheus engine project in order to "gain a year" in its development.
With Prometheus, Arianegroup aims to develop a low-cost and potentially reusable rocket motor demonstrator for the European Space Agency (ESA).
This engine, the cost of which must be ten times lower than the engine of an Ariane 6, in particular thanks to additive manufacturing (3D manufacturing), could eventually be used for future evolutions of the Ariane rocket.
The other 15 million euros will be devoted to the development of hydrogen propulsion, on which the Eure site is working.
The aerospace group, which already uses hydrogen for the propulsion of Ariane launchers, has just concluded a partnership with the energy company Engie to produce liquid hydrogen of renewable origin for maritime transport.