Ariane is touted in an article by Andy Pasztor in today’s Wall Street Journal with a new person singing its praises–Mike Griffin:

Mr. Griffin declared the launch system “probably the best in the world, very smooth and very impressive.”

One quibble: there is an apple to orange comparison of the commercial launch business ($2.7 billion) to US national security space spending ($80 billion). Commercial space launch supports tens of billions in satellite products, services and content. A more relevant comparison would be to look at how much the Department of Defense spends on launchers. The total space budget for military and intelligence is in the $50 billion range. Launch costs presumably would comprise about 3-4% of that if they were more competition. I’m having a little trouble finding a good source of Pentagon launch spending budget figures, but I’m guessing it’s in the 5-10% range.