The European (read mostly French) space program is in big trouble.

The headline is misleading, though. Here are the nut grafs:

Especially worrying for Arianespace, and the global launch industry, is that the flight 157 accident review board identified significant problems in all versions of Ariane 5, not just the stretched version that failed in December 2002.

It was left to the head of Arianespace, Jean- Yves Le Gall, to tell his senior colleagues that Ariane 5, and Rosetta, should be grounded indefinitely.

This is bad news, not because I really care whether or not a bloated jobs program in Europe is doing anything for space, but because it continues to perpetuate the myths that Space Is Hard, and Space Is Expensive, and if well-funded governments can't get it right, how can lowly entrepreneurs be expected to?

Why do both the European Space Agency and NASA have their share of launch vehicle problems?

I suggest that the cause of the problems is not necessarily insufficient free enterprise, but instead clinging to the expendable rocket, low-launch rate model. Rand has mdae this point in the past. They never get the bugs out because it's hard to learn from launch failures when the missile is not recovered and the launch rate is low.

In contrast the -- make gestures to ward off vampires here -- the partially reusable Shuttle system is looking like Old Reliable.

Yes, and to the degree that it's unreliable (i.e., STS 51-L, the seventeenth anniversary of which is coming up in a couple weeks), it was due to the expendable, or at least partially-reusable portions (the SRBs).