Here is a comparison of Ariane’s Themis prototype in 2025 and SpaceX’s Grasshopper tests (2012–2013) and the early Falcon 9 reusability program (2013–2016). Ariane is 13 years behind SpaceX.
SpaceX had low-risk suborbital hops on Grasshopper. Had more advanced F9R Dev vehicle in 2014 and then landed boosters after commercial payloads were sent to orbit. This built the foundation for over 450 successful booster landings and counting now. It cut launch costs by up to 30% through rapid turnaround and be reusing 9 boosters out of every launch.
Above is the SpaceX grasshopper and below is the 2025 Ariane Themis
Themis is developed by ArianeGroup under ESA contract. It is Europe’s first serious program for vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) reusability. It is a 30-meter-tall prototype and is a single-engine demonstrator powered by the new Prometheus methalox engine, focused on proving autonomous guidance, landing legs, and cryogenic propellant management for future operational stages.
Themis copies Grasshoppers pad-based hops. Grasshopper had a 325 meter max altitude but Themis is planing ~100 meters. Neither carries payload, emphasizing structural integrity over performance.
Themis is shorter/lighter than the falcon 9 booster height. It is very similar to the Grasshopper but has a more efficient methalox engine (better ISP ~330 s vacuum vs. Merlin’s ~311 s), but its single-engine setup limits scale. SpaceX iterated faster (months between tests) and escalated to orbital risks by 2013 and endured public failures (2015 CRS-7 explosion mid-mission). Themis’s cryogenic focus anticipates Ariane Next’s efficiency gains, but Europe’s bureaucratic funding may slow progress compared to SpaceX’s fail fast approach.
The taller F9R development rocket
~€100M+ ESA investment and focuses on tech validation over volume.
2025: Static fires, tethered hops (10–50 m), untethered hops (100 m) at Esrange.
2–3 flights planned; data for Ariane Next. No orbital attempts.
SpaceX had 8 flights (Sep 2012–Mar 2013) at McGregor, TX. Hops from 1.8 m to 325 m (record on Jul 2013). Hovered up to 40 seconds. They were all successful landings. Grasshopper retired for F9R Dev.
2013 3 F9R Dev failed orbital attempts (F9 v1.1).
2014: F9R Dev exploded on pad
2015: 2/3 barge successes (Dec 2015 landmark)
2016: Routine landpad/barge. ~20 attempts by 2016.
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Everybody is using SpaceX approach since SpaceX did all the hard work for them over ten years ago. Any comparison is stupid because they “stole” it from them…including the Chinese.
Musk made all of them, including NASA, look foolish because any one of those companies that existed at the time could have done the work before them. But it took an entrepreneur to show them how it’s done, demonstrating that legacy industry had gone soft and lazy and wasted money on old tech rather than invest in the future. NASA is doubling down on the SLS, a colossal waste of money and manpower. Just stupid.
The heck of it is, the switch to retropropulsive landings could have happened in the 90’s, when the Delta Clipper program at McDonald Douglas was experimenting with a craft that sounds a lot like the Starship, except that it was intended to be single stage to orbit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
McDonald Douglas ran out of strategic defense initiative funding after a couple test flights, then NASA took over the program, redesigned it with changes that were supposed to make it higher performing, but also made it more fragile and expensive. A few more test flights, and then they gave up on it after a crash.
It’s speculated that they deliberately ran the program into the ground, they hadn’t wanted to take it on…
But vertical take off and landing, belly flops, planned quick turn around; The Delta Clipper was pretty much a fancy version of the Starship, only in the 90’s.
ESA suffers from morons on top without vision no any spark of engineering mastery.
Overpaid and below average in any and every respect.
The French Guiana launch site is the best location. Combining that with something like the best (so far) rocket seems like a good idea. Probably too much ‘not invented here’ for a collaboration between ESA and SpaceX.