At the Paris Air Show, the aerospace sector succumbs to the siren call of start-ups and the market

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The ^55th Paris Air Show, which opens this Monday, June 16, reflects the evolution of the aerospace sector, which is increasingly subject to market imperatives to the detriment of its scientific objectives.

The financialization of the space sector is on display at the Paris Air Show, between private ambitions and massive public funds. Thomas SAMSON / AFP

Are space agencies about to be supplanted by startups? As the Paris Air Show opens its doors on Monday, June 16, in Le Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis), a 2,500 ^m2 hall is entirely dedicated to the space ecosystem: the Paris Space Hub. Since the commissioning of Starlink, a constellation of 6,300 telecommunications satellites spearheaded by American billionaire Elon Musk, the financialization of space is in full swing.

For the past ten years, the "backwardness" of France, and more broadly of Europe, compared to the United States and China has been regularly pointed out. "What we need to do alongside the large groups is to have the same ambition as SpaceX on a European scale: to bring out startups, (…) we take tickets, we take risks and we finance," declared Emmanuel Macron during a meeting with French Tech entrepreneurs in 2018. Since then, the machine...