LA PLATA, Maryland —The temptation was too much to resist, and Philippe Baptiste, former president of the French space agency, CNES, and now French Minister for Research and Higher Education, yielded to it.
In a brief speech March 6 just minutes after the confirmed successful launch of the first commercial Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket — a launcher that caused him more headaches than he’d like to admit — Baptiste immediately dropped the celebratory tone to veer into an attack on US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
