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Well, if there is to be a plan b, it's either new levels of cooperation with nasa, and, of course, back in 2011, 2012, you had a huge fallout with nasa over the mars mission because they decided to go their own way. so you're either going to have to rebuild a mars relationship with nasa, or somehow you're going to have to convince people like, i don't know, elon musk and jeff bezos, to work with you to do something dramatic that they've never done before. so, what is plan b? i'm not putting it on the table because a decision has to be made by my member states. but we are preparing a proposal, ...

I mean, that was complacency, wasn't it? you can call it complacency. actually, it has served us very well for... not now. not now, but for more than ten years, we had another rocket... we have, actually, three classes of rocket, as we call it. the one that is transporting heavier satellites into space, called the ariane 5 today. then we have the one in the lower segment, which is vega. and then we have the medium segment, which is now soyuz, which was soyuz, i should say, which was serving us well. but, at the time of the invasion of crimea in 2014, we already have made decisions to develop a...

This was meant to be a russian portion. then the transfer vehicle to come towards mars. then the lander that brings the rover down to the surface, and the rover itself, which is the hard piece, to drill into the mars surface and do all the science. so, there are four big elements. and out of those four, two, roughly, are dropping out — the rocket — the launch by russia, and the lander in particular. plus, in the other parts, there is some russian technology. of course, all this stops now. i've done the series analysis, what needs to be done? what are the options? what can be done in europe...

I'm not saying there's no plan b. if i'm not telling you the plan b, it's because we don't have a decision yet. well, if there is to be a plan b, it's either new levels of cooperation with nasa, and, of course, back in 2011, 2012, you had a huge fallout with nasa over the mars mission because they decided to go their own way. so you're either going to have to rebuild a mars relationship with nasa, or somehow you're going to have to convince people like, i don't know, elon musk and jeff bezos, to work with you to do something dramatic that they've never done before. so, what is plan b? i'm not ...

And what you did in practical terms was year—on—year rely on russian rockets, the soyuz rocket programme, to take your astronauts and your equipment up into space. i mean, that was complacency, wasn't it? you can call it complacency. actually, it has served us very well for... not now. not now, but for more than ten years, we had another rocket... we have, actually, three classes of rocket, as we call it. the one that is transporting heavier satellites into space, called the ariane 5 today. then we have the one in the lower segment, which is vega. and then we have the medium segment, which...