1 - Engineers and leadership didn't think landing would work that well
2 - The culture at ESA and Arianespace is to NOT have any failures. So they don't have the liberty to launch rockets that spectacularly explode. Even when experimenting, they are extremely risk averse.
3 - The same company builds ICBMs, so demonstrating reliability in civil launchers also asserts reliability for military equipment.
4 -The focus was reducing costs of Ariane5 and make a launcher with similar capability and cost to Russian Soyuz. I don't think SpaceX was the focus for the competition. They also wanted to get rid of the dual launches of Ariane5 and provide a launcher that could just do the large payload of those dual launches independently
You probably didn't intend to sound so racist. You participated in the process and you discriminated based on race? You aren't Indian, yet you still got hired?
Do you think pharma companies that develop this are going: "we will develop an X-Ray machine, and only Americans will pay for it"?
I would assume they try to get a profit anywhere they sell it. Which means $20 x-ray is a realistic profitable cost per x-ray. But the US healthcare is so broken that they manage to extract 10x more money out of it.
It also seem likely that opening an office outside of the USA may become an interesting alternative. Then your wage and your job may be at risk. If impact to you is how you evaluate things, it would seem like there's room for worries.
This year, China will have their maiden flight for 2 new rockets CZ-5, CZ-7. Launched a new space station: Tiangong2, is making steady progress in their space program.
Russia is developing Angara-5, a new rocket that made its debut in 2014. Russia upgraded in 2016 its soyuz capsule and is working on a new design crewed vehicle.
Europe started developing its Ariane 6 next gen-launcher, following the success of its current Ariane 5.
Europe also landed on a comet earlier this year.
I am less versed in Japan launch schedules, but they also have a strong program.
During this time, US is developing reusable launchers that land on their launchpad.
Space is a global effort and every country is participating in this exploration. Each has strengths and weakness. For instance, USA can land rockets but cannot send crew in space.
There is no more a 'me versus them' situation in space development. Everyone works somewhat together. Russia sends US astronauts in orbit. US refuels the ISS with Cigna cargo. Antares engines are Russian RD-181. The service of the orion capsule is made in France and Germany. The Chinese spacecraft is derived from Russian Soyuz.
There are two problems with using Falcon 9s as reusable missile.
First: missiles needs to be always ready. They need to fire as soon as needed. A rocket like Falcon 9 uses liquid oxygen which cannot be stored for long period of time. Nowadays most missiles uses solid fuel (as the ones used in the Shuttle boosters)
Second: A booster that lands is not immediately reusable. you need to refill it, replace the pyrotechnic chains, put back the payload on top of it, etc. During that time, your missile is at risk of being destroyed by an enemy counter measure.
Submarines dispatched around the globe are already packed with nuclear missile using solid fuel that can already destroy any place any time.
1 - Engineers and leadership didn't think landing would work that well
2 - The culture at ESA and Arianespace is to NOT have any failures. So they don't have the liberty to launch rockets that spectacularly explode. Even when experimenting, they are extremely risk averse.
3 - The same company builds ICBMs, so demonstrating reliability in civil launchers also asserts reliability for military equipment.
4 -The focus was reducing costs of Ariane5 and make a launcher with similar capability and cost to Russian Soyuz. I don't think SpaceX was the focus for the competition. They also wanted to get rid of the dual launches of Ariane5 and provide a launcher that could just do the large payload of those dual launches independently