Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew • Hacker News Board

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#21

Post by rory096 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 12:58 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #16

peter303 wrote: post #7

President Bush promised a shuttle replacement by 2014 when he canceled the shuttle.

Obama cancelled Constellation, then backed the SLS disaster, and told everyone NASA will be going to Mars in 2030. I think it's pretty safe to assume that NASA will not be going anywhere outside LEO in 2030. If we are really lucky, it would stop with the manned space expedition charade entirely, and do something useful with those billions of dollars, for a change. Probes, robotics, ecosystem study.

>I think it's pretty safe to assume that NASA will not be going anywhere outside LEO in 2030.

This is certainly not safe to say and in fact is quite unlikely. Multiple separate programs promise to get us beyond LEO by 2030. Whether we'll be on any planetary bodies is questionable, but at the least humans will have made it to lunar DRHO by then.

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#22

Post by hinkley » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 12:58 AM UTC

There are a lot of big organizations that seem to understand something that few of us in the software industry ever did:

When you have one vendor they have no reason to give you any special attention. They are min-maxing you against all of their other customers and if you aren’t about to either Give them more money or take it away you fade into the background.

If you have two vendors, they have to pay attention. They have to and get to stay engaged.

If SpaceX is ahead or Boeing is ahead doesn’t matter. What matters if SpaceX is still at the table. If they drop to third or fourth place then they have a real problem.

NASA doesn’t want to give all their contracts to one vendor, and neither should we. That makes things easy this year but fattens then for the slaughter.

As long as Boeing is getting some noteworthy fraction of the contracts they stick around as a goad for SpaceX to try harder. And SpaceX does the same for Boeing.

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#23

Post by abadaba » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #17

This headline is another example of biased news pushing a narrative.

Not disagreeing with you, just genuinely curious: how is this headline biased?

Do you mean that the margins are thinner than one might expect by reading it?

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#24

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #22

There are a lot of big organizations that seem to understand something that few of us in the software industry ever did: When you have one vendor they have no reason to give you any special attention. They are min-maxing you against all of their other customers and if you aren’t about to either Give them more money or take it away you fade into the background. If you have two vendors, they have to pay attention. They…

The standard failure mode is that the two vendors reach an understanding and split the market at a comfortable level of effort and progress.

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#25

Post by JshWright » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:26 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #24

hinkley wrote: post #22

There are a lot of big organizations that seem to understand something that few of us in the software industry ever did: When you have one vendor they have no reason to give you any special attention. They are min-maxing you against all of their other customers and if you aren’t about to either Give them more money or take it away you fade into the background. If you have two vendors, they have to pay attention. They…

The standard failure mode is that the two vendors reach an understanding and split the market at a comfortable level of effort and progress.

Or they pull a ULA and merge.

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#26

Post by mrep » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:30 AM UTC

amacbride wrote: post #4

...by a little bit (mostly due to Boeing's greater familiarity with NASA paperwork requirements.) "Based on NASA's "schedule risk analysis" from April, the agency estimates that Boeing will reach this milestone sometime between May 1, 2019, and August 30, 2020. For SpaceX, the estimated range is August 1, 2019, and November 30, 2020. The analysis' average certification date was December, 2019, for Boeing and January,…

Also probably because "Boeing asked for, and got, 50 percent more funding for the same task" [0]. Despite the mythical man month, 50% more funding on a 5/6 year (current estimate) project can pay your way ahead of the competition on almost any project (that is a really really long time!).

Considering the timeline difference is only 10% (6 months spacex is behind based on 5 year delivery), I would expect Boeing to be much further ahead of spacex than they currently are.

Sounds like spacex will be the real winner in the end IMO due to future contracts as a 50% savings ($1.6 Billion in this case [1]) to wait 10% more time is totally worth it in almost every case.

[0]: from the article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/nasa-commercial-crew...

[1]: https://qz.com/266665/the-us-will-spend-6-8-billion-hiring-b...

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#27

Post by mcguire » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:32 AM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #11

I'm still impressed that SpaceX, with <20 years of experience, is even in the same ballpark as Boeing and its 101 years.

Check out how many of the Space X team have experience leading government space contractors. (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te...). They're not going in raw.

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#28

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #22

There are a lot of big organizations that seem to understand something that few of us in the software industry ever did: When you have one vendor they have no reason to give you any special attention. They are min-maxing you against all of their other customers and if you aren’t about to either Give them more money or take it away you fade into the background. If you have two vendors, they have to pay attention. They…

>If SpaceX is ahead or Boeing is ahead doesn’t matter. What matters if SpaceX is still at the table.

Not only that but SpaceX is delivering commercial payload after commercial payload to orbit while still TESTING new stuff on their rockets while they do all the planning for ITS/BFR... how many launches has Boeing been doing while designing SLS?

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#29

Post by lukeify » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #17

This headline is another example of biased news pushing a narrative.

In which direction?

Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

#30

Post by lukeify » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

I find it hard to treat news published by Eric Berger as objective, sadly. He receives special treatment from SpaceX & Elon—for example, its arguable he only had permission to interview Musk and attend the launch of FH from 39A precisely because his articles mainly cast a positive light—and in turn, this clouds his objectiveness when it comes to such reporting. It's quite a shame.