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Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

arstechnica.com

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

#41

Post by Latteland »

lukeify wrote: post #30

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.

I had noticed that he did interview Elon then, with the cool near-the-rocket background. I also noticed that several other journalists interviewed musk from that same overview sight. So he did not have special access. I wondered about that until I saw other journalists with the same vantage and the same background.

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

#42

Post by vkou »

ISL wrote: post #19
vkou wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we are to leave the planet eventually, some level of skill at keeping people in space is essential. (N.B. I'm a scientist who would love more dedicated robotic missions. Human spaceflight is important, too.)

If, instead of sending 12 people to the moon, we took that money, and worked on sending hundreds of robots to the moon...

We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. And better robots. Or, at least, more than six people in space.

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

#43

Post by qohen »

timb07 wrote: post #8
peter303 wrote: post #7

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

President Bush also proclaimed "Mission Accomplished".

Not in our timeline [0]:

Although Bush stated at the time "Our mission continues" and "We have difficult work to do in Iraq," he also stated that it was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. Bush never uttered the phrase "Mission Accomplished";[2] a banner stating "Mission Accomplished" was used as a backdrop to the speech.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech

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

#44

Post by unethical_ban »

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.

Any post that suggests humans should not explore space will be the recipient of my derision. We can't and shouldn't sit on this rock for the next 100 years. And we as a world can afford both manned and unmanned exploration.

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

#45

Post by skookumchuck »

civilitty wrote: post #40
bikezen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be useful for stuff you can afford to lose, but during the same period how many spacecraft have Boeing lost. When a mission takes a decade to plan a build, you go with the launch vehicle most likely to get you to destination successfully. Fail rates matter immensely. You don't want a launch vehicle iterating on your launch.

Whether or not NASA (and by extension Boeing) can afford to lose a mission isn't dependent on how much it costs but on public relations and legislation. Money has diminishing returns when it comes to mission success rates. A common ballpark example I've heard from JPL PMs: you can spend $500 million on one launch with a 95% chance of putting one satellite in orbit - or - you could spend $250 million per launch on two…

When a mission is $250m, I wonder how much additional a second identical copy would cost. For example, if $200m of that is R&D, it would only cost $300m for two missions.

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

#46

Post by avmich »

vkou wrote: post #42
ISL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are to leave the planet eventually, some level of skill at keeping people in space is essential. (N.B. I'm a scientist who would love more dedicated robotic missions. Human spaceflight is important, too.)

If, instead of sending 12 people to the moon, we took that money, and worked on sending hundreds of robots to the moon... We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. And better robots. Or, at least, more than six people in space.

> We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today.

Unfortunately the opposite could also be true - loss of interest to space research, because, hey, they don't make anything perceivable...

In the awesome game "Bazz Aldrin's Race Into Space" if both (human) players try to perfect the technology, to avoid costly failures with human flights and stop flying for a while, at some point budgets get slashed and the game stops. I suspect it could be a possibility in the real world. Fortunately, by now we both depend on space enough and have enough technology to keep flying.

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

#47

Post by avmich »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #35

Having worked at one of Boeing's competitors (not in this specific industry but a similiar one) I think I'd rather sit on top of the rocket built by the big, old, slow defense contractor. I'd hard to overstate how much consideration of making sure edge cases (for both hardware and software) don't kill people is baked into the culture at these companies. As a taxpayer I think the rocket that moves fast and breaks thin…

There were recently a discussion about NASA insisting in loading propellants when crew is already onboard, and opponents pointing out that it increases the duration of crew sitting in the capsule during a dangerous process of fueling.

It could be a lot of consideration, but if some important area is overlooked, then it's no guarantee safety will improve over some threshold.

Similarly in Russian Soyuz-2 rocket the 2.1b variant adds about 10% of payload - but uses a much more stressed engine on the upper stage. That's the reason Russians don't want to use that variant for manned flights - even though there were lots of flights and rockets with engines like that certified for manned flights.

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

#48

Post by sseth »

qohen wrote: post #43
timb07 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

President Bush also proclaimed "Mission Accomplished".

Not in our timeline [0]: Although Bush stated at the time "Our mission continues" and "We have difficult work to do in Iraq," he also stated that it was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. Bush never uttered the phrase "Mission Accomplished";[2] a banner stating "Mission Accomplished" was used as a backdrop to the speech. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech

Later in the article ... "the White House later conceded that they hung the banner but still insists it had been done at the request of the crew members"

He stood in front of a banner put up by the White House saying "Mission Accomplished" and claimed victory. He did not clarify that the huge banner behind him was about the crew's mission and not Iraq. It is legitimate to say that Bush proclaimed it, and pedantic to argue he did not speak the words.

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

#49

Post by aardvark291 »

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…

Can this be summarized as "competition is good for the marketplace"?

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

#50

Post by itronitron »

api wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NASA's "schedule risk analysis" Last time I looked at this, the firms set their own milestones. So for one, Boeing's milestone deliverable was a PowerPoint presentation; SpaceX's was a crew abort demonstration.

Welcome to the world of government contracting where success depends much more on your ability to work the system then your ability to deliver anything.

>> the world of government contracting

After watching the documentary on the joint strike fighter competition I just think of Boeing as a lobbying organization that happens to make planes.

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