so many billions wasted just because they don't want to play along with russia :')
Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
61–70 of 85 posts
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standard failure mode is that the two vendors reach an understanding and split the market at a comfortable level of effort and progress.
Cartels are illegal in the US because of anti-trust laws?
You would think so, and yet...
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#63...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…
SpaceX, on the other hand, is pouring a lot of their own money into shared systems used by the contract. On the third hand, SpaceX is developing both the rocket and capsule, whereas Boeing is using an off-the-shelf ULA vehicle. Boeing's is expendible, SpaceX is making theirs reusable.
Really, it's apples to oranges.
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#64Earlier 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.
There are things we learned from Apollo with 1960's technology that the best robots today couldn't tell us. The entire past two decades of rover exploration on Mars could have been accomplished by 1 astronaut in a EVA suit with a rock hammer in a couple of hours. Sometimes you actually need a geologist/biologist/botanist there to determine ground truth, and sometimes people ARE more capable than machines. You need both.
Apollo couldn't tell us there was water in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar poles because they didn't go to the poles, but the Lunar Prospector, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and LCROSS gave us good reason to think so. The orbiters we sent couldn't tell use the age of the Moon or its likely formation process because you actually need a hand-picked diverse set of rock samples for that, and lots of them. It's not an either/or debate, and shouldn't be one. We need to send both humans AND machines.
And, at the end of the day, basic science is not why we're going to space. It's about spreading the human race beyond the confines of this rock and establishing a permanent and ever lasting space-faring culture. You CAN'T do that with robots alone.
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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?
This article isn't about SLS (or BFR). It's about commercial crew, Boeing's CST-100 capsule vs. SpaceX's crewed Dragon. Boeing may well be ahead because unlike SpaceX they consider themselves having one job, and one job only.
And without a reliable rocket to get them up there, those crew capsules are useless.
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#66Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
SpaceX, on the other hand, is pouring a lot of their own money into shared systems used by the contract. On the third hand, SpaceX is developing both the rocket and capsule, whereas Boeing is using an off-the-shelf ULA vehicle. Boeing's is expendible, SpaceX is making theirs reusable. Really, it's apples to oranges.
Put like that the fact they are a couple of months behind on an estimate is a massive win for spacex
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#68President Bush promised a shuttle replacement by 2014 when he canceled the shuttle.
George Bush in lying shocker. I mean, this probably isn't in the list of the top fifty things he mislead people on.
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#69Forgive my ignorance on the subject but how can Boeing be ahead if they don't have any rockets?
Re: Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you're in the business of making and selling airliners, that's what you have to be. It's why Airbus needed government money to get started: it wasn't just the money they needed, they needed expert diplomats to have some skin in the game for the launch of a credible competitor in that sector to the US manufacturers.
Boeing in the UK has an interesting reputation right now: they were involved in the MoD's bungling of an upgrade to Chinook firmware [1], and stepped in to pick up a contract worth hundreds of millions to basically make some small changes, run the compiler, and put the result on the machines.
The MoD were so embarrassed they basically let Boeing bully them into becoming a full stack outsource service provider on these things. Boeing now run full-page adverts in various news magazines (The Week, The Economist, etc.), explaining why they are so important to the UK and how much they love to "invest" in the UK around the Chinooks.
Eight machines that have opened the door to Boeing being a very central part of the MoD, British Army and RAF for the foreseeable future...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/jun/04/military.defence