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Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

arstechnica.com

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Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#151

Post by ta1243 »

hinkley wrote: post #33
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a different perspective on that from large acquisitions around firm fixed price contracts. If you're doing some low risk building, say a 10 mile road on flat ground with known soil, replacing a previous road, that is well-known to current specs with set-in-stone requirements (no pun intended) it is easy to pitch that firm fixed price because the contractor will know exactly what to do, and there are 20 road…

You can't even get your plumber to tell you how much it's going to cost to get your toilet working smoothly again. And you want to get to the moon on a fixed budget? (Which will also require a toilet). Software has the same problems. An unreasonable expectation of being able to predict the future (except the bits they don't want you to know about), and a lot of whining when we run into unexpected issues.

> And you want to get to the moon on a fixed budget? (Which will also require a toilet).

Didn't last time

https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/poop-space-revisited-apo...

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#152

Post by rtkwe »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #84
areoform wrote: post #8

This comment is your regularly scheduled reminder that they were supposed to be the safe option. The people who'd come in clutch when SpaceX failed (and it was assumed in certain quarters that SpaceX would fail to deliver on time). They were paid 2x more than what NASA paid SpaceX. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-will-pay-boeing... RIP Boeing.

I agree with this, it is pretty stunning. Also ULA's inability to come up with a launch capability that is anywhere close to Falcon/Falcon Heavy in terms of cost and time to flight. The fascinating thing is that the lack of competition allowed the space launch industry to switch from "invent" mode to "monetize" mode way too early. It is also what makes the Starship work both more credible and more interesting. There…

There's also been a bit of a shift in the market for space launches. For the longest time there wasn't that much of a market for a higher volume, cheaper launcher like the Falcon as the number of launches were really limited to mostly government launches and a handful of communication satellites. Recently hardware has gotten much cheaper which combined with cheaper launches skyrockets the number of groups that could design and send up a payload because the economics on both ends finally met up.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#153

Post by nordsieck »

martin8412 wrote: post #125
nordsieck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted. Mostly. NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. > NASA instead requested Boeing “propose prices for additional flexibilities to fill an anticipated crew access gap, including shortening its lead times for rocket and spacecraft production,” the report states. After what OIG descr…

Yes, and NASA awarded SpaceX $278m in 2006 dollars from the COTS program when SpaceX had never even flown a rocket.

> Yes, and NASA awarded SpaceX $278m in 2006 dollars from the COTS program when SpaceX had never even flown a rocket.

OK.

I'm not really sure what your point is. NASA gives out contracts to new companies all the time. And the award was in a firm, fixed-price contract.

The difference between that and the previous example is that NASA had already awarded Boeing money for CCtCap (the commercial crew contract). And then they just decided to give them more money, for what can charitably described as bad reasons.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#154

Post by rtkwe »

resolutebat wrote: post #126
panick21_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA replacement stations are totally underfunded by congress, non are close. Don't expect a solution from that anyime soon.

If Starship delivers even half of what they're promising, we'll have a bunch of commercial space stations up even without NASA support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stati...

There's quite a gulf between what's promised and what's been tested. Despite the backfilling about just a test and total success there's were a LOT of big failures in that first launch test.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#155

Post by pavon »

ragebol wrote: post #49
arcticbull wrote: post #2

Lost, or invested? One imagines if they outright lost it and saw no opportunity to recoup (i.e. no longer an investment) they'd just end the program.

For that investment to work, they need to bring in some revenue as well. The ISS is scheduled to retire by 2030. Let's assume this capsule goes operational in 2025 and flies twice a year, that's 10 flights to recoup well, well over a billion by then. Let's say a 100 million per flight. Not sure what the contract is exactly, but it's not looking great. Pretty sure SpaceX is cheaper, so NASA will be the only customer.

NASA has already awarded all the ISS crew flights up through it's scheduled retirement in 2030. Boeing is contracted for 6 flights, and SpaceX for 14 (including the 6 it has already flown). NASA hasn't published the milestone payment schedules, but the total contract was for $4.2 billion, so Boeing would have needed to budget a 26% profit margin on the whole endeavor to break even at this point. That wouldn't surprise me, but they are probably quickly reaching the point where they will actually be losing money.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#156

Post by evandale »

panick21_ wrote: post #94
evandale wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The haters don't want to admit space flight is really really hard and Elon, excuse my language, fucking nailed it. Richard Branson is a billionaire who tried to do spaceflight long before Elon and Virgin Galactic hasn't launched anything useful (before SpaceX) as far as I know. If someone thinks a suborbital flight is impressive I highly recommend them to play KSP and find out how easy that is compared to getting int…

You are mixing up Virigin Galactic and Virgin Orbit. One is suborbital tourism, the other is sat launch. VO is bankroupt. VG has raised so much money from clueless investors that they are not quite bankroupt yet.

My only point was it takes more than a billionaire with a dream to create a space program. VG is a complete failure from a getting into space perspective, I don't care how much money investors have given to them. They don't have anything unique or worth mentioning.

How Branson shuffles money around between VG and VO is irrelevant if the goal is getting into space and the name of the company matters even less.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#157

Post by jackmott42 »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #149
jackmott42 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sane person here, I would only take Elon's claim that something would work seriously if it relied mostly on newtonian mechanics to verify. which model S being good, falcon 9 working etc, that is all it takes. basic physics napkin math. anything with nuance (self driving) or human emotions in play (twitter), and he is the same as any boomer uncle complaining about kids these days

> basic physics napkin math. Exactly, it's not rocket science. Oh, wait, it actually is.

Right, and you can land on the moon with basic newtonian mechanics. The are millions of devils in the details but for a person to decide how big a rocket to build and whether it could land vertically after a payload of X that needs a delta-V of Y, its easy napkin math to prove feasibility.

Executing it is then one of the hardest things people can do but SpaceX had all the best people at the time.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#158

Post by ThinkBeat »

This is I am sure a stupid question but is that a lot? In the context of building a new rocket system?

Allegedly the development of the F35 cost about $35 billion according to one 2020 study. (Which I think was estimated at the start to about $400 million in non-inflation adjusted dollars)

If I look at it through that frame, spending $1.1B on developing a rocket seems ok (I Know they are not done so the cost will keep rising)

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#160

Post by wkat4242 »

nordsieck wrote: post #15
mezeek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear to readers, the were only paid for their achieved milestones, which is nowhere near the full contracted amount since they haven't flown anyone. As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted.

> As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted. Mostly. NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. > NASA instead requested Boeing “propose prices for additional flexibilities to fill an anticipated crew access gap, including shortening its lead times for rocket and spacecraft production,” the report states. After what OIG descr…

They paid them extra for "shortening lead times". Lol.
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