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

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

#51

Post by civilitty » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:45 AM UTC

skookumchuck wrote: post #45

civilitty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The marginal cost of an identical copy is almost always "just" the cost of assembly and testing - which can be astronomical if the mission is pushing the boundaries of technology like the Mars Science Lab or the NuStar x-ray telescope - but for most missions the major cost is R&D leading up to final assembly. For the majority of missions, that second $250 million goes towards engineering an extra 15% success chance for the satellite itself (success rate of the launch vehicle is known). The first $150 million gets you 80%, the second 250 million gets you an extra 15% with a flat $100 mil for launch.

If you budget for two 80% launches, however, $150-200 million gets you two satellites, you spend $125-200 million on launches (you cant wait until your first failure to put money down for the second launch so it's at least a 1.25x multiplier), and $25-100 million on extra staffing costs (you can't risk losing your top PIs/scientists between the first and second launch so you have to pay them the entire time).

Ideally, both options would be evaluated independent of popular sentiment. For manned exploration or cutting edge missions like the Mars rovers, we should strive for that 95% single mission success rate. Otherwise we should err towards getting more science done faster and cheaper.

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

#52

Post by TangoTrotFox » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:51 AM UTC

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…

The numbers are even better than you're throwing out there. Gotta keep in mind two big factors. A lot of the cost in these missions is not just the satellite hardware but the R&D costs. And the second is that launches are insured, so you'd need to compare the relative rate of insurance more than the expected value of fail rate x satellite cost. I have no idea on insurance costs for e.g. SpaceX vs Boeing launches but I'd be quite surprised if they're not extremely comparable.

But yeah, I think you're really hitting at the heart of the problem that's going to become even more troublesome once we start putting people on Mars. There are a practically unlimited number of ways for something to go wrong. And even if we do everything we possibly can, we're still playing an odds game with extremely high stakes. A sensationalizing media and an ill informed public creates a nasty mix for issues like this.

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

#53

Post by sitkack » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:18 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #39

Waterluvian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's an understanding of just a natural equilibrium found when two companies iterate on focusing where their money seems to be most successful at earning contracts. Soon enough one company is great at one thing and the other another.

I won't pretend to have studied this at any depth, but my possibly overconfident intuition is that it can be either an outright conspiracy or an unspoken understanding of not stepping on each others toes. It doesn't matter much; you don't have to be a genius CEO to see what is in both companies interest, conspiracy or not. The more companies are added to the mix, the less stable the truce becomes, and somewhere aroun…

You see this in Germany vs the US when it comes to grocery store. In DE there are vastly more grocery stores and more grocery store companies. Prices are crazy low. In the US, there is very little overlap, with mega-stores carving out a multiple square mile section of the town.

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

#54

Post by jve » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:22 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.

As Gwynne Shotwell (President of SpaceX) in some interview said something along the lines: "We are standing on the shoulders of giants"

Basically they didn't start from beginning, but just continues from the point where knowledge has been accumulated over those years.

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

#55

Post by some_account » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:26 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…

Enterprise systems are always like that. You pay for it, then you are invisible and communicate through support tickets.

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

#56

Post by taneq » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

avmich wrote: post #47

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 2.1…

> even though there were lots of flights and rockets with engines like that certified for manned flights

In the end, a certification doesn't actually mean the rocket won't explode, just that it hasn't so far. For manned missions, certification is necessary but arguably not sufficient.

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

#57

Post by emiliobumachar » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:54 AM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #52

civilitty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The numbers are even better than you're throwing out there. Gotta keep in mind two big factors. A lot of the cost in these missions is not just the satellite hardware but the R&D costs. And the second is that launches are insured, so you'd need to compare the relative rate of insurance more than the expected value of fail rate x satellite cost . I have no idea on insurance costs for e.g. SpaceX vs Boeing launches but…

Insurance doesn't matter for this tradeoff, except maybe in the very short term. If they fly with a high failure rate, their insurance price will go up. At their price point, insurance companies pay attention.

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

#58

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 8:22 AM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #57

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers are even better than you're throwing out there. Gotta keep in mind two big factors. A lot of the cost in these missions is not just the satellite hardware but the R&D costs. And the second is that launches are insured, so you'd need to compare the relative rate of insurance more than the expected value of fail rate x satellite cost . I have no idea on insurance costs for e.g. SpaceX vs Boeing launches but…

Insurance doesn't matter for this tradeoff, except maybe in the very short term. If they fly with a high failure rate, their insurance price will go up. At their price point, insurance companies pay attention.

I assumed the parent meant that you don't get the benefit of a lower failure rate until insurers have noticed a pattern of lower failures, so for rare launches you might not achieve a financial benefit.

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

#59

Post by willvarfar » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 8:39 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.

Cartels are illegal in the US because of anti-trust laws?

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

#60

Post by garmaine » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 8:48 AM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #28

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?

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.