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Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

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Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#51

Post by garmaine »

perl4ever wrote: post #37
garmaine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Boeing has petitioned for, and received amendments to its “fixed-price” contract to cover these extra costs in the past. Boeing making this number public, which they would have every reason to keep secret for competitive reasons if it was their own cost, is the first step in normalizing the customer to the added cost. Watch as they threaten to pull out as they have done before...

Is that really a priori the wrong way to run things? You have a project, you estimate the cost, you have a contract, then the customer just HAS to add more stuff, so you negotiate about what to add at what cost in time and money. So, fixed price with adjustments, why wouldn't that be normal (in a vacuum)?

The promise of fixed-price contracts is that the contractor is incentivized to get really creative and cut costs in order to maximize profits, like SpaceX has done. SpaceX is charging NASA about $220M per launch of the Falcon 9 -- the same rocket they price on their website for $62M -- and they get to keep the rocket and capsule for reuse too. Now at a marginal cost that's a minimum of 72% profit, and probably much higher. Now if SpaceX botched their demo flight and had to do another, would NASA be willing to pay the cost? No, and they shouldn't: the risk of cutting into their margins is what incentives them to keep on schedule, on budget, and minimize risk.

Yet Boeing has shown consistently that they are only able to operate in the old business model where "profits" disappear into "overhead" and contracts earn only a small margin of profit. Then as something unforeseen happens, as has happened multiple times, they threaten to pull out and force a renegotiation.

This defeats the entire spirit of the fixed-price contract, and costs the taxpayer. IMHO NASA contract officers should call the bluff, and give the contract to Sierra Nevada if Boeing does back out.

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#52

Post by DuskStar »

sebazzz wrote: post #49
jessriedel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial crew program is going to be a way, way cheaper method of putting astronauts in low-Earth orbit than the Space Shuttle. And most of the capabilities that the Shuttle had but Starliner/Dragon lack are either obsolete or are being handled more efficiently by the dedicated X-37 spacecraft.

If you take the dollar per weight price the Space Shuttle wasn't that expensive, right? Assuming a full cargo bay. Source: everyday astronaut. I don't understand why (as far a I know) the weak points of the space shuttle weren't addressed, like the heat tiles which were supposedly fragile. Instead, they aborted the entire program.

Dollar per kg to orbit of the Space Shuttle was pretty respectable - if you count the mass of the orbiter as part of the payload. If you don't, it's absolutely ruinous. (~$5,000/kg with orbiter, $20,000/kg for what it could carry in the payload bay, 2020ish dollars - yes the orbiter outweighed its payload 3:1)

Look, the Saturn 1B - the man-rated, 20,000kg-class, safe predecessor to the Saturn 5 - cost ~$330m 2020 dollars per launch. The Space Shuttle could carry 24,000kg to orbit at a marginal cost per launch of somewhere between 500 and 700 million dollars. (This ignores all the costs attributed to the Space Shuttle program that were incurred even if a launch never occurred)

The Saturn V, of course, could put 140,000kg into LEO for ~1,250 million 2020 dollars.

So for half the price of a shuttle launch, you can put the 80% the mass into orbit on a Saturn 1B. Or for double the price of a shuttle launch, you can put 5.8 times as much mass into orbit on a Saturn V. Or double the shuttle's orbital payload mass - but on a trans-lunar injection trajectory instead.

And this is all comparing the shuttle to the technology of a decade and a half earlier.

Yes, a Shuttle Two - get rid of the reinforced carbon-carbon (hell, maybe even move to an ablative heatshield), ditch the SRBs, ditch the wings, lose the cross-range capability and maybe even move the fuel tank internal - might have been viable. But the closest thing to that (the X-33 program/VentureStar) never got the funding it needed, and even then might have been a bit too ambitious. Time will tell if an affordable SSTO ends up ever happening, but I'd bet on things like SpaceX's Falcon SuperHeavy/Starship (fully reusable TSTO craft) being the real successes.

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#53

Post by patorjk »

tristador wrote: post #28
patorjk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Northrop Grumman a decade ago on a contract that was missing it's deadlines. It was pretty choatic, and management was not very good (every new thing became a #1 priority). To try to get things done we were allowed to work as much overtime as possible. They even had white board showing who had worked the most hours (the top several people people worked over 2000 extra hours during a 12 month period). I al…

> 2000 extra hours during a 12 month period 11.5 hour days, 7 days a week for a year? > I almost burned out No kidding. Seems like a recipe for much worse than burn out.

I wasn't one of the 2000+ people, but yes, there were people doing that (working long days 7 days a week). One guy would actually sometimes sleep in his car. People weren't doing the same number of hours every day though. Also, there were some weird incentives. If you worked past 9PM, you got 10% extra pay on all of the hours you worked that day, so a lot of people (including myself - though not all of the time) would work past 9.

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#54

Post by jessriedel »

sebazzz wrote: post #49
jessriedel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial crew program is going to be a way, way cheaper method of putting astronauts in low-Earth orbit than the Space Shuttle. And most of the capabilities that the Shuttle had but Starliner/Dragon lack are either obsolete or are being handled more efficiently by the dedicated X-37 spacecraft.

If you take the dollar per weight price the Space Shuttle wasn't that expensive, right? Assuming a full cargo bay. Source: everyday astronaut. I don't understand why (as far a I know) the weak points of the space shuttle weren't addressed, like the heat tiles which were supposedly fragile. Instead, they aborted the entire program.

DuskStar explained well why the Shuttle was not cost effective in terms of payload per launch cost. I want to mention that there was a tiny minority of missions where this isn't a fair comparison: where they were returning satellites from orbit to Earth. In those cases, the shuttle was not just deadweight that needed to pay for itself through reusability; it was a necessary part of returning the satellite.

This ability was used a grand total of just four times.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15094/what-satelli...

It was not remotely worth making the rest of the launch system more expensive by an order of magnitude. Better to pay for a new satellite when they break, or (in the case of returning scientific samples) to design a sample-return function into the satellite.

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#55

Post by ceejayoz »

wmf wrote: post #21
alistairSH wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why there aren't performance requirements in government contracts. Same thing with infrastructure construction here in DC... new offices go up in a year, but changes to the intersection in front of said office take 5 years and cost multiple of the office itself. [hyperbole, but only just]

So if the contractor runs out of money and goes bankrupt when the project is 90% complete, then what? Spend far more money with a different contractor to try to pick up the pieces?

For starters, don't give contractors projects so large they're an existential threat to the company. Northrop Grumman makes billions in profit every year, and the JWST has been in the works since 2003. They (and their insurance) could afford to pay for the fuckups.

When a bank collapses, the FDIC steps in, takes over operations, and ensures it keeps running while they find a different bank to take it over.

It's a rather fascinating process: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102384...

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#56

Post by ceejayoz »

garmaine wrote: post #51
perl4ever wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really a priori the wrong way to run things? You have a project, you estimate the cost, you have a contract, then the customer just HAS to add more stuff, so you negotiate about what to add at what cost in time and money. So, fixed price with adjustments, why wouldn't that be normal (in a vacuum)?

The promise of fixed-price contracts is that the contractor is incentivized to get really creative and cut costs in order to maximize profits, like SpaceX has done. SpaceX is charging NASA about $220M per launch of the Falcon 9 -- the same rocket they price on their website for $62M -- and they get to keep the rocket and capsule for reuse too. Now at a marginal cost that's a minimum of 72% profit, and probably much h…

> SpaceX is charging NASA about $220M per launch of the Falcon 9 -- the same rocket they price on their website for $62M...

To be fair, that doesn't include the cost of a Dragon capsule, nor the extra steps NASA flights involve. It's the "stick your ready-to-go satellite on top of our booster" price.

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#57

Post by perl4ever »

scarejunba wrote: post #39
perl4ever wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, taking this as sincere, I would think your satisfaction would depend on them being benign tumors rather than turning out one day to be metastatic cancer. There's no way to have absolute security against that.

Yeah, if the US military starts sucking that would be bad but I'm not too worried about that. And to be honest, if they're going to suck at this, they're going to do that whether or not I put another $300k so I'd rather be wealthy and in trouble than poor and in trouble.

I sense that when you say "start sucking" you are envisioning a gradual process.

People and organizations can live in an unhealthy way for a long time before they have a crisis, but that doesn't mean there's a gradual ramp at the end.

Re: Boeing reports a $410M charge in case NASA decides Starliner needs another test

#58

Post by scarejunba »

perl4ever wrote: post #57
scarejunba wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if the US military starts sucking that would be bad but I'm not too worried about that. And to be honest, if they're going to suck at this, they're going to do that whether or not I put another $300k so I'd rather be wealthy and in trouble than poor and in trouble.

I sense that when you say "start sucking" you are envisioning a gradual process. People and organizations can live in an unhealthy way for a long time before they have a crisis, but that doesn't mean there's a gradual ramp at the end.

I'm betting on seeing it coming.
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