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Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

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Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#71

Post by mschuster91 »

somenameforme wrote: post #39
irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them. They even managed to get through COVID unscathed. The main danger of relying on a single provider is them taking advantage of that position and charging unreasonable rates, exactly like Boeing/Lockheed have been doing for decades (two compa…

> The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them.

Financially, there is almost zero chance for SpaceX to go under at the point they're at - every launch is profitable for them and the margin goes up with each time they can re-use any component, for boosters their record holder was at 19 launches until it was taken out by bad weather during transport [1].

The real danger for SpaceX is Elon Musk, plain and simple. Either he does something really stupid, something even more dumb than playing personal CSR for neo-Nazis, and the US government says "okay, that's f...ing enough now" as a result, or he goes completely against the US government: push for Mars because he finds out he has some sort of cancer or whatnot and wants to die there while the US government wants to first focus on the moon, or turn off services to Ukraine and instead provide services to Russia... or sell critical information to Russia, China or whatever just to stick the finger to the US government (aka, follow the Trumpian way of "I do what I want, what do they wanna do lol").

Yes, the US government can always go and nationalize SpaceX if need be, so it's not too high of a risk for SpaceX to go completely belly-up, but it would mean years upon years of nasty judicial fights.

[1] https://interestingengineering.com/culture/falcon-9-spacexs-...

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#73

Post by mschuster91 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

> How is it that SpaceX was able to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time, esp considering Boeing has been building aircraft for a century?

Two factors, IMHO. First and biggest one is by being a private company operating on its own budget authority. Basically, SpaceX was free to work in whatever way they wanted - a 180° turn from "established" practice both at NASA and ESA and the political decision makers that the billions of dollars of expenses had to be distributed across the continent fairly to help politicians get reelected. That means instead of dealing with shit tons of suppliers, wasting insane amounts of money on tenders, specification documents and whatnot, SpaceX went in-house for as much as they could, in very very few locations on top of that to save on shipping.

The second one is ossification. Boeing, Airbus, EADS, the major carmakers - they all got big by perfecting (sometimes centuries) old designs by iteration: airframes, cars, combustion engines, rockets, you name it. Straying from the beaten path comes with very high internal risk for anyone involved, and so very little true innovation happens. SpaceX in contrast operated on a green field - a ton of money and a general attitude of "you're free to do whatever the fuck you want, and failures are expected along the path".

Eventually, no doubt there, SpaceX and Tesla will both ossify as well, it's a trap for any large organization - and we're seeing signs with Tesla already, with attention going to the Cybertruck instead of getting the issues with existing models (e.g. fabrication tolerances, spare part availability) under control first.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#74

Post by MangoCoffee »

phkahler wrote: post #45
insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

>> How is it that SpaceX was able to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time Because they already had Dragon sending cargo to the ISS at the start of the commercial crew program. They used the money to upgrade and get man rated. Boeing started their capsule from scratch. This still doesn't explain all of it, but nobody else has mentioned their head start.

ULA started a long time ago before SpaceX. It's really unfair to say Boeing doesn't have a head start. if anything, ULA/Boeing failed because their leadership

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#75

Post by panick21_ »

dotnet00 wrote: post #29
walkabilitee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone asks, "why don't they just build more Atlas V rockets," it's because they rely on Russian engines which have been phased out due to politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

Plus, the production lines for Atlas V have already been retooled with those for Vulcan, so even if they did have the engines, they couldn't make the rockets. IIRC ULA did have a license to manufacture their own domestic RD-180s (or was considering getting it), but the factory for those would've been very expensive and not worth it with Vulcan in its early design stages.

I don't think the line has been retooled. They still have to build a number of Atlas 5s for Amazon. They don't have all of those in storage.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#76

Post by raverbashing »

somenameforme wrote: post #69
raverbashing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did SpaceX poach all of Boeing/Airbus' best people? No For one, SpaceX can't even hire non-citizens from what I understand But yeah they probably poached some ULA, some LM, also from some other companies.

That's nothing to do with SpaceX specifically. The same applies to any American company building long range rockets. The government classifies this as weapons technology, and so it falls under ITAR - the International Traffic in Arms Regulations [1]. And hiring a foreign employee (or even a multi-national employee) is considered equivalent to a transfer of the underlying technology to that individual's home country o…

> That's nothing to do with SpaceX specifically

Correct, and I never said it was

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#77

Post by panick21_ »

phkahler wrote: post #45
insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

>> How is it that SpaceX was able to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time Because they already had Dragon sending cargo to the ISS at the start of the commercial crew program. They used the money to upgrade and get man rated. Boeing started their capsule from scratch. This still doesn't explain all of it, but nobody else has mentioned their head start.

While that experienced helped, its not as as simple. The Crew Dragon was far more then just man rating the Cargo Dragon. It was a complete redesign, the structure is totally different. And the really hard part are things like the Launch escape system, SpaceX actually developed new engine from the ground, Boeing didn't.

SpaceX also got far less money, Boeing received like 80% more money.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#78

Post by panick21_ »

renewiltord wrote: post #12

The funny thing is that Elon Musk promised us Mars and gave us orbit for cheaper than ever before. Boeing in its various incarnations has promised us orbit and given us nothing for just as expensive as before. Some people like to optimize for delta between promise and delivery. I think I like it when just delivery is optimized. There's really only one space company in the US today, and perhaps if there were other peo…

> There's really only one space company in the US today

This is just categorically false. There are many space companies. Launch isn't the only thing that happening in space.

But yes, SpaceX in terms of launch and operational sats dwarfs everybody to a degree that is unprecedented.

But there is a lot of money flowing in and many former SpaceXers have created lots of companies. Rocket companies, RocketLab, Firefly, Relativity, ABL. Lunar companies like Astrobotics. Transport companies like Impulse Space.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#79

Post by melodyogonna »

mschuster91 wrote: post #71
somenameforme wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them. They even managed to get through COVID unscathed. The main danger of relying on a single provider is them taking advantage of that position and charging unreasonable rates, exactly like Boeing/Lockheed have been doing for decades (two compa…

> The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them. Financially, there is almost zero chance for SpaceX to go under at the point they're at - every launch is profitable for them and the margin goes up with each time they can re-use any component, for boosters their record holder was at 19…

[dead]

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#80

Post by wtfwhateven »

arresin wrote: post #66
somenameforme wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your guess would be incorrect. Boeing felt they were in risk of collapse during COVID and immediately went to the government asking for a $60 billion bailout. The government wanted equity in exchange for this bailout, which Boeing didn't want to offer. So they ended up offering Federal Reserve facilitated 'Boeing bonds', and took in about $25 billion to stay afloat. [1] Amusingly a big part of the reason they ended u…

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