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Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew

arstechnica.com

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

#81

Post by garmaine »

noir_lord wrote: post #67
garmaine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but I'd agree with the headline even if it wasn't supported by the article. If I were a betting man I'd place better odds on Boeing making the deliverable date (or slipping by less) than SpaceX. Boeing has a tendency to promise something reasonable, and so long as there's no requirement creep, deliver more or less on schedule. SpaceX has a history of promising the impossible, then actually delivering on it many years late. Based on that alone I'd rather place money on Boeing delivering on time than SpaceX, as much as I really do love SpaceX.

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

#82

Post by vkou »

avmich wrote: post #46
vkou wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. Unfortunately the opposite could also be true - loss of interest to space research, because, hey, they don't make anything perceivable... In the awesome game "Bazz Aldrin's Race Into Space" if both (human) players try to perfect the technology, to avoid costly failures with human flights and stop flying for a while, at some point budgets get slashed and th…

The benefit of using robots is that failures are less costly, and that you don't have to stop flying if a mission fails.

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

#83

Post by avmich »

vkou wrote: post #82
avmich wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. Unfortunately the opposite could also be true - loss of interest to space research, because, hey, they don't make anything perceivable... In the awesome game "Bazz Aldrin's Race Into Space" if both (human) players try to perfect the technology, to avoid costly failures with human flights and stop flying for a while, at some point budgets get slashed and th…

The benefit of using robots is that failures are less costly, and that you don't have to stop flying if a mission fails.

Robots do have a lot of benefits in space. Lots of them weren't obvious in 1950-s, but robots came a long, long way since then.

So apparently did manned spaceflight. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, Simonyi, Garriot, Laliberte flights demonstrate it's much more within reach now than before. Same could be said regarding private makers of rockets, spacecrafts and even space stations. Not only we see the push to increase the new industry, with new services to humanity and new taxes to governments - we're actually learning to do things in the environment (the learning itself happens there) which is quite different from where we evolved in.

And when we talk about actually living in space - including doing really complex things, like unexpected actions across the specter of what might be needed when you're actually trying to be successful for long periods of time - many robotics specialists, last time I've checked, admit that human flights are actually less costly than robotic ones. In other words, if you want to have a big enough exploration program for space, you ought to include people into that.

Fortunately flying to space becomes easier as we learn more.

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

#84

Post by sitkack »

toasterlovin wrote: post #75
sitkack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW, grocery chains in the US have low single digit margins. I don’t think they’re gouging anybody. Also, prices at my local grocery store are frequently lower than at Costco (a warehouse-style store).

Gross Profit vs Net Profit. Gross Profits are in the 20-40% range, Kroger (22%) [1] Safeway (28%) [2] Whole Foods (34%) [3]

Those Net Profits of 1.5% look like a target, not a byproduct of a cut throat business.

Smart and Final, a warehouse and restaurant supply store [4] has a GP of 14%.

[1] https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatios.php?c...

[2] https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatios.php?c...

[3] https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatios.php?c...

[4] https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatios.php?c...

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

#85

Post by toasterlovin »

sitkack wrote: post #84
toasterlovin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, grocery chains in the US have low single digit margins. I don’t think they’re gouging anybody. Also, prices at my local grocery store are frequently lower than at Costco (a warehouse-style store).

Gross Profit vs Net Profit. Gross Profits are in the 20-40% range, Kroger (22%) [1] Safeway (28%) [2] Whole Foods (34%) [3] Those Net Profits of 1.5% look like a target, not a byproduct of a cut throat business. Smart and Final, a warehouse and restaurant supply store [4] has a GP of 14%. [1] https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatios.php?c... [2] https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatios.php…

You need overhead to run a business. Pointing to GP is nice for a company that can expect overhead to stay the same while they reap the benefits of increasing scale, but all the large grocery chains in the US are already at scale. If there was extra net profit to be had by reducing overhead, they would have done so already.
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