The numbers don’t lie—NASA’s move to commercial space has saved money
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"But it worked perfectly in the simulations!" said the dead astronauts.
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To be clear these are partnerships and there is considerable NASA involvement, the main difference is the way the contracts are designed. Cost plus is used in government contracts way more than it has any right to be, even in areas where they claim "private sector does better" (they consider it working with the private sector). The thing that is surprising is that human space flight is basically the definition of high development costs with limited commercial interest where cost plus arguably SHOULD make more sense than fixed price on anything short of a new CVN, or maybe ballistic missiles. The fact that it works so well here can eventually have some pretty far reaching consequences.
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Also reuse enables post flight analysis, to improve performance and reliability,
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The reason for a lot of things done the way they were in the 60's was that Pres. Kennedy wanted to land on the moon and get back by 1969. That forced NASA to go to a variety of vendors (Grumman in Long Island for the lunar lander for example), and since NASA and other vendors kept changing specs, things moved to a cost+ basis for EVERYTHING. Also a lot of political log-rolling. "Want my vote? Move a piece of the production to my state" kind of things.
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The story of SLS and the vehicle that it is to carry into space reminds me of stories that my father told me about his work with Italian POWs in Arizona during WW2. The government was developing new POW camps to house both Italian and German POWs so it gave contract to contractors for each of the needs it had to be met, housing, utilities and roads. So the contractor would stack his supplies, lumber, in what would become the yard of the barracks. It was a cost plus contract so every thing had to be perfect or it could NOT be used. But the contractors for the utilities had to complete the utilities also. Now the building contractor had not placed the lumber and supplies in an area that was out of the way so the utilities contractor in digging the trenches would when the lumber was in the way just pow on through it. The same thing for the different utilities contractors. The contractors for the water would dig a trench and the sewer contractor would fill up the water trench while digging its trenches. This was happening all the time. Now the building contractor would receive in a load of new lumber and if one of the boards has cracked or a chip end the board no matter it was the whole board would not be used. It would be discarded rather than cut to a shorter usable length.
My father was a civilian guard supervising some of the Italians POW. These prisoners were trusties and were allow out of their cells. Some of them were were to drive the dump trucks that hauled the discarded supplies to the dump ground. Each prisoner had to have a US citizen to oversee them in their job so my dad had plenty of opportunities to observe what the contractors did. Not only did the haul new long boards that only had a small chip on the end but also sewer pipe that had been ran over with construction equipment and even the metal pipes for the water lines.
This same attitude from the government and contractors is the same attitude for the government and the SLS and the vehicle it is to carry. The more these companies waste the more profits they make all at the expense of the taxpayers.
My father was a civilian guard supervising some of the Italians POW. These prisoners were trusties and were allow out of their cells. Some of them were were to drive the dump trucks that hauled the discarded supplies to the dump ground. Each prisoner had to have a US citizen to oversee them in their job so my dad had plenty of opportunities to observe what the contractors did. Not only did the haul new long boards that only had a small chip on the end but also sewer pipe that had been ran over with construction equipment and even the metal pipes for the water lines.
This same attitude from the government and contractors is the same attitude for the government and the SLS and the vehicle it is to carry. The more these companies waste the more profits they make all at the expense of the taxpayers.
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It was also bleeding edge and they had real schedule pressure (beat the Soviets) this both made cost plus sensible and actually work. We also had started using cost plus a bit over the course of WW2 as the changing situation meant that the equipment had to change fairly rapidly,
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It'd be more, SpaceX would be obligated to take point fixing the problem, NASA already has those schematics of course, as for malicious compliance, then the same thing that appears to be happening with Boeing would start happening to them, they will be awarded fewer contracts.
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Let's look at the numbers for that "the cost of an expendable launch vehicle doesn’t even put a dent in the overall price whatsoever" remark there.
NASA is paying $90 million per seat for Starliner, and $55 million per seat for Dragon. That's for four seats per launch, so $360 million per launch to Boeing/ULA, and $220 million per launch to SpaceX.
An Atlas launch, according to Wikipedia, is about $110 million, and a Falcon 9 launch (on a new booster) is $62 million.
So, of the $140 million extra that NASA has to pay per four-seat launch for Starliner over Dragon, $48 million (over 1/3 of the "Old Space Premium," and 13% of the total launch cost), is from having to launch on Atlas. I'd hardly call that "not even a dent in the overall cost."
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
The $110 is also for a 401 the cheapest smallest Atlas V. The Starliner launches on an N22 and while pricing isn't available for that the 521 has a price of $135M. The final 2 is for a dual engine upper which likely adds another $15M+ so lets say $150M.
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Also if cargo wasn't factored in, the per seat cost of Starliner would be about the same as the seat cost of Soyuz, you are getting more leg room and space for your carry on- err transfer bags than Soyuz of course so it is technically better, (and mind you, the transfer bags can be more like soft body suitcases)
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I think they're referring to James Webb and Secret Squirrel, but that's not really a sustainable business is it.
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$15m for an additional RL10? Think you are a bit low on the estimate, plus add a bit more for the Centaur itself as it is built differently than the single engine version.
Edit thinking about it, they might only be able to get the system to its price because they own half of ULA.
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Fantastic article, these are the stories that keep me coming back to Ars and happy to be a subscriber.
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Don't you have that backwards? Neither SpaceX nor OSC/OATK/NG have sold a single cargo capsule to anyone; but SpaceX has already sold 2 Crew Dragon flights: One of which became a Starship flight around the moon instead; the second to a space tourist company that's trying to find a few zillionaires to buy the seats in it.
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Given what we saw with the whole senator stock dump fiasco litigation - kinda makes sense
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normally butters
Ars Praefectus
Ares I would have had a higher thrust-to-weight during the SRB phase of ascent than SLS and would have presented a more challenging in-flight abort environment for Orion. That explains *some* of Orion's weight issues.
But at the end of the day, Orion was intentionally designed to exceed the payload capacity of an Atlas V (single core). This was necessary to justify the development of Ares I. Michael Griffin did not want the crew exploration vehicle (CEV) to be able to launch on an EELV that could potentially make it through the NASA human-rating gauntlet.
It's important to note that Lockheed did not win the CEV contract by proposing anything like Orion. The CEV program was arranged by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and had much more forward-thinking requirements including a fly-off competition.
Lockheed's proposal called for a reusable lifting body reentry vehicle designed for runway landings and capable of launching with an expendable abort tower on an Atlas V. Missions beyond earth orbit would require three EELVs to launch the CEV elements. The reentry vehicle would rendezvous in LEO with a pressurized mission module and a hydrolox trans-earth injection stage based on a dual-engine Centaur.
Then Michael Griffin was brought in to replace O'Keefe. Griffin canceled the flyoff competition, awarded the contract to Lockheed, and commissioned the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) to evaluate a proposal he'd previously developed while working with The Planetary Society.
One of the elements of ESAS was the Apollo-on-Steroids crew capsule we know as Orion. After the ESAS report rubber-stamped the feasibility of Griffin's architecture, NASA issued a gigantic change request to the CEV contract to completely transform the design from what Lockheed proposed to what Griffin envisioned.
So that's how NASA managed to select a distributed launch architecture for human exploration and wind up with a crew capsule that requires a super-heavy rocket to launch.
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I choose firebomb because the probable is less that it's throwing shrapnel but that it's throwing flaming shrapnel that instead of punching small holes through the parachute (which in small numbers would be survivable); but that a single hunk of flaming solid prop hitting the chute could set it on fire and burn the entire thing to ash and rendering it completely useless.
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COTS also included the development of the original iteration of Falcon 9 and Antares, while Antares hasn't seen sales outside of NASA, Falcon 9 is a different story, so no I don't have it backwards, as for OSC/OATK/NG, while Cygnus hasn't really been sold to other customers, the sat bus it is based on has.
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greybeardengineer
Ars Praefectus
Air travel is safe because most flights are in the low part of the bathtub reliability curve. Up until SpaceX space flight has always been at the high point on the left (arguably STS got the same benefit but the ET was always new and the orbiter and SRBs were far more recycled than reused. The architectural was so insanely dangerous that any benefit was more than lost).
The right side of the bathtub might be only around 10 flights for F9 and 100 for SS but that's a good start.
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Way i look at it, SpaceX is unique. I'm not super fan boy, i'm looking at it as what i see. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other are all commercial space companies, though specialized in government services. Shame on them for gouging American public and administrations that allow to continue to happen.
SpaceX so far has been unique, private, funneled profits try improve itself, become something more and do more. Will Blue Origins do that? Maybe. Will Virgin Galactic evolve from a expensive novelty space program? I hope so, but i have doubts. Not because their failures, beyond flying up and down briefly doesn't strike me as space flight. If they get their future plans of sub-orbital flight going.
As guy who grew up thinking space was the future, wondering what happened why NASA wasn't doing anything but lingering around orbit. It was being held back, by US Government, With expensive costs.
I hope NASA is able keep going and use SpaceX and other companies to lower their costs. Only time and politics will tell. Since that one biggest stumbling blocks, politics and angling for a vote/money.
SpaceX so far has been unique, private, funneled profits try improve itself, become something more and do more. Will Blue Origins do that? Maybe. Will Virgin Galactic evolve from a expensive novelty space program? I hope so, but i have doubts. Not because their failures, beyond flying up and down briefly doesn't strike me as space flight. If they get their future plans of sub-orbital flight going.
As guy who grew up thinking space was the future, wondering what happened why NASA wasn't doing anything but lingering around orbit. It was being held back, by US Government, With expensive costs.
I hope NASA is able keep going and use SpaceX and other companies to lower their costs. Only time and politics will tell. Since that one biggest stumbling blocks, politics and angling for a vote/money.
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Also helps that they can pack a bunch of sensors and cameras in various places and add new ones without much fuss if sensor and post flight data creates interest in certain areas that they don't have as much data about. Combined this information enables them to iterate exceptionally quickly.
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It's not really that they are unique, except from the perspective of the aerospace industry as it stands today, (excluding the small launchers) what they are is a tech company that builds rockets, though the reinvesting to self improve has been seen in most industries at some point or another so saying its a tech company thing isn't really accurate. What sets them apart is that they never treated the launch industry as being as mature as everyone else seemed to think it was.
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Full disclosure: I was a doubter.
I am Canadian by nature and nurture and I remember our trips to America as a child. I remember all the private billboards (a rarity in Canada at the time). I remember the private toll roads, the private schools (which I occasionally attended in Oklahoma City), and above all the private hospitals with their dizzying mazes of insurance requirements (my brother had an emergency appendectomy in Alabama, of all places). I always felt intimidated and suspicious of all these private entities which never seemed to have my interest at heart, as opposed to the Canadian more government-oriented systems which were clunkier, but seemed somehow more humane.
The advent of commercial crew filled me with horror. I had visions of the Space Shuttle being adorned with massive Coca Cola logos or the advertisements being beamed down to me from space. "Sure government space flight is more expensive," I thought, "but at least it has my interest at heart".
Oh, the sweet summer child I was.
SpaceX didn't win me over at the beginning, but Tesla did (I was an early adopter of electric bikes and probably still have one of Lee Iacocca's E-Bikes hanging in my garage in Canada) and SpaceX followed, in large part because my brother bought me a one-year subscription to Ars Technica for my birthday some years back, which introduced me to some very thoughtful arguments. Now I can only be described as a complete convert to commercial space travel.
I still don't like the private hospital system in America, mind you. It still weirds me out.
I am Canadian by nature and nurture and I remember our trips to America as a child. I remember all the private billboards (a rarity in Canada at the time). I remember the private toll roads, the private schools (which I occasionally attended in Oklahoma City), and above all the private hospitals with their dizzying mazes of insurance requirements (my brother had an emergency appendectomy in Alabama, of all places). I always felt intimidated and suspicious of all these private entities which never seemed to have my interest at heart, as opposed to the Canadian more government-oriented systems which were clunkier, but seemed somehow more humane.
The advent of commercial crew filled me with horror. I had visions of the Space Shuttle being adorned with massive Coca Cola logos or the advertisements being beamed down to me from space. "Sure government space flight is more expensive," I thought, "but at least it has my interest at heart".
Oh, the sweet summer child I was.
SpaceX didn't win me over at the beginning, but Tesla did (I was an early adopter of electric bikes and probably still have one of Lee Iacocca's E-Bikes hanging in my garage in Canada) and SpaceX followed, in large part because my brother bought me a one-year subscription to Ars Technica for my birthday some years back, which introduced me to some very thoughtful arguments. Now I can only be described as a complete convert to commercial space travel.
I still don't like the private hospital system in America, mind you. It still weirds me out.
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FTA:
"This is nearly as much lift capacity as the Scotty Rocket, which would have cost 50 times as much to develop."
This is why I'll cut Elon slack on a lot of his libertarian Twitter stupidity. He really has delivered, and I believe that he will continue to do so in a similar way. I would not be surprised if we have boots on a moon orbiting Saturn before I shuffle off to the unknown, because of his ambition.
(Not Jupiter--that's some hella radiation.)
"This is nearly as much lift capacity as the Scotty Rocket, which would have cost 50 times as much to develop."
This is why I'll cut Elon slack on a lot of his libertarian Twitter stupidity. He really has delivered, and I believe that he will continue to do so in a similar way. I would not be surprised if we have boots on a moon orbiting Saturn before I shuffle off to the unknown, because of his ambition.
(Not Jupiter--that's some hella radiation.)
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Since they are maliciously compliant (oops we made a mistake, please pay us to get it corrected) Boeing is an excellent example.
In this modern world of 2nd and 3rd alternatives, the malicious vendor no longer gets contracts unless they can show that the behavior won't repeat.
Where Boeing really and truly screwed up was with letting this attitude spill over to the commercial aviation side where they have a competitor with an acceptable alternative at a similar price. Before Covid 19 the Boeing 737 MAX was heavily influencing future buying decisions in a manner that really benefited Airbus.
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Well you see insurance and private toll roads can be closer to cost plus single source contracts than they are to competed fixed price, in that they have a captive customer, who usually doesn't have an alternative, and there is little incentive to keep the costs down, competitive fixed price contracts give the contractor every incentive to keep on time, budget and maintain quality.
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In the old days, NASA decided what they wanted, drew up the plans, went to a company and said "Build this." After Constellation got cancelled the Senate designed SLS, went to NASA and said, 'Build this." What commercial cargo/crew has the great potential to do is change all that and build *partnerships* with space companies. NASA can approach companies and say, "We want to do (X). What do you have or can build that allows us to do (X). The spacecraft belongs to the company, it's built under their control (with assistance and oversight from NASA), and launched by their team at their facility with recovery by their team. It's soup to nuts spacecraft ala carte. Partnerships is the key word and concept.
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While is this very true, I expect that Nasa is *very* happy with the capabilities & value offered by both SpaceX/Dragon & NG/Cygnus. Both suppliers/spacecraft have evolved into having different abilities & combined offer a very capable network for LEO & ISS servicing.
Cygnus alone offers great capability for long-term experimentation near to earth - sort of an unclassified X-37B but without the return capability. The return capability is currently offered by Dragon of course.
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I totally agree with the substance of your comment. But as a wise-assed Phillies Phan and a human space flight proponent, I have to add a slight amendment. While Schilling has been known to shill for some questionable political and social positions, we have had no word here in the City of Brotherly Love of Schilling shilling for questionable launcher programs. Red Sox fans may have further information.
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Also, notice how Northrup Grumman has evolved the Cygnus to serve other needs: it forms the basis of the Lunar Gateway's Minimal Habitation Module, as well as the Transfer Element of Blue Origin's Human Landing System proposal. If either of those actually happen, then investment into the Cygnus will have paid off in future NASA programs.
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Great article, Eric, but it perpetuates the myth that the commercial cargo program was Mike Griffin's idea. Commercial cargo was already in President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" policy and NASA's budget by the time Griffin became Administrator. Griffin should get credit for adopting the COTS approach to implement the program.
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It's like someone watching the first Model-T roll off the assembly line comment: "other than cost benefits what possible use will there ever be for manufacturing using assembly lines?"
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Man i still remember when Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan stood against commercial space flight and made Musk cry on 60 Minutes. How things have changed.
On a different note. I think we should be careful when we are talking about the success of commercial space. Don't ge me wrong - it is a success, but it has mostly been SpaceX. Last time I checked Blue is still burning stupid money with little output. And so are others.
On a different note. I think we should be careful when we are talking about the success of commercial space. Don't ge me wrong - it is a success, but it has mostly been SpaceX. Last time I checked Blue is still burning stupid money with little output. And so are others.
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Its also impacted their military business, more in drones than manned aircraft, though, there was a competition for a stealth combat drone that they got pretty far into development for that they lost on technical grounds, the airframe was later used for a certainly less lucrative drone tanker, of course, but they still ended up putting the kind of money into it they'd only do it they thought that it was near certain they would get selected for it to not get selected.
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I do agree with you, but you're citing a very special case. As much as a Howard Hughes-like kook Musk has become, I do believe he has good intentions, many environmentally based, something other private, for-profit entities can't say. And yes, your health and whether your live or die depending upon someone's profit? That's not right.
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But to play devil's advocate, Starliner is the result of the Commercial Crew program. If you were to just compare Starliner to Orion it would not be unreasonable to conclude that this new form of contracting saved money, but resulted in lower quality and reliability. The same could also be argued about the Cygnus/Antares Commercial Cargo contract.
SpaceX really is unique, and I don't think the commercial cargo and crew programs would have been as big of a success without them. Nor would SpaceX have been able to deliver what they did under a cost-plus contract where NASA dictated so much of the design up-front.
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Who knew incentivizing private companies to spend as much taxpayer money as they can, would cause them to spend as much taxpayer money as they can?
*snark off*
2020 is a shitty year in many respects, but it's going to be an amazing year for human spaceflight.
Safe flight, gentlemen! Can't wait to watch it
*snark off*
2020 is a shitty year in many respects, but it's going to be an amazing year for human spaceflight.
Safe flight, gentlemen! Can't wait to watch it
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Even if you just factor in upmass cargo Dragon still wins out with the exception of Pressurized volume, while being cheaper, Cygnus does offer the ability to conduct experiments after detaching from the ISS, such as flame experiments, and has been explored as an additional means to provide ISS propulsion. It also seems fairly easy to modify for use as a permanent module will multiple docking/berthing nodes
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