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Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
- neonate 8y agoThe GAO report this is based on: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/693035.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/693035.pdf.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- amacbride 8y ago...by a little bit (mostly due to Boeing's greater familiarity with NASA paperwork requirements.) "Based on NASA's "schedule risk analysis" from April, the agency estimates that Boeing will reach this milestone sometime between May 1, 2019, and August 30, 2020. For SpaceX, the estimated range is August 1, 2019, and November 30, 2020. The analysis' average certification date was December, 2019, for Boeing and January, 2020, for SpaceX."
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> NASA's "schedule risk analysis" Last time I looked at this, the firms set their own milestones. So for one, Boeing's milestone deliverable was a PowerPoint presentation; SpaceX's was a crew abort demonstration.
- api 8y agoWelcome to the world of government contracting where success depends much more on your ability to work the system then your ability to deliver anything.
- itronitron 8y ago>> the world of government contracting After watching the documentary on the joint strike fighter competition I just think of Boeing as a lobbying organization that happens to make planes.
- PaulRobinson 8y agoIf you're in the business of making and selling airliners, that's what you have to be. It's why Airbus needed government money to get started: it wasn't just the money they needed, they needed expert diplomats to have some skin in the game for the launch of a credible competitor in that sector to the US manufacturers. Boeing in the UK has an interesting reputation right now: they were involved in the MoD's bungling of an upgrade to Chinook firmware [1], and stepped in to pick up a contract worth hundreds of millions to basically make some small changes, run the compiler, and put the result on the machines. The MoD were so embarrassed they basically let Boeing bully them into becoming a full stack outsource service provider on these things. Boeing now run full-page adverts in various news magazines (The Week, The Economist, etc.), explaining why they are so important to the UK and how much they love to "invest" in the UK around the Chinooks. Eight machines that have opened the door to Boeing being a very central part of the MoD, British Army and RAF for the foreseeable future... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/jun/04/military.defence https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/jun/04/military.defence
- api 8y agoIn their defense aerospace is a sector where governments and state-linked mega-corps are probably the largest customer base, especially for high-end gear.
- danso 8y agoBased on the linked GAO report, it doesn't even seem like the "little bit" is justified, nevermind the headline that Boeing is in any way meaningfully "ahead". The point of the GAO report is not to assess Boeing's and SpaceX's progress, but to assess NASA's ability to manage the project and its contractors. From page 10: > Boeing and SpaceX continue to make progress developing their crew transportation systems, but both contractors have further delayed the certification milestone to early 2019. These changes have occurred as the contractors continue to work to aggressive schedules, and they have had to delay key events regularly. Further delays are likely as the Commercial Crew Program’s schedule risk analysis shows that the certification milestone is likely to further slip. > In addition, as of mid-June 2018, NASA officials told us that these dates may change soon but that both contractors have not yet provided official updates to their schedules to NASA...While NASA has begun to discuss potential options, it currently does not have a contingency plan for how to ensure an uninterrupted presence on the ISS beyond 2019* A better headline would be: NASA can't tell how late Boeing and SpaceX will be with commercial crew
- mrep 8y agoAlso probably because "Boeing asked for, and got, 50 percent more funding for the same task" [0]. Despite the mythical man month, 50% more funding on a 5/6 year (current estimate) project can pay your way ahead of the competition on almost any project (that is a really really long time!). Considering the timeline difference is only 10% (6 months spacex is behind based on 5 year delivery), I would expect Boeing to be much further ahead of spacex than they currently are. Sounds like spacex will be the real winner in the end IMO due to future contracts as a 50% savings ($1.6 Billion in this case [1]) to wait 10% more time is totally worth it in almost every case. [0]: from the article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/nasa-commercial-crew-analysis-finds-boeing-slightly-ahead-of-spacex/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/nasa-commercial-crew... [1]: https://qz.com/266665/the-us-will-spend-6-8-billion-hiring-boeing-and-spacex-to-build-new-spacecraft/ https://qz.com/266665/the-us-will-spend-6-8-billion-hiring-b...
- garmaine 8y agoSpaceX, 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.
- noir_lord 8y agoPut like that the fact they are a couple of months behind on an estimate is a massive win for spacex
- garmaine 8y agoYes, 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.
- peter303 8y agoPresident Bush promised a shuttle replacement by 2014 when he canceled the shuttle.
- timb07 8y agoPresident Bush also proclaimed "Mission Accomplished".
- bilbo0s 8y agoAlso declared "Brownie" was doing a "Heckuva job!" I think it is the nature of most politicians to "spin" to the point of "spectacular falsehoods".
- King-Aaron 8y ago> I think it is the nature of most politicians to "spin" to the point of "spectacular falsehoods". In recent times it appears to be more a case of "produce spectacular falsehoods, then attempt to spin it"
- qohen 8y agoNot in our timeline [0]: Although Bush stated at the time "Our mission continues" and "We have difficult work to do in Iraq," he also stated that it was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. Bush never uttered the phrase "Mission Accomplished";[2] a banner stating "Mission Accomplished" was used as a backdrop to the speech. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech
- sseth 8y agoLater in the article ... "the White House later conceded that they hung the banner but still insists it had been done at the request of the crew members" He stood in front of a banner put up by the White House saying "Mission Accomplished" and claimed victory. He did not clarify that the huge banner behind him was about the crew's mission and not Iraq. It is legitimate to say that Bush proclaimed it, and pedantic to argue he did not speak the words.
- timb07 8y agoIs the Boeing team that worked on the schedule for the 787 Dreamliner involved in this schedule?
- saulrh 8y agoI'm still impressed that SpaceX, with <20 years of experience, is even in the same ballpark as Boeing and its 101 years.
- ghrifter 8y agoIm surprised people worship SpaceX for reinventing 1970s rocket tech. Huh, same thing when Go reinvented 1970s programming language C and branded it Go. ULA will always crush SpaceX
- mcguire 8y agoCheck out how many of the Space X team have experience leading government space contractors. (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies/current_employees/current_employees_image_list#section-current-team https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te...). They're not going in raw.
- jve 8y agoAs 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.
- hector_ka 8y agoSigh. http://spacenews.com/crew-dragon-completes-thermal-vacuum-tests-ahead-of-first-test-flight/ http://spacenews.com/crew-dragon-completes-thermal-vacuum-te...
- rory096 8y agoThis is for certification, not demonstration missions. That capsule is scheduled for the unmanned DM-1 flight, after which will be the manned DM-2 flight, at which point SpaceX will submit its data for final certification in advance of operations flights. As an aside, the author (Eric Berger) is in no way biased against SpaceX - he's one of the most overtly pro-SpaceX journalists around.
- stcredzero 8y agoThis headline is another example of biased news pushing a narrative.
- abadaba 8y agoNot disagreeing with you, just genuinely curious: how is this headline biased? Do you mean that the margins are thinner than one might expect by reading it?
- sluggg 8y agoi would imagine so
- stcredzero 8y agoThe margins are meaningless at this point. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510611
- lukeify 8y agoIn which direction?
- stcredzero 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510611
- hinkley 8y agoThere 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 have to and get to stay engaged. If SpaceX is ahead or Boeing is ahead doesn’t matter. What matters if SpaceX is still at the table. If they drop to third or fourth place then they have a real problem. NASA doesn’t want to give all their contracts to one vendor, and neither should we. That makes things easy this year but fattens then for the slaughter. As long as Boeing is getting some noteworthy fraction of the contracts they stick around as a goad for SpaceX to try harder. And SpaceX does the same for Boeing.
- BurningFrog 8y agoThe standard failure mode is that the two vendors reach an understanding and split the market at a comfortable level of effort and progress.
- JshWright 8y agoOr they pull a ULA and merge.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 8y agoI 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.
- BurningFrog 8y agoI 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 around 4-5 I think ruthless competition is empirically the norm.
- lukeify 8y agoI find it hard to treat news published by Eric Berger as objective, sadly. He receives special treatment from SpaceX & Elon—for example, its arguable he only had permission to interview Musk and attend the launch of FH from 39A precisely because his articles mainly cast a positive light—and in turn, this clouds his objectiveness when it comes to such reporting. It's quite a shame.
- yashevde 8y agoIf this allegation were true, it would definitely render the journalist unreliable and ethically compromised. But, this article is in favor of Boeing, not SpaceX, so I'm wondering what you're trying to say..?
- rory096 8y agoBerger is a competent but aggressive journalist who has a bias, but wears it on his sleeve - much like Andy Pasztor. Worth reading, but with a critical eye. Ignore them and you'll be missing out on important scoops and original journalism.
- Latteland 8y agoI had noticed that he did interview Elon then, with the cool near-the-rocket background. I also noticed that several other journalists interviewed musk from that same overview sight. So he did not have special access. I wondered about that until I saw other journalists with the same vantage and the same background.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoHaving 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 things is just fine for nonhuman cargo.
- avmich 8y agoThere 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 2.1b variant adds about 10% of payload - but uses a much more stressed engine on the upper stage. That's the reason Russians don't want to use that variant for manned flights - even though there were lots of flights and rockets with engines like that certified for manned flights.
- taneq 8y ago> 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.
- vectorEQ 8y agoso many billions wasted just because they don't want to play along with russia :')
- diakritikal 8y agoForgive my ignorance on the subject but how can Boeing be ahead if they don't have any rockets?
- Sharlin 8y agoSpaceX has no human-rated launch vehicle either as of now. But this article is about the spacecraft, SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner, not the launch vehicles. The Starliner is to be compatible with multiple launchers, including human-rated variants of Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 9.
- skgoa 8y agoThis article is about a NASA-funded project that is supposed to end with Boeing (and SpaceX) having both a man-rated rocket and a man-rated capsule, so that american access to space is assured.
- Daycrawler2 8y agoI didn't know that Soyuz flights are scheduled to stop in 2019. I'm not optimistic at all about all that. Manned missions are a whole new level, a level where a single failure could mean the end the road either for SpaceX or Boeing's space department. If I were to put my tinfoil hat on, I would even suggest that Russia managed to deal the end of the Soyuz contracts for when USA is ready to launch their own manned flights, but not reliably so, therefore increasing the probability of them having an accident and looking weak.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]