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The only issue is where the risk pools, and the drive towards competitors merging to obtain scale capable of surviving failure. Or in other words, the US effec
by ethbr0 5y ago
The only issue is where the risk pools, and the drive towards competitors merging to obtain scale capable of surviving failure.
Or in other words, the US effectively produced the modern primes by pushing more risk onto them. No company wants to go out of business.
And if that would be the result of a single project failure when your primary customer is asking you to do something that's never been done before?
SpaceX having success is great. But had they failed, it would have bankrupted the company. And then we'd be back to Orbital, Boeing, et al.
- Robotbeat 5y agoBankrupted companies is not necessarily bad for society overall. Besides SpaceX, there was also Kistler in the running for COTS commercial cargo. They failed and were replaced by Orbital. Also, you seem to be implying that cost plus contracts will allow much smaller companies since they won’t have to absorb as much risk, but in reality, it’s the big boys who win cost plus contracts. SpaceX was tiny when they won COTS/CRS (Elon wasn’t a billionaire and Tesla was looking more like a dead end novelty than the most valuable car company in the world). Also, Iridium and Orbcomm and OneWeb all went bankrupt but all are still operating today. Bankruptcy doesn’t always mean the business disappears off the face of the planet, and even when it does, often their assets end up being used productively by others (that’s how SpaceX got their McGregor test site).