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It's also worth mentioning that this effectively outsources much of the risk to the taxpayer. Because the govt is self-insured, there is no insurance needed to

• Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  Space is a big waste of money. At best it's a zero sum game playing field between countries. Regular people will never benefit from space. Commentators and pundits were fooled by GPS , Sat-TV and Internet and are extrapolating loads of quality of life which would come from space if only could be cheaper to send stuff up there. The world is increasingly urbanised. Fiber and 5G for telecomms will always be cheaper in an urban setting compared with sat-internet.
  • avmich 4y ago
    Are you saying people won't want to travel and won't need internet outside of cities? Space is already paying for itself.
• panick21_ 4y ago
  This is not really true. If SpaceX fails to perform, they don't get the money. They developed things like Falcon Heavy totally by themselves on spec. They pushed the government into fixed price contracts. If SpaceX had failed to do the human launch, the cost would have been on SpaceX. As it is right now on Boeing.
  • bumby 4y ago
    >If SpaceX had failed to do the human launch, the cost would have been on SpaceX. This is not how govt launches work. The payload (which is sometimes worth more than the rocket) is self-insured, meaning SpaceX is not responsible for eating that cost if it's lost. They are paid for the service (i.e., the ride) but have little to no cost regarding the cargo on govt launches.
    • panick21_ 4y ago
      This is true but that is the costumers responsibility if they want to insure their cargo or not. Whatever method or rocket design the govenrment uses this is always an issue. Just flying on a government provided rocket doesn't change that cargo is at risk of being lost because it is not insured. In this case the risk to the tax payer is always at risk, it has nothing to do with SpaceX as such or the method of rocket procurement. But the way the contracting model has been changed, the fact is, if SpaceX had not performed on their development and test campaign, they would have been stuck with the cost of most of that. Just as Being likely had to eat 600M+ because of their delays. So in terms of developing capabilities for the government to use, this was an incredibly low risk and cost effective one.
      • bumby 4y ago
        >This is true but that is the costumers responsibility if they want to insure their cargo or not. Yes, but this is somewhat missing the forest for the trees. The larger point is that relatively untested tech is going to be more expensive to insure because there is greater uncertainty. This makes it less economically viable until it proves itself to be reliable. Can a commercial company forego that and take on greater risk? Of course, but they aren't likely to because they are more risk-adverse for a variety of reasons. But because the govt is self-insured, the economic risk considerations related to that becomes a moot point. Meaning, the govt is in a unique position to take on risk to help an upstart like SpaceX. Note that 100% of Falcon Heavy contracts are govt (military/NASA). >Just as Being likely had to eat 600M+ because of their delays. But this is a different point. They are being penalized for contractual delays. This has the potential to increase risk because it incentivizes rushed development. We saw this with CST-100. The only reason it came to light is because the mission did not go as planned, and as a result NASA started to trigger additional oversight (which slows down development). This is part of why the CCP can move faster than NASA. They don't have to build to the same requirements as an in-house NASA build. To an extent, all NASA cares about is the ride. That works well as long as things go as planned. As soon as they don't, NASA will start doing engaging more oversight. This has already happened with SpaceX, too. When some unfavorable things came to light, NASA wanted more govt in-person inspections/audits.