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Perhaps relevant: > According to Blue Origin's lunar lander head John Couluris, Blue Origin privately contributed 'well north' of the contract's $3.4 billion p

Perhaps relevant: > According to Blue Origin's lunar lander head John Couluris, Blue Origin privately contributed 'well north' of the contract's $3.4 billion payout.

ArtWomb 3y ago
Not a bad way for NASA to generate revenue. License its brand to space manufacturers, who privately fund say, microgravity single-crystal silicon wafer fabs ;)
B4CKlash 3y ago
Also relevant and stated publicly by John, Blue Origin expects to cover more than 50% of the total cost. To put this into perspective the DoD will happily invest north of $1 Trillion for a single fighter pilot development program (F-35) and I doubt Lockheed is willing to front any of that...
- the_optimist 3y ago
  This is what happens when multiple influences combine to get the system completely off the rails. It is a worst-case, lowest common denominator perspective that would completely destroy society were it applied everywhere. There’s no reason to use it as a productive reference point.
  - B4CKlash 3y ago
    I think your point is fair, but the point I'm making is that we should applaud when private industry is willing to shoulder a large proportion of the risk (vs. the traditional externalize risk, internalized profit).
- nradov 3y ago
  The DoD didn't pay Lockheed Martin anywhere near $1 trillion to develop the F-35. The $1 trillion plus figures you see are for total program lifecycle cost including a lot more than just development. Back in 1996 when the DoD awarded initial JSF prototype development contracts to Boeing and Lockheed they actually prohibited those contractors from putting in their own additional funds. There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base after the end of the Cold War and the DoD couldn't risk having any of their few remaining prime contractors fail.
  - jeff_carr 3y ago
    > There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base Or everyone took the money and ignored what Present Eisenhower had to say.
  - blach 3y ago
    > There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base. Maybe from the military industrial complex that was pulling in billions annually. Everyone else hoped that we would scale back after the insane global c*%k measuring contest that was the Cold War.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      In retrospect, was the peace dividend a good idea? We got a europe that couldn't protect itself, the US playing bombs in the desert for 20 years and building anti-terrorism focused systems which will have no value against a near peer adversary, a navy that forgot how to build good boats, and a general refusal to learn the always relevant lesson of "build more ammo"
      - hackernewds 3y ago
        But the US found Boogeymen to continue spending $800B per year to attack. Isn't that the goal of the army?
    - nradov 3y ago
      We did scale back. Military spending was cut back in real (inflation adjusted) terms at the end of the Cold War, and bottomed out as a percentage of GDP in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/mili... After 2001, military spending went way up of to fund the Global War on Terror. Most of that was a total waste and failure. Now the GWOT is essentially over and funding priorities have shifted to containing expansionist regimes in China and Russia (and to a lesser degree Iran) as part of Cold War 2. It is certainly an option to adopt an isolationist stance and cut the military-industrial complex down to the minimum size necessary to defend the homeland, but you might not enjoy the results of letting hostile foreign powers dominate the rest of the globe.
Robotbeat 3y ago
SpaceX did the same thing with Starship. I think this is why Dynetics didn’t win, tho. They couldn’t self-fund.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Starship development is projected to cost 2 billion this year alone, and they have a lot left to do (developing the HLS upper stage variant, orbital refueling) so it seems likely that SpaceX will lose money on this.
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    Yes, but keep in mind that Starship is mostly going to be used for launching Starship satellites in the early years, and that is super valuable to SpaceX. Falcon 9 is super cheap and has a low marginal cost to SpaceX, but to launch the full sized Gen2 Starlink system would cost ~$100 billion extra if done on Falcon 9 vs Starship (and that’s just initial launch… the constellation would need refreshing on a 5-10 year basis), so Starship is worth about $100 billion to the Starlink program alone. Refueling will also be helpful for launching commercial satellites to geosynchronous orbit, for crewed missions like Dear Moon, etc. This is why SpaceX doesn’t mind co-investing on Starship.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    The Lunar contract was never meant to pay the whole development. Starship is not a dedicated lunar architecture for NASA. NASA does not finance most of Starship development, but rather a variant of the upper stage for lunar landing. So yes, SpaceX will 'lose' money but they will have a very versatile rocket that can use for everything.

Perhaps relevant: > According to Blue Origin's lunar lander head John Couluris, Blue Origin privately contributed 'well north' of the contract's $3.4 billion payout.

ArtWomb 3y ago

Not a bad way for NASA to generate revenue. License its brand to space manufacturers, who privately fund say, microgravity single-crystal silicon wafer fabs ;)

B4CKlash 3y ago

Also relevant and stated publicly by John, Blue Origin expects to cover more than 50% of the total cost. To put this into perspective the DoD will happily invest north of $1 Trillion for a single fighter pilot development program (F-35) and I doubt Lockheed is willing to front any of that...

the_optimist 3y ago
This is what happens when multiple influences combine to get the system completely off the rails. It is a worst-case, lowest common denominator perspective that would completely destroy society were it applied everywhere. There’s no reason to use it as a productive reference point.
- B4CKlash 3y ago
  I think your point is fair, but the point I'm making is that we should applaud when private industry is willing to shoulder a large proportion of the risk (vs. the traditional externalize risk, internalized profit).
nradov 3y ago
The DoD didn't pay Lockheed Martin anywhere near $1 trillion to develop the F-35. The $1 trillion plus figures you see are for total program lifecycle cost including a lot more than just development. Back in 1996 when the DoD awarded initial JSF prototype development contracts to Boeing and Lockheed they actually prohibited those contractors from putting in their own additional funds. There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base after the end of the Cold War and the DoD couldn't risk having any of their few remaining prime contractors fail.
- jeff_carr 3y ago
  > There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base Or everyone took the money and ignored what Present Eisenhower had to say.
- blach 3y ago
  > There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base. Maybe from the military industrial complex that was pulling in billions annually. Everyone else hoped that we would scale back after the insane global c*%k measuring contest that was the Cold War.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    In retrospect, was the peace dividend a good idea? We got a europe that couldn't protect itself, the US playing bombs in the desert for 20 years and building anti-terrorism focused systems which will have no value against a near peer adversary, a navy that forgot how to build good boats, and a general refusal to learn the always relevant lesson of "build more ammo"
    - hackernewds 3y ago
      But the US found Boogeymen to continue spending $800B per year to attack. Isn't that the goal of the army?
  - nradov 3y ago
    We did scale back. Military spending was cut back in real (inflation adjusted) terms at the end of the Cold War, and bottomed out as a percentage of GDP in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/mili... After 2001, military spending went way up of to fund the Global War on Terror. Most of that was a total waste and failure. Now the GWOT is essentially over and funding priorities have shifted to containing expansionist regimes in China and Russia (and to a lesser degree Iran) as part of Cold War 2. It is certainly an option to adopt an isolationist stance and cut the military-industrial complex down to the minimum size necessary to defend the homeland, but you might not enjoy the results of letting hostile foreign powers dominate the rest of the globe.

Robotbeat 3y ago

SpaceX did the same thing with Starship. I think this is why Dynetics didn’t win, tho. They couldn’t self-fund.

cubefox 3y ago
Starship development is projected to cost 2 billion this year alone, and they have a lot left to do (developing the HLS upper stage variant, orbital refueling) so it seems likely that SpaceX will lose money on this.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Yes, but keep in mind that Starship is mostly going to be used for launching Starship satellites in the early years, and that is super valuable to SpaceX. Falcon 9 is super cheap and has a low marginal cost to SpaceX, but to launch the full sized Gen2 Starlink system would cost ~$100 billion extra if done on Falcon 9 vs Starship (and that’s just initial launch… the constellation would need refreshing on a 5-10 year basis), so Starship is worth about $100 billion to the Starlink program alone. Refueling will also be helpful for launching commercial satellites to geosynchronous orbit, for crewed missions like Dear Moon, etc. This is why SpaceX doesn’t mind co-investing on Starship.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  The Lunar contract was never meant to pay the whole development. Starship is not a dedicated lunar architecture for NASA. NASA does not finance most of Starship development, but rather a variant of the upper stage for lunar landing. So yes, SpaceX will 'lose' money but they will have a very versatile rocket that can use for everything.