4 ms·

You don't see the point? You see nothing wrong with handing out nearly $300m to a company that's never done anything or demonstrated any capabilities?

tekla 3y ago
COTS was literally a grant to the private industry to challenge it to create a private rocket industry. What is the problem when does literally what is was supposed to do.
nordsieck 3y ago
> You see nothing wrong with handing out nearly $300m to a company that's never done anything or demonstrated any capabilities? 1. COTS was a milestone based, firm, fixed-price contract. Which means that NASA didn't have to pay for work that didn't get done. If SpaceX failed at development, NASA could have chosen a different company and retained most of the money. Which actually happened - Rocketplane Kistler basically did just that. And NASA replaced them with Orbital Sciences. 2. Established companies like Boeing and Arianespace entered bids and NASA seemed to think those bids were worse than the eventual winners. 3. The program largely worked - SpaceX and Orbital Sciences were successful at delivering cargo to the ISS. And all indications are that Sierra Nevada will be successful soon. 4. It was way less expensive than the traditional NASA route. > In 2011, SpaceX estimated that Falcon 9 v1.0 development costs were on the order of US$300 million. NASA estimated development costs of US$3.6 billion had a traditional cost-plus contract approach been used. A 2011 NASA report "estimated that it would have cost the agency about US$4 billion to develop a rocket like the Falcon 9 booster based upon NASA's traditional contracting processes" while "a more commercial development" approach might have allowed the agency to pay only US$1.7 billion". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

4 ms·

You don't see the point? You see nothing wrong with handing out nearly $300m to a company that's never done anything or demonstrated any capabilities?

by martin8412 3y ago

tekla 3y ago
COTS was literally a grant to the private industry to challenge it to create a private rocket industry. What is the problem when does literally what is was supposed to do.
nordsieck 3y ago
> You see nothing wrong with handing out nearly $300m to a company that's never done anything or demonstrated any capabilities? 1. COTS was a milestone based, firm, fixed-price contract. Which means that NASA didn't have to pay for work that didn't get done. If SpaceX failed at development, NASA could have chosen a different company and retained most of the money. Which actually happened - Rocketplane Kistler basically did just that. And NASA replaced them with Orbital Sciences. 2. Established companies like Boeing and Arianespace entered bids and NASA seemed to think those bids were worse than the eventual winners. 3. The program largely worked - SpaceX and Orbital Sciences were successful at delivering cargo to the ISS. And all indications are that Sierra Nevada will be successful soon. 4. It was way less expensive than the traditional NASA route. > In 2011, SpaceX estimated that Falcon 9 v1.0 development costs were on the order of US$300 million. NASA estimated development costs of US$3.6 billion had a traditional cost-plus contract approach been used. A 2011 NASA report "estimated that it would have cost the agency about US$4 billion to develop a rocket like the Falcon 9 booster based upon NASA's traditional contracting processes" while "a more commercial development" approach might have allowed the agency to pay only US$1.7 billion". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9