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NASA has paid SpaceX $381mm to date for the 37 of 40 tasks in the COTS program. So, private industry, yes, but a lot of public assistance in achieving this. [

by jonah 14y ago

NASA has paid SpaceX $381mm to date for the 37 of 40 tasks in the COTS program. So, private industry, yes, but a lot of public assistance in achieving this. [edit]: Not bashing the arrangement at all. Just pointing out the deep history and current support, both technical and financial.

sasha-dv 14y ago
The NASA's decision to support SpaceX with money and expertise is a step in the right direction. NASA (and Roscosmos) should delegate to private companies all of the operations in LEO. They should focus their efforts on sending humans deeper into space. I want to see a day when docking at the ISS is considered a boring affair.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  I agree, except about sending humans deeper into space. It seems much cheaper and more useful to send many, many machines deeper into space.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    Machines will never describe the surface of a new world as "magnificent desolation". Not really - some day, they'll share this trait with humans - but it will take some time. I want humans to experience this, even if briefly, before our much more capable successors take the lead from us relics.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    The goal of spaceflight is not merely exploration, it is also colonization, and adventure. The rest of the Universe is just a place, and humans will go there. Not because it is the only way to learn about it, but merely because we can.
marvin 14y ago
Do these $381MM include launch costs?
- fleitz 14y ago
  Yup, that's all in, the total contract is $1.5 billion for 12 missions.
  - dasmoth 14y ago
    $1.5B refers to the commercial resupply contract, which is quite separate from the COTS contract which funded the development and demo program. Just to add to the confusion, the next Falcon+Dragon flight could be end up being either CRS-1 (if things go well tomorrow) or COTS-3 (if it looks like another demo is needed). But they really are separate contracts.
lchengify 14y ago
A single shuttle mission used to cost ~450MM per mission [1]. By comparison this is a bargain. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  There are 3 relevant costs for a single Shuttle mission. There is the incremental cost. How much it would take to squeeze in another Shuttle mission in a given year, if possible. That cost was around $450 million in the last two decades or so of the Shuttle program. This is a useful cost estimate if you need to decide how much it's going to cost to launch or not launch a single Shuttle mission, for example, but doesn't actually give you a sense of how much it costs to operate the Shuttle overall. As an analogy, if you have a car and you want to decide whether you can hop in and make a long drive to a nearby city the cost that is relevant to you just then is the cost of just the gas to get there. However, the actual cost to you should take into account maintenance, insurance, oil changes, parking, car washes, tires, etc. So, there is also the overall "operational cost" per flight, which takes into account all of the cost of the fixed overhead (Shuttle personnel, mission control, etc.) for the Shuttle program. In the latter years of the program this cost was around $1 billion per flight, though it fluctuated from year to year based on flight rate. There were a few years where NASA still spent billions of dollars on the Shuttles and yet no flights were happening (after Challenger and Columbia), for example. This is probably the fairest measurement of Shuttle costs since it tells you how much it costs to keep the Shuttle program going. Finally, there is the total cost to the tax payers of the entire Shuttle program from development through the last flight, divided by the total number of flights. This is about $1.5 billion per launch. It's the best "what if we'd done something else instead of build the Shuttle" cost estimate and gives us a sense of the opportunity cost of STS but it's not entirely the best cost for deciding whether to keep the program running (since it includes sunk costs that shouldn't affect future decision making). By any measure the Shuttle was far and away the most expensive launch vehicle to be used so frequently.
  - nkoren 14y ago
    I'm going from memory here, so am possibly treading on thin ice, but I believe your numbers are on the high side. To my recollection, the marginal cost of each shuttle flight (additional consumables and labour) was on the order of $65M to $120M -- a seeming bargain. But the fixed cost of maintaining the Shuttle workforce -- the "standing army" of over 25,000 people -- was around $2.2B per year, which worked out to $300M to $600M per launch, depending on the flight rate. So in the pre-Challenger high-flight-rate days, it was possible to launch a Shuttle for around $400M total, but as NASA became more cautious in later years and the flight rate dropped, the cost of each mission climbed precipitously. I believe you're correct about the all-up amortised cost of the entire Shuttle program. An expensive beast by any measure. Much of SpaceX's cost-effectiveness comes from clever engineering, of course -- but a larger part comes from making sensible managerial decisions to minimise workforce costs. They don't split their workforce into umpteen zillion congressional districts in order to keep their political base satisfied; this minimises coordination costs and allows for a vastly more appropriate manager:engineer ratio. This has allowed them to develop and run the Falcon and Dragon vehicles with less than 1/10th the workforce that the Shuttle required. At the end of the day, that actually matters a hell of a lot more than achieving absolute engineering perfection.
ricardobeat 14y ago
The whole private industry thing is not about who's funding it right now, but the business model. SpaceX is not completely under NASA's wings, they have their own goals and schedule. They sell services to NASA (and others), and a future where most of their revenue doesn't come from government contracts isn't that far.
MPSimmons 14y ago
Would you build a business that didn't have customers? You don't say that the business is weaker because the customers are paying it money. That's called success.

by jonah 14y ago

sasha-dv 14y ago

The NASA's decision to support SpaceX with money and expertise is a step in the right direction. NASA (and Roscosmos) should delegate to private companies all of the operations in LEO. They should focus their efforts on sending humans deeper into space. I want to see a day when docking at the ISS is considered a boring affair.

lucian1900 14y ago
I agree, except about sending humans deeper into space. It seems much cheaper and more useful to send many, many machines deeper into space.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Machines will never describe the surface of a new world as "magnificent desolation". Not really - some day, they'll share this trait with humans - but it will take some time. I want humans to experience this, even if briefly, before our much more capable successors take the lead from us relics.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  The goal of spaceflight is not merely exploration, it is also colonization, and adventure. The rest of the Universe is just a place, and humans will go there. Not because it is the only way to learn about it, but merely because we can.

marvin 14y ago

Do these $381MM include launch costs?

fleitz 14y ago
Yup, that's all in, the total contract is $1.5 billion for 12 missions.
- dasmoth 14y ago
  $1.5B refers to the commercial resupply contract, which is quite separate from the COTS contract which funded the development and demo program. Just to add to the confusion, the next Falcon+Dragon flight could be end up being either CRS-1 (if things go well tomorrow) or COTS-3 (if it looks like another demo is needed). But they really are separate contracts.

lchengify 14y ago

A single shuttle mission used to cost ~450MM per mission [1]. By comparison this is a bargain. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget

InclinedPlane 14y ago
There are 3 relevant costs for a single Shuttle mission. There is the incremental cost. How much it would take to squeeze in another Shuttle mission in a given year, if possible. That cost was around $450 million in the last two decades or so of the Shuttle program. This is a useful cost estimate if you need to decide how much it's going to cost to launch or not launch a single Shuttle mission, for example, but doesn't actually give you a sense of how much it costs to operate the Shuttle overall. As an analogy, if you have a car and you want to decide whether you can hop in and make a long drive to a nearby city the cost that is relevant to you just then is the cost of just the gas to get there. However, the actual cost to you should take into account maintenance, insurance, oil changes, parking, car washes, tires, etc. So, there is also the overall "operational cost" per flight, which takes into account all of the cost of the fixed overhead (Shuttle personnel, mission control, etc.) for the Shuttle program. In the latter years of the program this cost was around $1 billion per flight, though it fluctuated from year to year based on flight rate. There were a few years where NASA still spent billions of dollars on the Shuttles and yet no flights were happening (after Challenger and Columbia), for example. This is probably the fairest measurement of Shuttle costs since it tells you how much it costs to keep the Shuttle program going. Finally, there is the total cost to the tax payers of the entire Shuttle program from development through the last flight, divided by the total number of flights. This is about $1.5 billion per launch. It's the best "what if we'd done something else instead of build the Shuttle" cost estimate and gives us a sense of the opportunity cost of STS but it's not entirely the best cost for deciding whether to keep the program running (since it includes sunk costs that shouldn't affect future decision making). By any measure the Shuttle was far and away the most expensive launch vehicle to be used so frequently.
- nkoren 14y ago
  I'm going from memory here, so am possibly treading on thin ice, but I believe your numbers are on the high side. To my recollection, the marginal cost of each shuttle flight (additional consumables and labour) was on the order of $65M to $120M -- a seeming bargain. But the fixed cost of maintaining the Shuttle workforce -- the "standing army" of over 25,000 people -- was around $2.2B per year, which worked out to $300M to $600M per launch, depending on the flight rate. So in the pre-Challenger high-flight-rate days, it was possible to launch a Shuttle for around $400M total, but as NASA became more cautious in later years and the flight rate dropped, the cost of each mission climbed precipitously. I believe you're correct about the all-up amortised cost of the entire Shuttle program. An expensive beast by any measure. Much of SpaceX's cost-effectiveness comes from clever engineering, of course -- but a larger part comes from making sensible managerial decisions to minimise workforce costs. They don't split their workforce into umpteen zillion congressional districts in order to keep their political base satisfied; this minimises coordination costs and allows for a vastly more appropriate manager:engineer ratio. This has allowed them to develop and run the Falcon and Dragon vehicles with less than 1/10th the workforce that the Shuttle required. At the end of the day, that actually matters a hell of a lot more than achieving absolute engineering perfection.

ricardobeat 14y ago

The whole private industry thing is not about who's funding it right now, but the business model. SpaceX is not completely under NASA's wings, they have their own goals and schedule. They sell services to NASA (and others), and a future where most of their revenue doesn't come from government contracts isn't that far.

MPSimmons 14y ago

Would you build a business that didn't have customers? You don't say that the business is weaker because the customers are paying it money. That's called success.