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The US is actively choosing to become completely reliant on private providers for access to space, which at this point boils down to SpaceX and Boeing. Both see
by pu_pe 1y ago
The US is actively choosing to become completely reliant on private providers for access to space, which at this point boils down to SpaceX and Boeing. Both seem unreliable for different reasons. I just cannot see it as anything else than a blunder.
- LiquidSky 1y agoThen look harder. The “blunder” was orchestrated by the man who owns one of those two companies.
- api 1y agoThe blunder is choosing only two and including Boeing at all. It should be SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and Blue Origin, and maybe soon Stoke Space.
- bumby 1y agoWere you prescient enough to claim that at the time of the contract or only in hindsight? At the time, most thought Boeing was the safer bet.
- api 1y agoI haven't thought Boeing was a good bet pretty much ever, or maybe not since the 1990s but I was a teenager then. Boeing has been on the same path to decline as old GE was for decades.
- aga98mtl 1y agoUS rockets were always made by private providers like SpaceX or Boeing.
- bumby 1y agoYes, but the government has much more control over all aspects, especially design. That changed with the commercial crew program.
- rockemsockem 1y agoAnd that was good because... Why?
- bumby 1y agoIt would potentially mitigate the risk identified by the GGP regarding “unreliable” contractors who force risks on you that you may not want. Same reason I often choose to do house maintenance myself. Not to say it’s also not without costs/risks, it just comes down to which balance you prefer.
- rockemsockem 1y agoNASA still makes these competitive contracts though and picks among several contractors. Afterwards NASA is still involved in design through reviews and other lines of communication. Using your analogy, if I do hire a contractor I'll talk with them a lot about what they're going to do and make sure it's generally in line with what I want, but they're generating most of the ideas and just incorporating what I say.
- bumby 1y agoEh, not so much. They have reviews, but it is a much more hands off approach. * There were instances where NASA engineers brought up issues with designs and were told it wasn’t their role to drive the design. The concept of CCP was they were buying a ride, not a rocket. Just like you don’t tell Airbus what engine they should use when you buy a plane ticket. * IMO the goal of CCP was to find a mechanism to informally circumvent many requirements. NASA could always waive requirements but I don’t think many people were willing to sign on the dotted line even if they disagreed with the requirements. CCP unburdens them from the same requirements while also allowing them to avoid full responsibility for the decision. (More charitably, it also allowed them to avoid some political costs, like having to spread projects across multiple political areas to avoid funding cuts.)
- 1y ago
- johaugum 1y agoNot really. Early rockets included multiple private contractors like Douglas, Boeing and NAA, but those were basically government projects top to bottom. Single vendor commercial rockets are a recent (2000s) invention.
- chrisco255 1y agoThink of how wasteful and inefficient multi-vendor rockets are as a concept. What complex machine would you engineer in such a way? Would you have the government, rather than buy cars from Ford, GM, Tesla, etc, instead contract out the production to one company for the motor, one for the frame, and one for the interior and instrumentation?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- johannes1234321 1y agoIt was the only way to do it at the time, no company would have had the capacity for such a project, including reserves for damages. And even in private businesses it is common to outsource specific elements to external suppliers. The Saturn program was massive.
- rockemsockem 1y agoSorry how is SpaceX unreliable? I personally think we need at least a second reliable launch provider, probably rocket lab, just for redundancy.
- superconduct123 1y agohttps://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-threatened-decommission-dragon-spacecraft-nasa/story?id=122568163 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-threatened-decom...
- Whoppertime 1y agohttps://www.npr.org/2024/08/24/nx-s1-5087892/nasa-starliner-astronaut-return-iss-spacex https://www.npr.org/2024/08/24/nx-s1-5087892/nasa-starliner-...
- trust_bt_verify 1y agoSo private contractors are unreliable for a variety of reasons? We should get all of this private bloat out of the government.
- rockemsockem 1y agoWhat are things the government has actually built themselves without private contracts?
- trust_bt_verify 1y agoWhat are some private contracts which do not contain the bloat of private profit?
- rockemsockem 1y agoGovernment employees profit from work they do too. There is no enterprise that people should engage in that does not provide profit to them personally. What are you saying?
- tonyhart7 1y agofunny enough that even if US government somehow abandon space x, they would just fine Space X is literally the best in commercial space right now and its not even close, and they already have starlink which basically cash cow that if somehow US cut off spacex they would just fine, they lost funding sure but they would happy to take foreign customer