4 ms·

Why does Orbital Sciences get $1.9 billion for 8 missions but SpaceX $1.6 billion for 12 missions? They both had previous experience building rockets (Orbital

Why does Orbital Sciences get $1.9 billion for 8 missions but SpaceX $1.6 billion for 12 missions? They both had previous experience building rockets (Orbital had Taurus/Minotaur families with launches over two decades while SpaceX had little experience with only the Falcon 1) so it seems strange for there to be such a large discrepancy. That's $133 million per mission including Dragon/Falcon 9 development vs $237.5 million per mission including Cygnus/Antares development, more than $100 million extra PER MISSION!!

nkoren 14y ago
Although both rockets have roughly equivalent upmass, their respective delivery vehicles are completely different beasts: Dragon is a compact spacecraft, designed to safely fly humans in a shirtsleeve environment and return them to Earth, whereas Cygnus is more like a large pressurised can with some thrusters attached. Cygnus has no downmass capability at all, but has a LOT more pressurised volume -- and in some cases (including, possibly, the recent SpaceX launches to the station), volume rather than weight can be the limiting factor for payloads. It's not implausible that NASA used some kind of formula which prioritised volume over weight, and arrived at the respective payments for each type of mission. Of course neither is it implausible that Orbital Sciences simply has better lobbyists than SpaceX.
anovikov 14y ago
At the time of contract being awarded, it was rational. Orbital had a lot of experience building and launching stuff (not just rockets, and you also forgot Pegasus air-launched rocket), and was in business for almost 25 years, while SpaceX has just started with their business and had almost no track record - 4 launches of light Falcon 1 with only 1 of them successful. So a more experienced contractor got a better price, which is natural. Now it seems to be the reversed, but it wasn't back then. It only demonstrates how much progress SpaceX made in these 3.5 years.
smithian 14y ago
Welcome to the world of government contracting. There was a requirement for two vendors, they got 5 proposals, they chose what they believed to be the best two, at the price the vendors specified. They weren't allowed to haggle.
wolf550e 14y ago
Both contracts are for 20 tons to orbit, so the difference is not as large. Also, there was no competition - both 1st place and 2nd place were assured contracts. So the competition would have been only for the second place, to not miss out. But since there were only two entrants... Now Congress want to down-select commercial crew to force NASA to depend on a single contractor that can then start jacking up the price like Boeing and Lockheed Martin regularly do, to kill the commercial benefits of commercial space and protect the government monopoly way of doing business.
- wolf550e 14y ago
  Correction: There was a third entrant which lost. So there was a competition, at the proposal phase. Apparently, they asked for even more money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSpace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSpace
damoncali 14y ago
Orbital has been around the block many, many more times than SpaceX.

nkoren 14y ago

Although both rockets have roughly equivalent upmass, their respective delivery vehicles are completely different beasts: Dragon is a compact spacecraft, designed to safely fly humans in a shirtsleeve environment and return them to Earth, whereas Cygnus is more like a large pressurised can with some thrusters attached. Cygnus has no downmass capability at all, but has a LOT more pressurised volume -- and in some cases (including, possibly, the recent SpaceX launches to the station), volume rather than weight can be the limiting factor for payloads. It's not implausible that NASA used some kind of formula which prioritised volume over weight, and arrived at the respective payments for each type of mission. Of course neither is it implausible that Orbital Sciences simply has better lobbyists than SpaceX.

anovikov 14y ago

At the time of contract being awarded, it was rational. Orbital had a lot of experience building and launching stuff (not just rockets, and you also forgot Pegasus air-launched rocket), and was in business for almost 25 years, while SpaceX has just started with their business and had almost no track record - 4 launches of light Falcon 1 with only 1 of them successful. So a more experienced contractor got a better price, which is natural. Now it seems to be the reversed, but it wasn't back then. It only demonstrates how much progress SpaceX made in these 3.5 years.

smithian 14y ago

Welcome to the world of government contracting. There was a requirement for two vendors, they got 5 proposals, they chose what they believed to be the best two, at the price the vendors specified. They weren't allowed to haggle.

wolf550e 14y ago

Both contracts are for 20 tons to orbit, so the difference is not as large. Also, there was no competition - both 1st place and 2nd place were assured contracts. So the competition would have been only for the second place, to not miss out. But since there were only two entrants... Now Congress want to down-select commercial crew to force NASA to depend on a single contractor that can then start jacking up the price like Boeing and Lockheed Martin regularly do, to kill the commercial benefits of commercial space and protect the government monopoly way of doing business.

wolf550e 14y ago
Correction: There was a third entrant which lost. So there was a competition, at the proposal phase. Apparently, they asked for even more money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSpace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSpace

damoncali 14y ago

Orbital has been around the block many, many more times than SpaceX.