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Orbital Becomes Second Private Firm To Send Cargo Craft To ISS
An anonymous reader writes "Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Cygnus spacecraft delivered 3,000 pounds of equipment, fresh fruit, and Christmas presents from the families of all six ISS spacemen today. 'From the men and women involved in the design, integration and test, to those who launched the Antares (rocket) and operated the Cygnus, our whole team has performed at a very high level for our NASA customer, and I am very proud of their extraordinary efforts,' said David W. Thompson, president and chief executive officer of Orbital, in a written statement from the company."
Except for the fact that Lockheed and Boeing have been NASA's contractors for decades.
The difference is how these contracts are funded. The COTS contracts for SpaceX and Orbital have two huge things going for them:
1) These are not "cost-plus" contracts, but rather fixed price contracts where any cost savings during operations is kept entirely by the launch provider. If either company can save even a few hundred dollars by doing something cheaper or avoiding a purchase of the proverbial $10k wrench & hammer, those companies see that savings directly. Neither Lockheed-Martin nor Boeing care about stuff like that as they simply pass those "costs" in the "cost-plus" contract on to taxpayers. There are no cost overruns in a fixed price contract too, so if either Orbital or SpaceX have some unexpected costs showing up.... they need to eat those costs.
2) Both SpaceX and Orbital are free to use these launch vehicles for any other purpose as everything they've made belongs to them and not NASA or the federal government.
I do think there is a time and place for cost-plus contracts where there is a genuine national priority that something absolutely must be made. None the less, this really is a different thing and in a great many ways these other companies have been extensions of the government in how they made their vehicles.