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US Air Force Overstepped In SpaceX Certification
Rambo Tribble writes: An internal review commissioned by Air Force Secretary Deborah James has concluded that Air Force personnel tasked with evaluating SpaceX's certification treated it as a design review, going so far as to dictate organizational changes in the company. This was judged contrary to the intention of promoting a competitive environment. The report, prepared by former Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch, concluded, "The result to date has been ... the worst of all worlds, pressing the Falcon 9 commercially oriented approach into a comfortable government mold that eliminates or significantly reduces the expected benefits to the government of the commercial approach. Both teams need to adjust."
Now, now. Yes, that's funny - and not a little true - but TFA goes into a bit more detail noting that there is a (rather expected) culture class between SpaceX and the Air Force / YoYoDyne / Lockheed (DBA as the United Launch Alliance).
And nominally intelligent people on both sides of the issue are working in what appears to be good faith to deal with it.
Sounds like a plan.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If anyone ever wondered why government contracting is so expensive, this is it. The government customers demand customization of commercial products that drive up development costs and complicate manufacturing while the bureaucracy's demand for documentation and "transparency" places a massive overhead burden on contractors to meet the requirements. Add on to it the government's lack of discipline in developing requirements and making changes, and your "cheap" program triples in cost with delivery moving two years to the right. As someone who worked in a business that dealt with both commercial and government clients, the former looks for a product that fits their needs then buys it whereas the latter looks for a product, modifies it, then continuously alters the requirements over and over right up to production.
Sometimes, I think this is also the reason why the government clings to cost-plus contracting: with fixed price, they have to be disciplined about the requirements because once the fixed price contract is in effect, they can't tinker with it any further. Cost-plus, they can keep changing requirements, and the contractor will simply roll it into the bill.
The only difference between the new 'commercial space' guys and Boeing and LM, etc are the rules. How is it fair to the established space industry that was forced to play the government game to lose business because SpaceX doesn't have to.
Not true. The "New Space" companies self-fund long term research and experimentation with an eye toward making space flight less expensive. Even if Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, McDonald Douglas, et al, were "forced" to jump through government hoops, they were also exceedingly well payed to jump through those hoops. They could have used that money to fund their own research to stay competitive in the commercial market but they did not. They pocketed the money and completely gave up the commercial market to Russia and Europe.
McDonnell Douglas was working on a VTVL rocket (the DC-X) in 1991. As soon as the DoD and NASA stopped funding that research, they dropped it. SpaceX uses their profits to continue developing reusability, there is no reason that McDonnell Douglas could not have done that. The government did not prevent any of the "Old Space" companies could from developing reusable rockets. Nor did the government prevent them from investing their own money in improving production techniques to lower production costs. They choose not to do that work in any long term sustainable way unless the government directly payed for it.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Roughly correct, according to this. "the contractor was told to allocate total contractual overheads equally across all deliverables - raising the book price of a $15.00 hammer to $435 without affecting actual cost by a nickel."
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Yes, exactly. Also the established players were paid for all of their development effort; therefore, it is likely that the IP is owned by the government. This is in contrast to private development efforts. So essentially it is the difference between developing a custom solution (and paying for all development) or going to the store and buying something off the shelf.
Nope, that's not how it works for the EELV rockets. Boeing and Lockheed Martin owned the IP to the rockets and was free to do what ever they wanted as long as they conformed to ITAR (SpaceX also has to conform to ITAR.) They were free to provide commercial launches with their rockets but they lost the market to Europe and Russia and they made no effort to be competitive in those markets. Most US aerospace companies just gave up entirely and Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed the United Launch Alliance and convinced the US government to give them a billion dollars a year to ensure "US access to space." Not to do research, just to exist and maintain their facilities and production capability. That billion does not include providing any launch vehicles and services, that costs extra. A lot extra.
So I know it's popular to blame the government for everything, but US aerospace choose not to compete because they had a nice big cash cow.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.