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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."
How will the Colonels and GS-15's justify their existence? They must put their mark on it in multiple places.
There should be 3 lines on the proposal:
I need payload weight and size X, in orbit Y.
Can you do it? Y/N.
How much will it cost?
One of our customers for my company is a medical device company regulated by the FDA. The FDA a few years ago came down hard on them with fines and a consent decree whereby they couldn't sell products due to issues in their quality control systems. We are very familiar with this company and while they did have issues, the FDA has essentially forced a complete reorganization on them, some of which will be good but much of which is utterly pointless.
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of Control Plans, FMEAs and other documents for products we've been making for well over a decade to support this customer. These documents will serve no useful purpose and in all likelihood never get looked at again. I'm also validating test equipment which I assure you at the end of the day will prove nothing. It's necessary to help our customer stay in the good graces of the FDA but really is pretty much a waste of everyone's time since these sort of documents are supposed to be done when the product is being developed, not ten years later without any evidence of an actual problem.
The "established" guys were compensated for having to follow those rules by being given cost-plus contracts that guaranteed profits and provided incentive to inflate costs whenever it could be justified, and actively punished reductions in costs.
So: they were applying the same restrictions to SpaceX, without giving them the same benefits, since SpaceX operates under fixed-price contracts: they sell a product, get paid, and their ability to make a profit and continue existing is dependent on keeping expenses low. What was that about fairness?
I remember reading that the $20k 'hammer' was actually a set of tools, including a spade & pick, made of a special set of alloys(can't remember what) designed to be non-magnetic, non-sparking, and a few other nons for use in helping to clean up stockpiles of explosives that were destabilizing, getting more sensitive. Given the location and amounts, they couldn't just set them off in location.
The toilet seat was actually a whole toilet system, I can't remember if it was for a plane or submarine. Still not cheap, but something that had to be custom designed and produced for that vehicle, and they were including design costs.
I don't read AC A human right
If it can't be seized and placed under control of the military during times of war*, its not going into space. Gotta make sure we know the key people and which pieces we'll need to grab should we need to mount weapons on it and send it up.
*That means pretty much any time. As we are always conducting a War Against Something.
Have gnu, will travel.