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NASA To Pay More For Less Cargo Delivery To the Space Station (arstechnica.com)
A new report from NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, finds that NASA will pay significantly more for commercial cargo delivery to the ISS in the 2020s rather than enjoying cost savings from maturing systems. "NASA will likely pay $400 million more for its second round of delivery contracts from 2020 to 2024 even though the agency will be moving six fewer tons of cargo," reports Ars Technica. "On a cost per kilogram basis, this represents a 14-percent increase." From the report: One of the main reasons for this increase, the report says, is a 50-percent increase in prices from SpaceX, which has thus far flown the bulk of missions for NASA's commercial cargo program with its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket. This is somewhat surprising because, during the first round of supply missions, which began in 2012, SpaceX had substantially lower costs than NASA's other partner, Orbital ATK. SpaceX and Orbital ATK are expected to fly 31 supply missions between 2012 and 2020, the first phase of the supply contract. Of those, the new report states, SpaceX is scheduled to complete 20 flights at an average cost of $152.1 million per mission. Orbital ATK is scheduled to complete 11 missions at an average cost of $262.6 million per mission.
But that cost differential will largely evaporate in the second round of cargo supply contracts. For flights from 2020 to 2024, SpaceX will increase its price while Orbital ATK cuts its own by 15 percent. The new report provides unprecedented public detail about the second phase of commercial resupply contracts, known as CRS-2, which NASA awarded in a competitively bid process in 2016. SpaceX and Orbital ATK again won contracts (for a minimum of six flights), along with a new provider, Sierra Nevada Corp. and its Dream Chaser vehicle. Bids by Boeing and Lockheed Martin were not accepted.
But that cost differential will largely evaporate in the second round of cargo supply contracts. For flights from 2020 to 2024, SpaceX will increase its price while Orbital ATK cuts its own by 15 percent. The new report provides unprecedented public detail about the second phase of commercial resupply contracts, known as CRS-2, which NASA awarded in a competitively bid process in 2016. SpaceX and Orbital ATK again won contracts (for a minimum of six flights), along with a new provider, Sierra Nevada Corp. and its Dream Chaser vehicle. Bids by Boeing and Lockheed Martin were not accepted.
How much would it have cost if NASA did it themselves ? I am also wondering if there isn't enough competition yet for this kind of thing.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Translated: SpaceX thought they needed to charge a premium to deal with bureaucracy but wildly underestimated just how much bureaucracy is required to interact with a multi multi billion dollar internationally operated property.
At least they rejected the bids from Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Dear lord, what a zillion-dollar clusterf^ck THAT would have been!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The Dragon 2 can carry almost as much back as it takes up. Orbital ATK can't bring anything back. Also, Orbital ATK can't carry crew members. That's not exactly a small difference.
And for an encore, they still undercut the price while flying on American-made rocket engines as opposed to Antares' Russian design.
So why are these being compared? Just because they both carry cargo to the same place on occasion?
I think one the problems is that re-usability of rockets has only relatively small cost savings for a launch company.
SpaceX now has over 7000 employees (https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/931087032830582784) who require salaries, medical insurance, pensions and infrastructure. This expense is not offset by the savings from reusing rockets, particularly in the age of CNC manufacturing.
Much is made of the fact that fueling a rocket with RP-1 and LOX is a negligible expense ($300,000 per Falcon 9 launch) compared to the cost of making the engines, but the metals which make the rocket are comparatively relatively inexpensive too. Machining of parts is now highly automated. Humans are the expensive part to rocket launches and it's this that levels the playing field for all rocket companies.
The opposite argument could also be done :
A private sector company can cut their cost by integrating as much as possible themselves the production pipe-line, and only relying upstream on common of-the-shelf parts.
(SpaceX isn't smelting their own aluminum ore, nor making their own silicon for embed electronics, but pretty much handle a lot above that).
This gives some significant cost reduction due to being lean, that they can pass of in the form of slightly reduced price compared to the competition, in the hope that by selling it a bit cheaper they can manage to land more contracts.
(They won't try to slap as much profit as possible up to the point of a government contract. They still need to "seem competitive enough from the outside" to attract customers. They'll need a fine balance between profits and being attractive in the market place).
A government project, they'll going to subcontract parts of the work to a high number of sub-contracting groups (they can't produce 100% themselves from the ground up neither).
There will be a ton a different academic department in university involved (for science !) which is a good thing, perhaps.
But there are also going to be tons of private companies small and big, for various reasons. Multiple companies to "spread the load and spread the charge and to avoid favouring a single player" (king of makes sense). But also multiple companie selected for politics (company wants a slice of the public money pork pie, politician wants campaign donations). And the multiple companies generate overhead, might have tons of incompatibilities (didn't standardise on the same interfaces).
And the whole will need to be orchestrated by an avalanche of committees.
The end result is far from lean, every one wants their share of money, budget will get extended anyway, and ends up costing a lot of money.
So in the end, there arguments for both approach:
- private sector can be cheaper by being lean and better integrated.
- public sector can have the advantage to be ablte to tackle problems that are important, but not profitable (yet)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And for an encore, they still undercut the price while flying on American-made rocket engines as opposed to Antares' Russian design.
The non-American partner of Orbital in the Antares rocket program is Yuzhnoye, a Ukrainian company. Big difference. It's partly because of a de facto Russian invasion of Ukraine that Russia was first placed under US-led economic sanctions. Perhaps you meant that Antares evolved from Soviet-era rocket technology? Not all "Soviets" were Russians, since the Soviet Union was more like a confederation of independent states, even if they were ruled by force and united by common fear of the West (much like a matryoshka Warsaw Pact within the Warsaw Pact). It was a union more of convenience than a shared sense of destiny, a setup not much different from the relations that exist between the still deeply "communistic" regimes of East Asia like China, Vietnam and North Korea.
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
Coincidence? I think not.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"The higher costs for CRS-2 are primarily driven by increased prices from SpaceX, the impact of selecting three contractors, and the $700 million in integration costs awarded to date."
Of course it's going to cost more if you place if you buy/require more stuff. SpaceX has to re-qualify and redesign the cargo version of the Dragon 2 to meet the new requirements while maintaining an option of flying Dragon 1 craft if necessary. A $100 Million insurance policy is being required for the next round of flights. And choosing 3 contractors instead of 2 requires more integration.
NASA is inflicting some of this on themselves by selecting 3 providers instead of going with one or two which would allow for more economies of scale. It's understandable why they don't want to get locked into one provider but at the same time you have
The price increase SpaceX announced was what it hopes to charge in the 2020s. But by then they will be competing with many other providers. NASA will actually pay less.
Did you even bother to skim the report? They didn't just hike their bid while lighting up cigarettes with $100 dollar bills, CRC-2 imposed numerous requirements that didn't exist in CRS-1. The one that I would guess hit SpaceX especially hard is the cargo capacity increase which appears to have required a redesign of the Dragon 2 to increase its capacity 30%. That probably fit under the original design of Cygnus and Dream Chaser but Dragons smaller form factor made it a bit of a headache.
That puts them one up on you!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Have they tried using Amazon "Prime"? No, wait. Bezos isn't doing deliveries to ISS. Never mind.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Is that SpaceX has the lowest $/kg cost by far. Both oatk and SNC would have to cut their prices by ~35% to come close to dragon. But what is important, is that there will now be 3 cargo AND 3 manned crafts in the western fleet. Basically , we will not lose space access again.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.