To expand on that thought - if Lockheed/Boeing started pulling costs out of the existing EELVs, they'd have a disaster on their hands - from his point of view, making something cheaper goes against the grain, and would fail miserably. There's too much inertia in what they've been doing for the last several decades.
Making something expensive cheaper is a vastly different problem than making something inexpensive from the get-go.
So far, the Falcon rocket has being nothing but failure. Every single one of their rocket has either exploited or the cargo has failed to reach the target orbit.
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To expand on that thought - if Lockheed/Boeing started pulling costs out of the existing EELVs, they'd have a disaster on their hands - from his point of view, making something cheaper goes against the grain, and would fail miserably. There's too much inertia in what they've been doing for the last several decades. Making something expensive cheaper is a vastly different problem than making something inexpensive from the get-go.
SpaceX isn't pulling costs out of a rocket. SpaceX isn't putting them in in the first place.
So far, the Falcon rocket has being nothing but failure. Every single one of their rocket has either exploited or the cargo has failed to reach the target orbit.
Flight 4 was dead-on perfect. http://www.spacex.com/F1-004-summary.php
Some of the ACM guys at UIUC had the idea already: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/projects/Wipt