Jeff Foust has the story on last week’s commercial space announcements.
3 thoughts on “Commercial Crew And Commercial Engines”
The contracts require at least one test flight to the ISS prior to completing certification; that flight will include one or more NASA astronauts along with crewmembers from the company.
The CCtCap contracts cover more than just the development of the vehicles. Each company, assuming they successfully certify their vehicles, will perform at least two, and as many as six, post-certification missions to the ISS. The contract values announced last week include the value of the six flights, but NASA did not break out the value of those post-certification missions versus development costs.
So, the prices include seven launches. Interesting how that explains a good deal of the price difference between the Boeing and SpaceX awards. Boeing is planning on using Atlas Vs with dual RL-10 Centaur upper stages. I don’t have any definitive price data on that particular booster/upper stage combo but for the sake of discussion put the price tag at approximately $200 million each. That’s $1.4 billion just for the boosters needed for those seven flights. SpaceX’s list price for a Falcon 9 V1.1 is somewhere around $60 million, or roughly $420 million for the seven flights. That’s almost a billion dollar difference just for the boosters and goes a long way to the $1.6 billion difference in award amounts. That, and Boeing apparently has not gone very far to actually building flight hardware yet so they have a lot further to go before being ready to fly.
Regardless of the cost, they’re paying for the exact same service. Shouldn’t the price be the same? Why is NASA, or rather the taxpayers, responsible for any private companies profits? The assumption already is the companies are responsible for any shortfall. SNC should get $1.6b of the Boeing award.
I may be wrong, but from what I understand, both companies stated the price they wanted to meet NASA’s contractural requirements. I have not seen what price Sierra Nevada provided or their risk assessment so I can’t comment on them. As I noted above, about a billion dollars of the difference in price is explained by the use of Atlas Vs instead of Falcon 9s. The remaining $600 million (give or take) is likely explained by Boeing’s higher overhead costs and the amount of work they have to do to actually have flyable hardware. Boeing has made a lot of pretty mockups but not so much flyable hardware.
So, SpaceX says they can meet NASA’s requirements and fly 7 flights for $2.6 billion. Boeing says they can do the same thing for $4.2 billion. NASA agreed to both. You or I likely wouldn’t do such a thing but government procurement has little relation to the real world. NASA wants two contractors for redundancy to avoid the possibility of multi-year standdowns like what happened twice with the Shuttle. Is that worth the extra money? If NASA told Boeing that they’d only pay $2.6 for the CST-100 (and 7 flights), Boeing likely wouldn’t have agreed to the contract, especially not a fixed price contract. Boeing couldn’t do it for that price without losing money.
The question now is what if Congress says there isn’t enough money for both. Boeing owns more politicians and bureaucrats than SpaceX. In a rational debate, if it came to only funding one company then SpaceX should get the contract. But was we’ve seen countless times, politics is not a rational process.
The contracts require at least one test flight to the ISS prior to completing certification; that flight will include one or more NASA astronauts along with crewmembers from the company.
The CCtCap contracts cover more than just the development of the vehicles. Each company, assuming they successfully certify their vehicles, will perform at least two, and as many as six, post-certification missions to the ISS. The contract values announced last week include the value of the six flights, but NASA did not break out the value of those post-certification missions versus development costs.
So, the prices include seven launches. Interesting how that explains a good deal of the price difference between the Boeing and SpaceX awards. Boeing is planning on using Atlas Vs with dual RL-10 Centaur upper stages. I don’t have any definitive price data on that particular booster/upper stage combo but for the sake of discussion put the price tag at approximately $200 million each. That’s $1.4 billion just for the boosters needed for those seven flights. SpaceX’s list price for a Falcon 9 V1.1 is somewhere around $60 million, or roughly $420 million for the seven flights. That’s almost a billion dollar difference just for the boosters and goes a long way to the $1.6 billion difference in award amounts. That, and Boeing apparently has not gone very far to actually building flight hardware yet so they have a lot further to go before being ready to fly.
Regardless of the cost, they’re paying for the exact same service. Shouldn’t the price be the same? Why is NASA, or rather the taxpayers, responsible for any private companies profits? The assumption already is the companies are responsible for any shortfall. SNC should get $1.6b of the Boeing award.
I may be wrong, but from what I understand, both companies stated the price they wanted to meet NASA’s contractural requirements. I have not seen what price Sierra Nevada provided or their risk assessment so I can’t comment on them. As I noted above, about a billion dollars of the difference in price is explained by the use of Atlas Vs instead of Falcon 9s. The remaining $600 million (give or take) is likely explained by Boeing’s higher overhead costs and the amount of work they have to do to actually have flyable hardware. Boeing has made a lot of pretty mockups but not so much flyable hardware.
So, SpaceX says they can meet NASA’s requirements and fly 7 flights for $2.6 billion. Boeing says they can do the same thing for $4.2 billion. NASA agreed to both. You or I likely wouldn’t do such a thing but government procurement has little relation to the real world. NASA wants two contractors for redundancy to avoid the possibility of multi-year standdowns like what happened twice with the Shuttle. Is that worth the extra money? If NASA told Boeing that they’d only pay $2.6 for the CST-100 (and 7 flights), Boeing likely wouldn’t have agreed to the contract, especially not a fixed price contract. Boeing couldn’t do it for that price without losing money.
The question now is what if Congress says there isn’t enough money for both. Boeing owns more politicians and bureaucrats than SpaceX. In a rational debate, if it came to only funding one company then SpaceX should get the contract. But was we’ve seen countless times, politics is not a rational process.