Yes, SpaceX actually has more recent and relevant capsule experience than Boeing.
As I wrote in the book:
When I worked in business development for a government space contractor, I’d always be amused by the standard section we’d always have to put in our proposals to NASA or the Air Force about our company’s previous experience and heritage, as though the people who’d worked on those programs in the sixties weren’t dead or retired.
Organizations don’t have knowledge — individuals do. And to the degree that NASA has any knowledge, it is because it has retained employees who have it.. But many of those knowledgeable people have gone to work for the commercial companies, so there really is nothing “unique” about NASA. But to the degree that there is, it is primarily that, at least with respect to safety, its procedures have resulted in the loss of fourteen astronauts in flight.
But I’m sure Palazzo et al will continue to think that Boeing is a better bet than SpaceX.
Never a truer word spoken. During my career I have contracted at a number of companies, but at one specific very large, very established company, (one we’d all recognize if I named it) I witnessed this phenomena firsthand. And was amazed. Here I was a contractor brought in to show the organization how to do a task that it had literally wrote the book on. Albeit nearly 40 years before. Almost exactly 1 career lifetime….
Dave
What happened in the last century is irrelevant. But the Boeing X-37 is from this century. Even if it isn’t a capsule some of the concepts apply.
Some of them, but that’s not what John was implying.
That makes their choice to go with a capsule all the more interesting.