First he called cost-plus contracts a “plague” on the agency, and now he’s praising SpaceX (while pretending that he wasn’t one of the “poo pooers” himself, who told Lori to “get her boy Elon in line”). And I love this:
“When there was the beginning of the space cargo and crew [programs], the two serious bidders were SpaceX and Boeing, and everybody poo-pooed SpaceX and said, ‘Oh, Boeing is a legacy company,'” Nelson said. “Well, guess who is about to make its sixth flight after its first test flight with astronauts, and guess who’s still on the ground?”
That’s got to leave a mark.
Oh, Boeing is a legacy company,’” Nelson said.
Perchance is that Ballast quoting himself?
That was a very rational opinion at the time. Most people would expect that a company as storied as Boeing could get the job done and even today, knowing what happened over the last decade, Boeing is still capable but has shown just because they are capable of something doesn’t mean they are able.
Dunno Wodun I might Take even money they lose a booster when all engines are lit. The Mark 2 Raptors haven’t really been flight tested.
They plan on losing some boosters, just as they planned on losing a lot of Starhips. That’s how they debug, iterate, and advance.
A lot of good hardware companies couldn’t complete in the PC business because by the time they could their well-engineered, well-designed motherboard to market, it was already obsoleted by the fast, nimble companies. It’s why you don’t have an IBM PC or a Thinkpad. It’s why the Shuttle replacement has taken longer, from the loss of Columbia to now, than it took to go John Glenn’s first orbital flight to the first flight of the Space Shuttle.
It’s why you don’t have an IBM PC or a Thinkpad.
Well I have two Thinkpads T530s (technically Lenovos, but in name only, because they were made right after the transition to a new label) and for that reason they not only are built like tanks but one has already outlasted the SSD that is in it. Its original HDD didn’t survive the teen I gave it to, so technically it outlasted two drives. And having survived a male teen also says something. The Toshiba I got him first never had a chance….
Lexmark found they couldn’t compete in the laptop business because the design cycles were so short. If they were six months behind the leading edge they might as well not have bothered. Of course that was back some years ago when huge performance gains were a constant. So they stuck with printers, a market where a 1990 HP LaserJet would still fit right in.
Speaking of Lexmark, I once made the rather unwise decision that a duplex color Laser Printer was the way to go. I bought this gigantic OKI color offset Laser Printer that took up a goodly chunk of table space and the wall space behind it as well as it sat quite tall. The downfall was when I came to the realization that replacing its developer cartridge was more expensive than what you would pay to just BUY a new duplex color inkjet printer. The OKI was eventually replaced with a DELL B&W laser and an HP InkJet, both duplex capaable. The OKI was removed via hand truck.
Could be but without the focus on reuse, they could have been orbital a long time ago.
I like how the article says that the two companies were given a total of $6.8B without breaking down the fact that SpaceX was given $2.6B (38%) and Boeing was given $4.2B (62%) of that money.
Senator Administrator Ballast has come a long way.
On further reflection it probably should be noted that Nelson was actually on record back in 2010-2011 saying positive things about SpaceX – admittedly, I think, because SpaceX was already building up a substantial presence at the Cape by that point. The real problem he posed instead was his skepticism about Commercial Crew. He was quite willing to pay SpaceX to haul the laundry and the food up to ISS, but he repeatedly tried to euthanize Commercial Crew and shift its funds to NASA mega-rockets.
But certain other of his colleagues, as we all know, had no reticence about dumping on SpaceX while they were carrying Boeing’s water.
Politician. Look it up.
Yep. Easy to tell when they are lying because their mouth is moving.
Critic. Look it up.
Oh sorry, I guess we are not allowed to criticize politicians in Biden’s America.
“In contrast, SpaceX developed Starship so fast that it went from blowing up steel prototypes in 2020, to being just weeks away from an orbital flight—potentially before 2023.”
The critical part is the landing. Going up is the easy part and could have been done sooner.