Spaceflight

640 readers

71 users here now

Your one-stop shop for spaceflight news and discussion.

All serious posts related to spaceflight are welcome! JAXA, ISRO, CNSA, Roscosmos, ULA, RocketLab, Firefly, Relativity, Blue Origin, etc. (Arca and Pythom, if you must).

Other related space communities:

Related meme community:

[email protected]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

threelonmusketeers

[email protected]

As NASA increasingly relies on commercial space, there are some troubling signs (arstechnica.com)

submitted 11 hours ago by [email protected] to c/spaceflight

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

The idea of privatizing things and opening up the engineering to the private sector actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. The idea of running space travel based on fixed-price bids is absolutely insane.

When things don't go to plan, which they never do, at least one factor will have to flex: Quality (i.e. safety), mission scope/schedule, or cost. You're already facing constant pressure for safety to be the thing that flexes, so why would you add additional pressure by assuring that people will lose money if things drag on, so safety is the only thing that can give?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

I don't actually completely disagree with you. I think there are some products and services that should absolutely be fixed price, like launching a rocket for the 400th time, but venturing into truly uncharted and groundbreaking R&D can't just be fixed price.

I think SLS and ML-2 should be closer to the predictable and firm fixed price end of the spectrum. Dragon, Starliner, and lunar landers are somewhere in the middle. Space nuclear plants or something would be on the cost plus side.

[–] Oni_eyes 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I would hazard a guess that it's because they seem to flex the budget every single time, which either means really shitty planning by a company that is trying to look competent or excess greed by the administration of said company to make them more money.

Maybe keep the cost plus but then add a tax increase on any executives running those companies/in charge of bidding. Something like revenues derived from government contracts get taxed without deductible and in a separate file from civilian business so they can't do squirrely tax dodging.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

And overruns and a systemic inability to plan should be much more significant factors when reviewing past performance.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 4 hours ago

I might weigh those as much or more than actual experience doing the job. New company vs old company with shit record? I feel like we should lean towards the new one but that's weak to spinoff/new subsidiary companies from older ones with a trash rep.