In article m,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:

They've developed their own launch vehicle and large capsule and have
demonstrated the orbital launch and recovery of that large capsule at a
fraction of the cost predicted by NASA cost models.

But aren't NASA's cost models developed with pork in mind, knowing that
not giving specific industries/cities lots of economic activity would be
a political show stopper that would prevent budget approval ?

I'm guessing that a huge part of NASA's cost models take into account
previous (NASA) programs.

or let me ask this differently:

When Boeing builds a commercial satellite launcher, are its costs much
lower and closer to SpaceX's costs and it is only work done for NASA
that is bloated ?

It's hard to say what Boeing's actual costs are, since there is so much
overhead at a large company like that. It really depends on how they do
their internal cost accounting. The cost they charge the customer may,
or may not, reflect the true cost to Boeing.

Since more and more commercial satellites are being launched by Russia
on Soyuz/Proton and Europe's Arianne 5, is this a sign that Boeing is
not competitive because it is so used to bloated contracts for NASA ? Or
is Boeing considered very competitive in commercial space launches ?

We'll have the answer soon enough. We'll just need to compare the cost
of a commercial EELV launch with a comparably sized Falcon 9 commercial
launch. Unfortunately, Falcon 9 is still new, so it's hard to say what
the cost of a launch will be a few years (and a few launches) down the
road.

Part of these costs will depend on the reusability of the Falcon 9 first
stage (which is obviously a work in progress since neither of the two
flown first stages were successfully recovered). That first stage has
90% of the engines on the entire launch vehicle and therefore represents
a sizable cost of the overall launch vehicle hardware.

Jeff
--
42