In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

Michael Gallagher wrote:


Do note that Orbital ATK and Boeing/ULA's involvement in "commercial"
programs is almost forgotten when people advocate "commercial"
approaches, acting as if SpaceX is synomymous with "commercial."
That's been my observation over debating this issues in may forums
over recent years.

Do note that Boeing, which co-owns ULA and therefore both the Atlas V
and Delta IV and is building the CST-100 and has contracts for
building SLS (so why would they propose competing with themselve?) was
on the business end of Trump's tweets regarding the future Air Force
One.


Do note that Boeing is being paid twice as much to develop CST-100 as
SpaceX is being paid to develop Manned Dragon. These are two
competing systems. Ask yourself why that is.

LOL, isn't it obvious? They may have come in with a higher bid than
other (non-winning) bids, but they are the company with a "track
record", which was no doubt part of the decision making process (either
explicitly or implicitly).


This is for the development/demonstration part of the program. I
would think "track record" would let you do it cheaper, not cost more.
I would personally suspect that Boeing needs a lot more money because
they'll be launching their test flights (there are 2 required, I
think) on ULA boosters which are significantly more expensive.

I'm sure using Atlas V is more expensive than Falcon 9. But, since
Boeing is one of the parent companies of ULA, I would have expected
they'd get a "good deal" on the launch price compared to what they'd
charge a commercial customer or even DOD.

Of course, this will likely also be true for an 'operational' system,
so on a system cost the Boeing capsule is going to be significantly
more expensive per seat to fly on.

Yes it is. But, compared to developing their own capsule via cost plus
style contracts (cough, CEV, cough, Orion, cough), it's still a relative
bargain. How many times in the past did NASA try to develop a space
station crew return vehicle only to cancel it during development? At
least with commercial crew, it looks like we're actually going to see
competing designs flying.

Jeff
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