Living Down To Expectations

I have another column this week on why space stuff costs so
much--because we expect it to:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98228,00.html

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 18:24:42 CST, in a place far, far away, rk
made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Rand Simberg wrote:

I have another column this week on why space stuff costs so
much--because we expect it to:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98228,00.html

Interesting, as always.

First, with regards to complexity, are you familiar with David
Bearden's work at The Aerospace Corporation? He is modelling
complexity, cost, and schedule, and using them to understand success
and failure.

No, I'm not. Is there anything available on line?

Secondly, with respects to the assumptions in the three cost
estimates used, did they compare the internal cost estimates with
those for a research and demonstration job organized by, say, DARPA?
The assumptions over what is to be done and delivered can
drastically effect the final cost (e.g., how much paperwork, how
many reviews, etc.). Not knowing the details in the cost estimates
and the assumptions it's hard to understand. For instance, if the
Air Force and NASA models were for a deliverable vehicle to be used
in operations vs. a simple demonstration you might get quite
different answers. For examples, you mentioned that the NASA
numbers were based on Shuttle experience. Doing work on that
program would be far different than say a one-shot demonstration
job. So, perhaps you can expand on why the numbers are different.
For an analogy -- one always needs analogies in Usenet -- note that
the cost for writing the code for a software job is just a small
part of the overall cost, with maintenance, documentation, etc.,
making up a large part of the pie. I'm sure Kevin would have the
latest breakdown on things like that.

I don't know the answers to any of those questions--you'd have to ask
Steve Hoeser.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

In article ,
says...
For an analogy -- one always needs analogies in Usenet -- note that
the cost for writing the code for a software job is just a small
part of the overall cost, with maintenance, documentation, etc.,
making up a large part of the pie. I'm sure Kevin would have the
latest breakdown on things like that.

Despite the claims of the XP'ers, I haven't seen anything that suggests
the latest breakdowns are any different from the breakdowns that have
been used over the last few decades. (That's a real disappointment.
You'd think we'd be doing a better job of building software as we learn
new things. We aren't. We are building ever more complex software, but
there is no evidence that it is of higher quality. The true high-quality
creations (e.g., the Shuttle flight software) are notable exceptions,
not the general rule.)

The standard rule of thumb is that the QA phase takes 1/2 the cost. The
actual coding takes 1/6th of the cost. Maintenance is two to ten times
the development. So the actual coding is at most an order of magnitude
less than the total development budget.

(These are, of course, broad averages. Individual products may have very
different budgets. I'm ignoring the non-R&D costs (e.g., marketing,
advertising, customer education, legal), yet these often dominate the
R&D costs.)
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

I have another column this week on why space stuff costs so
much--because we expect it to:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98228,00.html

That's good. The story of the misplaced decimal point is particularly
amusing.

One thing you might consider for a future column is to highlight
possible solutions to the problem. Fixed price contracts might seem
to be one (and have been used, e.g. in the TDRS procurement from the
90's), but the limiting factor here is that the government still will
only pay costs plus some fee, rather than letting the contractor
innovate and keep the savings (as long as they come in ahead of the
other bidders). Dan Goldin tried tilting at this windmill, but didn't
get anywhere. Don't know if anyone could, given the political
problems of wanting it to appear that no money is wasted and the
difficulty of distinguishing a sham competitive procurement from one
where there is really strong competition.

The concept which is probably doing the best job in this area is
Discovery and the other programs modeled after it (ESSP, Mars Scout).
Here you clearly have healthy competition. Here costs are a factor in
selecting missions. And the success of this kind of procurement
(among other factors) has led to a renaissance across most of the
uncrewed side of NASA.