How Elon Musk exposed billions in questionable Pentagon spending | Hacker News Reader

How Elon Musk exposed billions in questionable Pentagon spending

politico.com

122 pointsabhi340 comments

>When ULA was formed, Boeing and Lockheed were not only battling each other for launch contracts, they were also locked in a legal battle over rocket technology. For the Pentagon, the joint-venture was a way to settle the bad blood between its top contractors and make sure that both could remain in the space launch business. ...

> In his remarks, Tobey referred to that payment — about $800 million per year — as a carrot to “sweeten the deal” for the “shotgun wedding” the Pentagon forced on Boeing and Lockheed. ...

> Shelby continues to defend the original concept of ULA, noting that Boeing and Lockheed were battling each other in court over rocket technology before the merger.

>“There was a lot of trouble at one time between Boeing and Lockheed,” Shelby noted in a brief interview.

Strange that the article never comes out and says it: Boeing committed industrial espionage and bribed Air Force procurement officials.

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-probe-intensifie...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E2D9103BF...

https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2006/June/06_civ_412....

Wasn't one of the primary motivations for privatising the space industry to cut costs? So player A wound up having significantly higher costs than later player B. Oh, but mind you, player B (spacex) has had some very serious accidents along the way. I don't remember hearing about such with ULA. I don't necessarily read this as a story of corruption and waste, full stop. Unless I missed something...

ULA's track record is 100%

Also if you look at the individual companies since their foundation?

That's besides the point. What the govt is paying for with ULA is risk reduction. If you absolutely have to get that satellite up in response to a geopolitical situation, for example. Musk has done great work and SpaceX is definitely cost-competitive but can it deliver that level of certainty? No-one knows.

My point is that a 100% track record is easy to achieve, if you are allowed to reset the counter just by renaming your company or forming an alliance.

They haven't done that. 106 launches.

You're missing the point. Lockheed and Boeing had initial failures when each company was started. It's not like Boeing put up rockets on day one without a problem.

Then, when each company approaches stability with their launches, they form a new alliance. That new alliance has "zero failures", but that's only because you ignore each company's original problem s.

I see your point, but it's not exactly relevant. As a purchaser in need of putting a multi-million dollar satellite in space, I could not care less that your company had failures in its infancy. I want to see your most-recent results as evidence of your ability to put my satellite in space. Comparing SpaceX, and whatever its success rate is, to ULA, and it's 100% in 106 launches, is easy.

The string of 106 successful launches is what I'm looking at. Just because you're new to the market doesn't necessarily mean you get a pass on quality/success. This is especially true when we're talking about putting expensive objects, that took years to build, in space.

> I could not care less that your company had failures in its infancy

> Just because you're new to the market doesn't necessarily mean you get a pass on quality/success

Contradiction?

No it's not. When SpaceX gets to 100 launches with no failures you could effectively reset their counter if you want.

ULA has currently 100% in orbit mission success rate which cannot be overlooked.

Now for some it might not be an issue considering SpaceX is considerably cheaper, but if you are putting a new spy satellite into orbit your risk metrics might be different.

What I meant was if you're willing to allow failure in a company's infancy, doesn't that mean they /do/ get a pass on quality/success?

The key point is that you're evaluating both companies TODAY, and they're at different points in their evolution. The fact that ULA/etc. had failures in their infancy is fairly irrelevant because that's the distant past - the fact that SpaceX had failures in its infancy is highly relevant because they're still IN their infancy.

The "pass" on quality/success is for things that happened in the distant past because they're less relevant to current performance, not some strange pass for anything that happens "during infancy" regardless of when that was.

Probably we can all agree, if we just say "30 launch strike" instead of "100% track record". The former is still impressive, whereas the second is a bit deceiving.

But it's not misleading, ULA has a stable launch system with a 100% success rate, SpaceX currently does not.

ULA can also currently life heavier cargo than SpaceX and the most important part is that they do not still tweak the system to "improve".

When SpaceX comes with Dragon9Next and it has 100% success rate you can in effect reset the track record for that platform, you can ignore the company but you cannot ignore the platform. If Dragon Heavy turns out to be 100% reliable after a 100 launches they could be able to play in the same league as ULA but currently they cannot. Launching supplies to the ISS is fine and all, same goes for commercial satellites but some activities especially when it comes to government agencies and manned space flight play by a different rule book of risk metrics and calculations.

The NSA doesn't care about insurance money if it's satellite explodes it cares that it now cannot intercept SIGINT over the south china sea and so the US which could affect US national security, the NRO doesn't care about insurance money it cares about being able to track Russian nuclear silos to make sure that the men who are guarding them are not stealing the warheads to buy potatoes. And when we are talking about manned flight well then considering the enormous costs of training an astronaut, as well the cost of loss of life and the reputation damage that any accident will incur even a 10 times decrease in KG to Orbit costs might not be enough to go with the cheaper but the "less reliable" option.

When predicting reliability of next launch, you'll use weighted mean of historical data, not simple mean. And, weight of launches in 60s would be near 0, same for n-100 launches.

Is the cost difference between the launches usually less than the cost of building a backup satellite?

Yes. Many times yes. The cost of launches is on the order of a few hundred million.

Military satellites often cost a few billion. Losing a satellite is, by far, the biggest risk during a launch. The launch cost itself is non-trivial, but a small fraction of the overall mission cost.

> Military satellites often cost a few billion.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the plans for a military satellite cost a few billion?

I would assume stamping out a new copy when you have the plans costs just a few tens of millions.

I mean, if you wanted one Airbus A380, it would cost you 15 billion dollars. But once you have the plans, you can stamp out additional copies for 100 million or so.

Each one is unique, because they are always being improved.

> Military satellites often cost a few billion

This needs a reference.

Not really, but here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan

And no, you can't make cheap primary mirrors (in a garage).

That's a real goalpost moving exercise. How is a 1960s failure relevant today?

The senators in the story are transparently corrupt, but also doing their job.

Their job is to represent the interests of their state or their constituency.

Otherwise, their constituency would vote them out.

These senators are working at cross-purpose with our broader national interests.

They are acting in self-interest, not doing their job.

The job of a US senator is best expressed by the oath of office they take: “I do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

The actual day-to-day duties of a Senator are: "Senators, along with members of the House of Representatives, propose, author, and vote on federal legislation that touches upon all aspects of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Senators provide advice and consent on executive nominations and treaties and conduct oversight of all branches of the federal government."

I realize that few if any senators take their oath seriously, but it's still wrong to say that they are doing their jobs when they do the wrong thing.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/F... http://www.senate.gov/index.htm

Senators are there to represent their state's interests, not those of the nation; this is very clear from the fact that it was originally the government of the state that selected the senator, rather than the populace. You are forgetting the "States" part of the "United States of America".

It's expected that the Constitution doesn't contradict a state's longer-term interests (senators serve longer terms than those in congress) and if it does, it will be amended.

Note that's quite different from saying senators should serve the interests of a national government.

Perhaps, but the people who can fire a senator are the voters of his state, not the American people as a whole.

It is worth considering the track record, which even the article alludes to. It may well be worth paying 3x the cost for a higher probability of launch success depending on what the payload is. Launches are not yet commodities, there are major differences in success rates between vendors.

I was thinking about that as well. Depending on the payload, it might make sense to build duplicates of many satellites for redundancy should SpaceX lose a rocket. Cost-wise that could still come out ahead given how much more ULA costs.

Of course, I doubt it'd come as a surprise to anyone that these payloads are likely insanely expensive as they too have gone through the govt procurement system (which seems to make everything cost 100x what it should cost). At which point it makes sense to avoid losing the payload even at ULA pricing.

This would make sense if you could somewhat transparently define why it cost 3x, and what that is buying you in term of assurances. If you just hand wave about reliability, it's not worth much.

We can work out the math easily. Given a 100% success rate for $350 million each for ULA and assuming a SpaceX cost of $100 million and assuming a 95% success rate (I have no idea what the actual rate is) then, per launch, the true cost to put something in orbit per launch is:

$350x1.00 = $350 million for ULA $100x(1/.95) = $105.2 million for SpaceX

The difference is then $245 million or so. So, the government needs to justify why reducing their risk from 5% to 0% on losing a payload is worth $245 million. Purely economically, the payload would need to be worth about $4.9 billion to justify this cost. If we start talking about State secrets, actual production time for the payload on top of the economic cost, redundancy requirements for intelligence gathering, technological advantage over rival powers (China/Russia) that could be lost if another country recovers the wreckage, and the worth of a citizen's/soldier's life on the front line (e.g. - items that are hard to quantify economically) and you can see how easy it is to justify $245 million.

Plus your buddy works at ULA and it would suck if he had to work somewhere else because they went out of business.

You would have to justify not paying SpaceX however much it would cost them to do a launch at 0% risk. If SpaceX could do it for $300m then that's significant saving for the same service.

That isn't what transparency means.

That's a simplistic (and cynical) view, the Senate is intended to be the upper chamber that's more insulated from the popular passions. That's why Senate terms last six years, and why the Constitution originally had Senators elected by state legislatures, not popular vote. Indeed, direct election has removed a layer of state accountability-- the modern Senate is all too happy to shove unfunded mandates onto state governments.

I'm glad Elon Musk found enough time to expose the Pentagon's spending after personally launching and navigating a space shuttle.

Glad we have reporters checking whether Elon Musk is getting enough vacation time. We wouldn't want Elon Musk to burn Elon Musk out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/2...

When a state is printing trillions, what is a "measely" billion anyway ?

While this is technically true, the issue is that the result of the print is sent to a favored few, which is fundamentally at the expense of those who do not receive an apportioned amount. Hence, with the kind of structured inflation that is designed to "aid" the economy, you will always find losers - usually the average tax-paying citizen who constantly struggles to save up for (rental, car, mortgage, school, etc.) debt payment.

Medicare and Social Security are the largest components of the budget. Most of the government's people and money are dedicated to services for the average person.

In a way, you're correct, but in another, you're stretching it by a significant margin. Those expenses come out of payroll and is categorized as mandatory spending, in any case. The discretionary spending, to which I implicitly referred, is the principal thing under discussion here, I believe, and is remarkable in its primary output.

Ref.: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

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