As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted.
Mostly.
NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons.
> NASA instead requested Boeing “propose prices for additional flexibilities to fill an anticipated crew access gap, including shortening its lead times for rocket and spacecraft production,” the report states. After what OIG described as “prolonged negotiations,” NASA agreed to pay Boeing an additional $287.2 million for those mission flexibilities.
> The OIG report concluded that much of those payments were not necessary, since there were other methods to provide schedule flexibility to mitigate gaps in crew access to the station. The report specifically notes that, five days after NASA agreed to the additional payment to Boeing, the company submitted a proposal to NASA offering to sell five Soyuz seats it has acquired from Russian company RSC Energia for $373.5 million.
> The report concluded NASA’s payment of $144 million to accelerate the timetable for two of the four Starliner missions was unreasonable, and that it overspent by $43 million when it granted Boeing authorization to proceed on one Starliner mission a year earlier than necessary.
> OIG also criticized NASA for not giving SpaceX, the other company with a commercial crew contract, an opportunity for offering its own proposal to address any gap in crew access to the ISS. “In our judgment, contacting both providers would have been a prudent approach to maximize the Agency’s options while also ensuring fairness,” the report concluded.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-inspector-general-criticizes-addi...
Actually, a multiple award approach for a very high risk, technically challenging widget makes perfect sense, and is the same thing seen for similarly challenging weapon systems e.g. the Advanced Tactical Fighter F-22 vs F-23 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-23-ste...
> The report specifically notes that, five days after NASA agreed to the additional payment to Boeing, the company submitted a proposal to NASA offering to sell five Soyuz seats it has acquired from Russian company RSC Energia for $373.5 million.
This looks like Boeing was doing some horse trading that could have been pretty financially risky particularly considering the value of money.
> The report concluded NASA’s payment of $144 million to accelerate the timetable for two of the four Starliner missions was unreasonable, and that it overspent by $43 million when it granted Boeing authorization to proceed on one Starliner mission a year earlier than necessary.
Sometimes when thinking about the Industrial Base of the United States, there is a good rationale for keeping an incumbent's design & engineering capabilities active, while bringing competition to the table and potentially displacing it with a more agile competitor.
If truly getting the best and most efficient designs out there was the true goal, there should have been more awards, and for funded development to enable a greater diversity of competitors with designs being put forth.
There lots of more relevant and important technologies that need more funding.
The CommercialCrew program was not done for research, it was trying to solving a particular problem at the time and do it fast and efficently.
If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do it.
SpaceX has been built on launch contracts displacing ULA.
It is clear that the longterm for SpaceX, and their competitors, is going way past mere launch services (as complex as those are) to cis-lunar and interplanetary missions.
Getting a healthy ecosystem with robust competitors is just the start. NASA and peer govt organizations are looking for partners on this, since companies are expected to bring their own funding to bear too.
https://www.space.com/nasa-funding-moon-power-exploration-te...
No. The CRS missions were displacing Arianespace. The CommercialCrew flights were displacing Russia. Commercial came from Proton, Soyuz and Ariane 5. Only military came from ULA.
> NASA and peer govt organizations are looking for partners on this, since companies are expected to bring their own funding to bear too.
Yes, its called the Clips program. IT shouldn't be part of CC.
OK.
I'm not really sure what your point is. NASA gives out contracts to new companies all the time. And the award was in a firm, fixed-price contract.
The difference between that and the previous example is that NASA had already awarded Boeing money for CCtCap (the commercial crew contract). And then they just decided to give them more money, for what can charitably described as bad reasons.
1. COTS was a milestone based, firm, fixed-price contract. Which means that NASA didn't have to pay for work that didn't get done. If SpaceX failed at development, NASA could have chosen a different company and retained most of the money.
Which actually happened - Rocketplane Kistler basically did just that. And NASA replaced them with Orbital Sciences.
2. Established companies like Boeing and Arianespace entered bids and NASA seemed to think those bids were worse than the eventual winners.
3. The program largely worked - SpaceX and Orbital Sciences were successful at delivering cargo to the ISS. And all indications are that Sierra Nevada will be successful soon.
4. It was way less expensive than the traditional NASA route.
> In 2011, SpaceX estimated that Falcon 9 v1.0 development costs were on the order of US$300 million. NASA estimated development costs of US$3.6 billion had a traditional cost-plus contract approach been used. A 2011 NASA report "estimated that it would have cost the agency about US$4 billion to develop a rocket like the Falcon 9 booster based upon NASA's traditional contracting processes" while "a more commercial development" approach might have allowed the agency to pay only US$1.7 billion".