Future of Space Telescopes in the Era of Super Heavy Lift Launch

If you're referring to the 737-Max, that's a different animal because: 1) it's a different division than their aerospace and 2) it was taking advantage of a previously certified airframe. It doesn't mean they got rid of all the upstream quality requirements. Also, you might need to qualify what you mean by "not very expensive" because I don't think they would agree.

If you're talking about Starliner, there is no "certification" process like what the FAA requires. And NASA was heavily involved in the testing, especially after the mishaps with the Demo flight. They (NASA) felt the need to levy on many more requirements after the fact because of the (real or perceived) increase in risk.

>But I'm guessing that $1k bolt wasn't strictly from design/testing costs as much as managerial costs being a large factor.

That's my point. A large part of the cost isn't R&D but administrative. The difference I think we're making is you're considering the "managerial" costs to go to some C-suite, but I'm saying there are lots of quality requirements that would also go into the bucket of "adminstrative" or "managerial" costs. Look at what it costs to ship a flight article: you have to have a quality engineer inspect it and a photographer document it. There's all kinds of tracking documentation. You have to have special packing and labeling. Of course, the shipping itself is more expensive; it may have to have be shipped in a certified/refrigerated/climate-controlled truck and have accelerometers attached to the package to measure g-forces in transit. Then once it's received, you have to have a quality engineer open it, a photographer document it, more tracking paperwork, and a climate controlled, secured warehouse. All that paperwork has to be managed for the duration of the mission (and beyond). And this isn't just for the big items like a assembled satellite; this is often the case for the small parts too. You can get rid of all those requirements and just drop it to the UPS guy, but then you might risk being back in the same place after a mishap, like SpaceX.

I think this ignores some of history. The most glaring example is the strut failure that lost a launch. It is common practice in aerospace to test material coupons for structural specs for critical parts. SpaceX didn't and it cost them a rocket. Luckily it was uncrewed, but it forced them to layer on those quality requirements afterwards. They had to re-learn what much of industry was already doing but I bet if you asked them beforehand, they'd claim those weren't value-added requirements. With low probability events, it can be easy to conflate being lucky with being good.

I will say I think NASA is probably too risk adverse. This gets more into a philosophical debate, but I think that stems more from NASA being as much about national prestige as science. There are many people at NASA who think the engineerinng and quality requirements are too much, but very few people want to stick their neck out and waive them. Maybe a hot take, but I think that's a big part of CCP: it allows private companies to skirt many of those requirements so civil servants don't have to make those decisions. When civil servants have raised the flag on some CCP issues, they've been told it's not their place because NASA is just buying a ride and it's up to the contractor to drive the design. It essentially allows them to get rid of those requirements and outsource responsibility for the increased risk. (This is also a somewhat similar dynamic with JPL that made the Ingenuity copter, although it tends to be less pronouced. JPL is quasi-NASA because it's mainly managed via CalTech)

NASA developed the tech with human cargo, the acceptable risks there are very different than losing 20 satellites from a 6,000 unit constellation.