NASA's Starliner decision was the right one, but it's a crushing blow for Boeing
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Equally, perhaps Boeing knows that oddly they have utility as a runner up, and are unmotivated to do better.
Interesting game theoretic problem.
If not, it’s because we recognize people have many different incentives than they publicly display.
Based on your replies, you seem to think neither incentives or promises are important in business and, given the context, possibly not even profits. To give you the benefit of the doubt that those aren't just shallow dismissals, what do you think is important?
My issue is that each of those steps can also be cast as a pathway to more profit. Granted profit and Mars/betterment of the human condition aren’t mutually exclusive, but outside of mere talk I haven’t seen anything convincing that differentiates that one is the primary objective, e.g., a move that undermines profitability but helps the Mars mission
I don't know why he'd lie on this particular topic.
But Musk absolutely has a history of lying on commercial matters. I don't believe his statements deserve the presumption of honesty.
(Comment edited for tone.)
Edited: for guidelines
I think the OP may be a bit strong in their language, but I think your quote borders on cult-of-personality. Can you name a business where delivering on promises does not matter? To take it back to the featured article, there's a lot to be said for Boeing not delivering on their contract (really just a legally binding promise) and how it caused all kinds of schedule and cost pressure.
>"What did he do to hurt you?"
Also, snarky replies go against HN guidelines. Please review them.
What I don't get is when the public feels entitled to some forensically audited answer. Especially when the business in question is privately held. He's entitled to his view, I mean someone else asked for it, we're entitled to disagree, we know he is often over-optimistic on timelines but there's no need for people to get butthurt over it like many seem to do. Imagine every time some other influential person made a comment, people fervently came out specifically to comment "They're a liar because of x reason". He runs the company, we don't, he's our best insight into the business, we can adjust expectations accordingly.
Sorry I removed the snarky comment.
But when it comes to taxpayer money, the public absolutely has a right to audit. You can see how this played out with both Boeing and SpaceX. They were given huge leeway early, and they were audited more when they showed evidence that maybe some of that extreme trust was misplaced.
Let me clarify my comment above.
I'm a skeptic my nature. I generally trust claims on a sliding scale, not binary.
What I was trying to convey is that given Musk's history, I generally have a lower default trust level for his statements than I do for the average person.
On this particular matter, I don't know enough to have trust him above or below my defaults for him.
But for Musk, that still falls below what I'd call "taking at face value".
IMO, it makes for a good story and narrative that plays extremely well for PR purposes. There's just so many holes in the idea of executing that plan that I don't feel like it holds much water. But it reads much better than "There are large government contracts available to subsidize the early development of a business with an obvious and growing need that will lead to outsized profits if we're first."
They aren't just doing the bare minimum to be cheaper and better (as would be the way to go if they were trying to just be better than Boeing). Right now, SpaceX has launched the majority of the global mass to orbit this year and has done most rocket launches this year. SpaceX has flown 83 times, an unprecedented rate of a launch on average every ~3 days, ULA has flown 4 times, SLS (and for that matter Starliner also) will probably not fly again until 2026.
It's laughable to suggest that Boeing is even competing, let alone applying price pressure.
In turn, SpaceX can't quite apply monopoly pricing, because there is a hypothetical alternative in Boeing. SpaceX can't hike their prices 10x from current. But if they are the only crewed space transport?
NASA keeps Starliner around because they've already committed to the bit about redundancy when it comes to "new space" style acquisition processes (after all, they're still fully intending on flying astronauts on Orion without flight testing a fully crew capable version, and talking about paying for a backup option to it and SLS is a fast way to get fired or forced to resign).
Loss of a competitor might change its pricing structure, but they want success for reasons that go beyond extracting money.
You may disagree with how useful these ambitions are, but calling them ulterior is basically outright deception.
Even if competitors disappeared, the profit-maximizing price level is unlikely to rise much, as that would choke out a whole emerging sector of launch buyers whose businesses only make sense at a certain $/kg-to-LEO level.
Do you have support for this? As far as I know, SpaceX hasn't really reduced its customer-facing launch prices much since it's started regularly re-using rockets and last I saw, most demand increase in rocket launches are from SpaceX's own business of Starlink and there the industry at-large has not increased its demand. Amazon Kuiper has bought a as much launch capacity as they can from every supplier but it's unclear if that will pan out. Rocket Labs is the second busiest launcher in the US market with 10 launches in 2023[0].
A McKinsey report on this mentions that SpaceX is both a big driver of demand and supply because of Starlink[1]. And because of constellations, there might be a short-term limit in supply but long term over-abundance.
So is there a Joven's Paradox going on in space launches? IMO, no. But, SpaceX is certainly benefiting from being owner of a satellite constellation, which requires tons of launches, and being a launcher so they can do them at-cost.
[0] https://payloadspace.com/the-state-of-launch/ [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-defense/ou...
Rocket reuse began in 2017, and their pricing per kg has fallen by about half since then.
Attributing this directly to reusability isn’t straightforward, since they’ve also introduced new launch vehicles. However, it’s pretty clear that booster reuse is part of their economic model, without which they could never achieve profitability.
SpaceX (not) coincidentally being the owner of one of the biggest beneficiaries of reduced launch prices is evidence for, not against, the paradox. Without the cost structure enabled by their launch tech, Starlink is a massive money loser, like every other satellite internet company before it.
The Falcon 9 price per launch was increased from $62M to $67M in 2022. As far as I'm aware, that is the only time the Falcon 9 price ever changed.
> Since SpaceX began flying the Falcon 9 rocket in 2009, the cost of launch per pound has decreased from $10,000 per kilogram to roughly $2,500. Starship promises to lower the cost of launch even further. Today, the per kilogram cost of a Falcon 9 launch is $1520. Starship’s larger size would allow it to drop that down by 40% to $970
https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2023/04/20/t-min...
So it's either SpaceX had long established reuse and charging egregious margins to NASA, or Japanese aerospace labor is practically free, or only first stage recovery technology was realized and cost savings is still an open question.
Doesn't the situation look like a mix of all three, I mean, how can it be the case that SpaceX had cut cost by like 80% and US GAO is totally cool with that?
These small payloads individually have to pay much less than what they would've had to pay in the past, and get a guaranteed ride to space without fussing over the primary mission's needs. As a result SpaceX have eaten up most of the small launch market (eg no messes like having the batteries die on the pad because the only way to get an affordable ride is to fly on the maiden launch of SLS and Boeing isn't flexible enough to be able to charge them)
They even have a price calculator and scheduling information on their site for these.
The radical change was Moore's law. You can have more capability in a tiny cubesat today than you used to have in a satellite that weighed a ton. It was Moore's law that enabled Planet Labs and all of the new LEO constellations, not low launch cost.
Starship might provide a radical change in launch costs. More likely SpaceX will keep most of the gain for itself, charging similar prices and pocketing the difference.
(I can’t find Atlas ridesharing prices anywhere so apologies if that is indeed their rideshare price).
$67M / 10 tonnes + fees = $7000/kg.
Not sarcasm. I honestly don't get how? They're not even in the same order of magnitude in terms of price, reliability, safety features or capabilities.
It doesn't really matter how much of what is done, so long the US gets to keep enough aerospace workforce needed to design and mass produce enough Casablanca-class orbital dropships in WW3.
Boeing Defense is doing exactly that. They're competent enough.
If course, they may be playing a longer game, hoping they can kill all the competition by such low low prices
Systems always matter and systems sometimes matter the most but I would reckon a majority of the time, systems don’t matter and focusing too much on systems leads to wrong conclusions like yours.
Why does the average SpaceX employee try to do a good job? Think of the employee as an isolated piece. Some amount of it is intrinsic, humans like doing great work but not all humans are angels, and in a company as big as spaceX to perform well, intrinsic motivation is unlikely to be the root cause. No the average employee does a good job because his boss would fire him otherwise.
In the case of SpaceX this is not hyperbole. SpaceX is known to have a typical brutal work culture synonymous with Elons “hard-core” philosophy, you’re expected to put 100 hour work weeks, get results very fast or you’re shown the door. It has been documented that even significant life events like birth of a new born are no excuse to stop working 120% in SpaceX.
So the average employee, works because his boss would fire him, the boss works because he is under even higher pressure that his boss would fire him and so on you can climb up the ladder and you will realize that SpaceX is motivated because Elon is motivated and Elon would have them all fired the second he thinks they are not giving their 120% to work. Boeing does not matter to Elons motivation, it never did. Elon has his reasons for being motivated, he says it’s to reach Mars, but who knows what really drives a man, the fact is he has instituted a culture that expects excellence and dedication from its employees and employees are responding to that local feedback.
My prediction would be if Boeing dies today, it will not slow down SpaceX one second, but if Boeing actually speeds up, then Elon would drive his employees to insanity till they catch up to Boeing or fail as a business. Boeing can only add value to the upside if they get their act together which seems unlikely.
This is deeply embarrassing for Boeing. Their internal woes have bubbled to the surface and have started to affect planning, budgeting and delivery. This was for something designed to carry humans too. How much will Boeing have to do to repair their reputation and restore confidence in Starliner specifically but also their commercial spaceflight divisions in general?
Compare this to SpaceX where the Falcon 9's recent incident broke a streak of over 400 successful launches. Falcon 9 is now the most successful and reliable launch platform and its also one of the cheapest.
The Falcon 9 is really the Boeing 747 of space at this point.
SpaceX has its own issues with delivering on time. Crew Dragon was late. Starship is behind schedule and (IIRC) over cost. But these issues just pale into comparison to Boeing's issues.
Unlike Commercial, Boeing has competition from established players like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, and RTX as well as rising players like SpaceX, Andruil, Shield AI, etc.
Ther merger with McDonnell Douglas was the death knell for BDS because at the time, commercial dealflow was significantly greater than defense and space, leading to greater prioritization of commercial, and McDonnell Douglas had a history of management issues.
The merger with McDonnell Douglas in the 90s.
The deal flow and margins in commercial aviation were much higher than defense back in the 90s and 2000s, which deprioritized BDS and other defense aerospace manufacturers.
This caused BCA to gain greater priority and status internally in Boeing. And due to Boeing Commerical's near complete dominance in the commercial sector in the 2000s and early 2010s, this lead to cost cutting for better margins:
$9 an hour engineers in India weren't the problem (if so the AH-64 Apache would have a similarly horrid track record) - their union busting in Seatac by moving manufacturing to South Carolina and leadership to Chicago was the death knell, as experienced engineers, middle managers, and technicians didn't want to uproot from Seattle to SC or Chicago overnight.
Its my understanding that the actual "crushing blow" for Boeing was the merger with McDonnell-Douglas[1] in 1997, and the profit über alles management style[2] that they were infected with as a result.[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism
[3] https://indi.ca/the-boeing-737-max-and-the-crash-of-capitali...
[4] https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper_(Defense_industry)