Aerospace Corp Study Dumps on Commercial Crew Prospects

So when it's against commerical it's biased, when it's against NASA it's all true right? Are they really the only biased ones here?

Well, there goes the credibility of Aerospace Corp. Anyone have an explanation?

Wow, NASA may have to pay $10B to $20B just to support a single commercial crew provider. Yikes.

I think the underlying assumption is that these newcomers will find it just as difficult as anyone else to launch crewed vehicles to LEO. Aerospace Corp is just calling it like they see it. Why assume malice?

If commercial crew providers are going to pull a rabbit out of their hat and deliver crew to LEO for a fraction of the historical price, while at the same time providing the same level of safety and reliability, then they are going to have to prove it first. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

The charts seem to recommend that NASA take managerial control over their contractor's commercial crew projects. But isn't independence from NASA bureaucracy the whole point of this exercise?

Regardless, good luck pushing that through with the more hard-core commercial providers like SpaceX. Giving up design and program control to the government would be antithetical to their long term interests.

The underlying assumption seems to be that all involved are starting from scratch with no experience base whatsoever.

Keith, while this is true, there is something else at work that underpins these analyses.

1. Prior Experience

The computer models that they use at the Aerospace Corp looks heavily at this. It does not matter to the model that the last bit of experience in this realm was a generation ago, it still is a check mark in the computer analysis. Since Space_X was not around 40 years ago during the Apollo era, then by definition they do not quality.

Not that this is right, just explaining the process.

2. Launch Vehicle

Since Our granddaddies built the last human rated launch vehicle, and since we have a set of requirements related to that with launch vehicle providers that have provided hundreds of boosters, then by definition, no other vehicle can come close to the quality level of the incumbents.

It does not matter that the health monitoring system and the guidance and control system of the Falcon is light years ahead of current practice, the very fact that it is different than the "generally accepted way of doing business" is another black mark of deficiency in the computer generated ranking system.

3. Cost

Cost models are where the Aerospace Corp excels, and this is the greatest problem. The computer models that they used are again, based upon existing practice by the large incumbents. Therefore anything that deviates from the exact methods and CLINS used by the incumbents is wrong and cannot be relied upon for accurate costing. They will shoehorn the SpaceX (or anyone else who is not an incumbent) into the incumbent computer model, subtract numbers for past performance and adherence to standard practice and.......

The results spit out at the end that they came up with are inevitable.

Their approach does not allow innovation, it does not allow for the integration of completely new ways of doing business (I doubt that the Aerospace corp computer models even incorporate the benefits of vertical integration that SpaceX uses) and USED TO BE the standard of the Aerospace world that built giants like Hughes and even Boeing in the old days.

This at the core, is the greatest problem that innovators face in taking the aerospace industry into the 21st century. The priesthood simply cannot see beyond the orthodoxy and the orthodox way of doing business.

If the computer industry was the same way we would all be at terminals at computer centers all run by IBM mainframes.

The American Aerospace industry is in crisis, is in serious need of a dramatic change or we will become a second rate power.

Just what Elon has done at SpaceX has shaken the status quo to the core. It does not know what to do other than continue to utter the outputs of their obsolete computer models.

> Domestic commercial crew launch capability may result in prices per seat 2 to 3 times that of foreign based alternative access options

So slide 11 compares commercial crew to Roscosmos, but not NASA. It probably doesn't mean anything, but it is ironic that slide 11 doesn't convince anyone to choose NASA over commercial crew. It just convinces them to buy more Soyuz.

> Completely commercial service is difficult to envision in the near-term

That seems to miss the point. Completely commercial service isn't necessary at all. NASA will obviously buy whatever Soyuz service is necessary to get the job done. But NASA will also foster as many commercial options as possible to minimize that slack.

I don't know if it is worth being all wound up about this. It might just be a somewhat usual process for anything at NASA and the government: Go and ask AeroCorp what they think. NASA and the commercials probably have people who can address these issues. But one thing I learned is to never discount the voice of the opposition to what you do or propose doing. All it says is that the commercials have more work to do about their business case. They have to fight and come up with adequate objections and answer those assertions, show where they are wrong and/or right as necessary.

No one said it would be easy.

I wouldn't discount design experience that is supposedly 40 years old. Over the past 40 years, that design has been maintained and updated which requires maintaining that experience. Also those companies have many hi-rel human-rated procedures in place that help guide them for testing as well as designing the hardware. A new company would to some extent have to create those proprietary procedures and guidelines.

Another aspect is that only flying a crew twice a year is not the best approach from a commercial point of view. That's probably one reason that these companies haven't designed and built these crewed vehicles on their own and instead are looking for government contracts.

If the computer industry was the same way we would all be at terminals at computer centers all run by IBM mainframes.

That is Aerospace Corp's flaw in a nutshell.

I think it would be entertaining reading to see what Aerospace's cost models would predict it would cost to design, build and fly a pressurized space station with 400 cu feet of volume? I'd bet they'd guess a bit more than what Bigelow spent on Genisis II.

Based on Aerospace's EELV program-validated cost models what was SpaceX supposed to have spent to design, build and fly three Falcon 9 rockets? I'd be surprised if it was anywhere below $1 billion dollars.

Let's hope they never try to get Aerospace to predict the cost to produce outcomes like the suborbital flight prize-based models the X-PRIZE.

I will admit that I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to budgets and cost estimates but am I reading this presentation right?

NASA not only provides truckloads of money to develop a commercial launch vehicle (and no doubt of additional "in kind: services at KSC)

In return NASA gets the privilege of paying 50% more per seat than a private customer?

One also has to wonder what Boeing or Lockheed could pull off if they were allowed to build to the HR1/HR2 rating standard as compared to the HR3/Hr4 standard currently used by NASA launch vehicles.

Aerospace's cost models do not apply well here. They are based on decades of data including things like a high overhead of inefficient workers than can't be fired (DOD and NASA).

If they estimated the cost to launch, land, and recover Falcon 9 / Dragon I bet they would be off by an order of magnitude.

Aerospace has it's value, but the cost models break down here.

I just wanted to add that I believe SpaceX is planning to develop commercial crew capability whether or not they get development money from NASA, and they'll position their company's size and growth accordingly. That fact alone seems like a quick way to show the limitations of this report.

So if SpaceX does fly people to Station on the Falcon 9 and builds the Falcon Heavy with those prices, at what point does the Aerospace Corp admit that all of their models are wrong and that they should just close up shop?