China isn’t the only place worried that they will not be able to compete with upstart launch companies like Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) — traditional American cost-plus space contractors are starting to worry as well.
In a blog posting at Forbes today, Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute disingenuously warns us all about the dangers of relying on the company. Atop an unflattering photo of the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, the post has the scary title: “What NASA Risks By Betting On Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”
The disingenuity starts in the third paragraph:
Emphases mine.
There are two false implications here: first, that SpaceX won its contracts because of political favoritism, and second, that it was the only company to receive contracts.
Here is the reality: NASA put out a request for proposal for what it calls its Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program last fall, and received several proposals. It was a full and fair competition, and a little over a month ago, the agency awarded contracts to four companies, not just SpaceX, as Thompson attempts to imply by omission. In fact, of the four awards, SpaceX received only $75 million of the total $270 million awarded, and two other companies, Boeing and Sierra Nevada, both received more than SpaceX.
Moreover, it is only the second contract that the company has received from NASA in the Obama administration (the first was much smaller), so the talk of a “series” of contracts with the “push from senior administration figures” (whom he fails to name) makes no sense. The only way to talk about a “series” of NASA contracts to SpaceX is to include the Commercial Orbital Transportation System contract, which was awarded during the Bush administration, with different “senior figures.” And it too has multiple providers (Orbital Sciences Corporation has the other one).
In other words, contrary to Thompson’s account, there is no huge risk in relying on SpaceX, because NASA is not relying on SpaceX — it has a diversified portfolio of other players, including the Boeing Corporation, on which it can fall back if SpaceX does (contrary to its history) somehow falter. NASA has little riding right now on SpaceX, except $75 million, and the bet is not risky because it’s spread it across the table.
The disengenuity continues:
There’s a lot to unpack here. First, it’s not actually that hard to get into the private operations — I’ve taken tours of the factory (it’s about a fifteen-minute drive from where I live), as have many others. In addition, the company has been independently audited, and NASA itself claimed in an appendix of a recent report to Congress that the company had developed its two rockets and a capsule for anywhere between four and ten times less cost than NASA and Air Force cost models would have predicted. As for how the company has achieved its cost reductions, Elon Musk explained that recently. Readers are invited to read his own words and description, and make their own judgments as to whether or not they are credible.
I would also note that he continues to play fast and loose with the truth when later on he writes that the company has “gotten most of the money raised since its inception from NASA.” The company has received less than three hundred million from NASA — most of the money raised to date has been either from private investment, or commercial contracts.
He goes on and on about how SpaceX has missed their schedule, and had price increases, but again, there’s a huge omission — the schedule slips of NASA developments like Constellation and most importantly the fact that it was costing NASA an order of magnitude more money for a program that was slipping more than a year per year than it has for SpaceX to succeed. The Ares 1 rocket and the Orion capsule of Constellation had already cost $10 billion, and were still many years, and more tens of billions, from completion when they were canceled last year. Compare that to the mere $300 million that NASA has spent to get the Dragon test flight on the Falcon 9 last December and, if you’re a major aerospace contractor (like Lockheed Martin — more on that in a minute), weep.
He doesn’t say in what way the performance of the Falcon 9 is deficient with regard to its competitors — he leaves it to us to guess. I’m unaware of any such deficiencies. As for “man rating,” this is today a meaningless buzzword left over from the sixties, when in our rush to get to the moon, existing unreliable munitions were being designed to carry humans. Modern launch systems, such as the United Launch Alliance Delta and Atlas, or (yes) the SpaceX Falcon are designed to be reliable from the get go, because they have to deliver billion-dollar satellites. What NASA wants before they carry astronauts is launch escape systems in the crew capsules, and a billion dollars is an upper limit on what it will cost to do this for SpaceX’s Dragon, including test flights. It will likely be much less.
Why does Mr. Thompson write these tendentious pieces? Why so many misstatements of both omission and comission? Is it really his faux concern over the “risk” that NASA is taking in “relying” on one of several companies? The Lexington Institute claims to be a free-market libertarian entity, which is funny (and as an actual free-market libertarian, I resent), because according to Harper’s magazine (subscription required), it’s actually “the defense industry’s pay-to-play ad agency.” Thompson is quoted as saying:
Lockheed Martin is a major contributor. Lockheed Martin has contracts being threatened by the new way of doing space business. Follow the money. And then recognize these hit pieces for what they are.
