Mark R. Whittington
Recently, Eric Berger at Ars Technica sounded the alarm about a peculiar and vexing problem in the commercial space sector.
SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk, is beating the competition hands down for NASA contracts. That includes the old-line aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin and its fellow new space startups.
SpaceX has achieved an unprecedented degree of reliability and low cost with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles. Company engineers recently found and resolved a glitch in the Falcon 9 second stage and returned to flight in two weeks. The ability to reuse the first stage multiple times has left SpaceX’s competition in the dust.
During the second Bush administration, NASA turned to the private sector for launch services for two reasons.
First, commercial companies can deliver goods and services more cheaply and reliably, using fixed-priced contracts, than the government using traditional cost-plus arrangements.
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