The problem is not the amount of money (beyond a certain point) but the stability and predictability of income. The second is far more important when attempting to create an accurate schedule. The second has not been forthcoming. Basic economic reality is that people cannot stick to a preplanned economic calculus when you keep jimmying the inputs, inevitable and concurrent engineering realities aside.All the alternatives are either more expensive and/or less predictable. Orion? More expensive. Soyuz? Less predictable. Commercial crew has been a widely successful program so far for being able to make progress under the conditions both NASA and the providers have been handed.
It's been obvious for a while that commercial crew is now overfunded. It's probably not a ploy by Congress to demonstrate that the claim that funding was the schedule limitation was false.. they're not smart enough for that.. but it may work out that way if they continue to slip.
Nope. Again, there's been no point where the partners have been ahead of the funding. The claim that somehow the funding hasn't been sufficient is the argument of a politician to other politicians.For the rest of us, it's much more obvious that Boeing has a lack of commitment and SpaceX is suffering from feature creepage.
Please keep Orion, Soyuz, etc. out of this discussion. By all indications NASA and Congress are committed to CCtCap. The operative question is whether CCtCap can deliver.
Boeing's lack of commitment is matter of public record. They've threatened to pull out numerous times. As for the funding, it's a milestone based program and there's more than enough funding to cover the milestones. If you need clarification of SpaceX on-going feature creepism, you're obviously not paying attention.
It's relevant because the commitment is comparatively new, and whilst that commitment was not in place, frugal funding pushed execution to the right. Soyuz and Orion were presented as alternatives by various parties involved during the period of instability - they are relevant, but that's the limit of their involvement in this discussion.
This is a milestone-based contract with performance-based payments. Why would the partners be ahead of the funding? Why would they want to do so? ..
...Considering that the providers have been financed less than requested for a number of years, I'm wondering at what height you're setting the "overrun" bar?
Gemini was underfunded, and once SpaceX and Boeing actually fly a similar number of flights we'll have a chance to compare the costs.
Well yeah, obviously Commercial Crew needs a few percent of the US GDP to get to completion... perhaps it'll even happen this decade, then.
Yeah, it's only been 6 years. You can't expect to build and fly a crew vehicle in that little time. Let alone a whole program.
Quote from: QuantumG on 05/17/2016 09:58 pmGemini was underfunded, and once SpaceX and Boeing actually fly a similar number of flights we'll have a chance to compare the costs.Seriously? Gemini underfunded? Comparing CCtCap with Gemini? The expression "apples-to-oranges" would be an understatement here.NASA's budget, as a percentage of GDP, reached its peak during Gemini. Sure, some folks at the time probably wanted more money, but saying it was underfunded and then saying CCtCap is overfunded, and somehow trying to compare both programs takes the biscuit on so many levels. Here's my shot at an apples-to-apples comparison that we can do right now without waiting for the end of CCtCap:In 1963, project Mercury was finishing and project Gemini was in development. NASA's budget was roughly 2.3% of GDP. I think it's safe to assume that much of that budget went to the manned space program, and therefore quite a lot went to Gemini. I tried to find exact numbers, but my Google-foo came to a dead end.US GDP in 2015 was approx $18 trillion ($18,000 billion). In 2015, $805 million was budgeted for commercial crew, which equates to 0.0045% of GDP. Even if we assume that only 1% of GDP was allocated to Gemini in 1963, that's still more than 200 times greater than CCtCap is getting now.Percentages of GDP mightn't be a perfect reference frame, but they give us general ballpark order of magnitudes so that we can compare budgets from two completely different cost-of-living periods.
The Space Review estimated in 2010 the cost of Gemini from 1962 to 1967 as $1.3 billion in 1967 inflation-adjusted dollars, or $7.3 billion in 2010 dollars.
While inventing the technology? There was one thing they had back then that we don't have today and it really set the pace - will.
So they may not be comparable in many ways, but the funding level is.