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#140
by
Prober
on 22 May, 2014 18:13
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think this is the right place for this post ..if not move it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-22/the-musk-show-in-washington-roils-rivals-as-fans-applaud.html
Musk has suggested that Orbital Sciences Corp. deserves fewer missions to supply the space station. Unlike SpaceX, Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital delivers cargo to the station using a one-way spacecraft that burns up on its return.
“They take up less than we do and they take nothing down, and they get paid twice as much per mission as we do,” Musk said in an April presentation at the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s annual conference in Washington.
Ahhh...the plot thickens...
They do offer more pressurized volume though, especially when the enhanced Cygnus flies. However, he has a point. Why is OSC getting twice as much per mission as SpaceX does? That doesn't seem right. They should both be getting similar money for similar services I'd think.
And good for McCain and some others for standing up against the "business as usual" with government and traditional government contractors. Too few politicians will do that.
No offense, but Musk is getting paid less, because he asked for less... He left money on the table trying to get his foot in the door. Now he is crying about about it?
no this is about competition, and one party wants it all.
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#141
by
Lars_J
on 22 May, 2014 18:16
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no this is about competition, and one party wants it all.
How un-american!
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#142
by
ChrisWilson68
on 22 May, 2014 18:37
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think this is the right place for this post ..if not move it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-22/the-musk-show-in-washington-roils-rivals-as-fans-applaud.html
Musk has suggested that Orbital Sciences Corp. deserves fewer missions to supply the space station. Unlike SpaceX, Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital delivers cargo to the station using a one-way spacecraft that burns up on its return.
“They take up less than we do and they take nothing down, and they get paid twice as much per mission as we do,” Musk said in an April presentation at the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s annual conference in Washington.
Ahhh...the plot thickens...
They do offer more pressurized volume though, especially when the enhanced Cygnus flies. However, he has a point. Why is OSC getting twice as much per mission as SpaceX does? That doesn't seem right. They should both be getting similar money for similar services I'd think.
And good for McCain and some others for standing up against the "business as usual" with government and traditional government contractors. Too few politicians will do that.
No offense, but Musk is getting paid less, because he asked for less... He left money on the table trying to get his foot in the door. Now he is crying about about it?
He's not complaining that he should be paid more, he's complaining that his customer should buy more of his product. Big difference. And he has a very good point. Musk offers more for less, yet the U.S. government decided to spend more on his competitor than on him.
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#143
by
kevin-rf
on 22 May, 2014 18:45
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He's not complaining that he should be paid more, he's complaining that his customer should buy more of his product. Big difference. And he has a very good point. Musk offers more for less, yet the U.S. government decided to spend more on his competitor than on him.
But does he offer more for less? Dragon has half the pressurized volume of Cygnus for half the cost. Sounds like a level playing field to me
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#144
by
ChrisWilson68
on 22 May, 2014 18:55
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He's not complaining that he should be paid more, he's complaining that his customer should buy more of his product. Big difference. And he has a very good point. Musk offers more for less, yet the U.S. government decided to spend more on his competitor than on him.
But does he offer more for less? Dragon has half the pressurized volume of Cygnus for half the cost. Sounds like a level playing field to me ;)
That's a legitimate point -- Cygnus may have an advantage over Dragon, and if that's the reason the government chose to give some business to Cygnus instead of Dragon, that's a legitimate critique of Musk's statement.
However, I was responding to a different critique of Musk's statement. The critique of Musk's statement I was responding to was that he doesn't have a right to complain because he chose to offer his services for less money. That critique is not valid.
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#145
by
Jim
on 22 May, 2014 19:01
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The critique of Musk's statement I was responding to was that he doesn't have a right to complain because he chose to offer his services for less money. That critique is not valid.
It is very valid. The contract wasn't winner take all. He doesn't have a right to complain because it is his fault that he didn't charge more.
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#146
by
dror
on 22 May, 2014 19:03
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He's not complaining that he should be paid more, he's complaining that his customer should buy more of his product. Big difference. And he has a very good point. Musk offers more for less, yet the U.S. government decided to spend more on his competitor than on him.
He's not complaining, he's showing off.
That's advertising😉
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#147
by
kevin-rf
on 22 May, 2014 19:12
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That's not completely correct. When the original contracts was signed, it was a down select to two from multiple bidders. It was not a winner take all. NASA wanted to reduce risk and assure access by contracting two companies.
Actually, the first two selected companies where SpaceX and Rocket Plane/Kistler. Only after the Rocket Plane contract was terminated did Orbital get the contract.
Orbit bid what they felt was a fair price, and NASA accepted it. Since it was a competition, that should be the end of the story.
While trying to eat your competitors pie is nothing new, if he is not content with the contracts he currently has, then he should have bid differently. When these contracts where let, many felt that SpaceX low balled it. I really hope this isn't sour grapes because they need to pick up additional contracts to become profitable.
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#148
by
ChrisWilson68
on 22 May, 2014 19:23
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That's not completely correct. When the original contracts was signed, it was a down select to two from multiple bidders. It was not a winner take all. NASA wanted to reduce risk and assure access by contracting two companies.
Actually, the first two selected companies where SpaceX and Rocket Plane/Kistler. Only after the Rocket Plane contract was terminated did Orbital get the contract.
Orbit bid what they felt was a fair price, and NASA accepted it. Since it was a competition, that should be the end of the story.
While trying to eat your competitors pie is nothing new, if he is not content with the contracts he currently has, then he should have bid differently. When these contracts where let, many felt that SpaceX low balled it. I really hope this isn't sour grapes because they need to pick up additional contracts to become profitable.
You're confusing COTS and CRS. COTS was the development contract, and it was a down-select to two from multiple bidders. That's what RpK was in originally, and what Orbital replaced them in.
Musk was talking about CRS, the follow-on contract for services. It was up to NASA whether to reduce it from two to one provider, and how to distribute the awards between the two winners if there were two.
Musk wasn't suggesting he should get more per flight. He was suggesting he get more flights. NASA could have given Orbital 4 flights instead of 8, for example.
More to the point, I think Musk was looking to the future, suggesting that SpaceX be given a bigger slice of the pie, or perhaps the whole pie, going forward.
The suggestions Musk was foolish not to ask for more per flight implies that the government would buy the same number of flights from SpaceX whether they charged more or less. To me, that suggests foolishness on the part of the government, not foolishness on the part of SpaceX.
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#149
by
bad_astra
on 22 May, 2014 19:24
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Orbital doesn't offer downmass, either. Is the cost of returning cargo a separate billable item? It should be.
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#150
by
Lars_J
on 22 May, 2014 19:25
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NASA were also pretty desperate to get a 2nd provider on-board at that time, if I remember right. Local government also paid for the launch pad (or a significant portion thereof). Their horizontal assembly building, built for Taurus II/Antares was built by NASA for them. (There's a huge NASA logo on the building)
So NASA really bent over for them, and Orbital took the opportunity. I can't blame them for doing it.
But it will make the bid process for CRS-2 veeery interesting.
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#151
by
ChrisWilson68
on 22 May, 2014 19:35
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NASA were also pretty desperate to get a 2nd provider on-board at that time, if I remember right. Local government also paid for the launch pad (or a significant portion thereof). Their horizontal assembly building, built for Taurus II/Antares was built by NASA for them. (There's a huge NASA logo on the building)
So NASA really bent over for them, and Orbital took the opportunity. I can't blame them for doing it.
But it will make the bid process for CRS-2 veeery interesting.
Yeah, I don't blame Orbital for taking advantage of the situation. If there's anyone to blame, it's the government. If they just wanted a second provider, they could have given Orbital 4 missions and SpaceX 18 instead of Orbital 8 and SpaceX 12 and gotten more missions, more upmass, more downmass, and all for less money, while still keeping the redundancy of two providers.
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#152
by
baldusi
on 22 May, 2014 19:52
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If I recall correctly, it was more a riposte to a comment by OSC management regarding their and SpaceX launch cadence to the ISS. Which compared exactly the transition between v1.0 and v1.1 and made exactly after the delay of CRS-3.
But in general terms, the COST/CRS contract structure was such of a Dutch Auction. Basically you bid as low as you can and thus the client get's the two lowest quotes. It's not exactly like that, but because of the intrinsic differences of the solutions, and the pick up of a runner up, that's how it ended up.
In particular, up to now every single Dragon launch has been volume limited, and thus, even on a USD/kg metric, they might be on par with Cygnus. But let's remember that they get paid for each kilo brought down in excess of the 23tonnes contracted (20tonnes up and 3tonnes down). So I don't think Elon should get too much into an argument here.
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#153
by
pathfinder_01
on 22 May, 2014 19:56
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Yeah, I don't blame Orbital for taking advantage of the situation. If there's anyone to blame, it's the government. If they just wanted a second provider, they could have given Orbital 4 missions and SpaceX 18 instead of Orbital 8 and SpaceX 12 and gotten more missions, more upmass, more downmass, and all for less money, while still keeping the redundancy of two providers.
Life support and the things that the station need are more bulky than heavy so Orbital's greater volume is very useful and getting rid of the trash is also extremely important so you probably don't need as much down mass as up mass. I like Dragon, but would prefer that no one company has too much businesses. Having them spaced out also can reduce issues with delays(they might not cascade so bad.).
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#154
by
Antares
on 22 May, 2014 20:36
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Local government also paid for the launch pad (or a significant portion thereof). Their horizontal assembly building, built for Taurus II/Antares was built by NASA for them. (There's a huge NASA logo on the building)
So NASA really bent over for them, and Orbital took the opportunity. I can't blame them for doing it.
But it will make the bid process for CRS-2 veeery interesting.
That was a Mikulski earmark, due to lobbying by Orbital. NASA had no choice.
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#155
by
MP99
on 22 May, 2014 20:36
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He's not complaining that he should be paid more, he's complaining that his customer should buy more of his product. Big difference. And he has a very good point. Musk offers more for less, yet the U.S. government decided to spend more on his competitor than on him.
But does he offer more for less? Dragon has half the pressurized volume of Cygnus for half the cost. Sounds like a level playing field to me
That's a legitimate point -- Cygnus may have an advantage over Dragon, and if that's the reason the government chose to give some business to Cygnus instead of Dragon, that's a legitimate critique of Musk's statement.
However, I was responding to a different critique of Musk's statement. The critique of Musk's statement I was responding to was that he doesn't have a right to complain because he chose to offer his services for less money. That critique is not valid.
NASA recognises a value in getting deliveries with the minimum amount of disruption from having to dock yet another VV.
Larger capacity per vehicle has a direct value to them, in allowing more science to be done.
Cheers, Martin
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#156
by
Lobo
on 22 May, 2014 20:41
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They won't have to depend on unreliable Russian suppliers ...
Let's not blame the suppliers. The Russian suppliers themselves, Energomash, etc., have been quite dependable and reliable. The problem is entirely political, and it cuts both ways. It was a U.S. judge that first stopped RD-180 imports (briefly). It is Russia's Deputy Prime Minister who subsequently threatened a cut-off, apparently in response to U.S. sanctions that themselves were a political response to Ukraine. Energomash/RD-AMROSS itself has never stopped supporting its U.S. customer.
- Ed Kyle
Sorry. Let me rephrase. That way they won't valve to depend on an potentially unreliable supply of Russian engines.
:-)
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#157
by
GClark
on 23 May, 2014 06:50
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A thought made me chuckle...
The possibility exists that Orbital will end up selecting the RD-181 for Antares and ULA selecting AJ-1-E6 for Atlas V. The two vehicles would trade engines/engine contractors.
Mildly amusing...
V/R,
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#158
by
Lar
on 23 May, 2014 12:32
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VV relative cargo volume is veering off topic.
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#159
by
rayleighscatter
on 11 Jun, 2014 21:04
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Came across an interesting video yesterday by accident. Has some good Antares imagery I hadn't seen before.
