Re:Boeing-SpaceX Team Split Space Taxi Award
by Patrick_Devine on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @12:09AM
(#8328557)
Unfortunately Sierra Nevada ends up being the losers here. I'd have loved to have seen the Dream Chaser also win the competition, but my guess is NASA (or someone in Congress) felt that choosing SpaceX and SNC would have been too risky.
Re:Boeing-SpaceX Team Split Space Taxi Award
by snogglethorpe on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @01:04AM
(#8328684)
Yeah, and it sounds like they were under political pressure to choose just one winner, so even the choice they made was a bit of a push for them.
If they had chosen just one winner, I presume that, given the inherently risk-averse nature of NASA and the political realities of lobbying and pork-spreading, it would have been Boeing. The same factors almost certainly meant that Boeing would have to be one of the two winners under the current plan.
SpaceX is the cool, fast-moving, forward-thinking—but potentially more risky—alternative. Boeing is the boring, slow-moving, business-as-usual, military-industrial-complex alternative.
I suspect that privately they hope SpaceX succeeds, but they also want a backup plan that's more conventional, if less good in some sense.
[As to why Boeing's getting more money than SpaceX, I suppose because Boeing probably uses money much less efficiently... they need more to reach a similar point... >< ]