Commentary
The Difference Between Boeing And SpaceX
by michael belfiore
At a Southern California YPO meeting in February, I moderated a discussion between Virgin Galactic’s Will Pomerantz and Boeing’s John Schindler.
As Director of Program Integration for Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, Schindler is one of the managers in charge of Boeing’s spaceship-in-development, the CST-100.
The ship is one of those competing to replace the retired Space Shuttle for getting crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Schindler characterized the ship as a no-frills, get-up-and-get-down vehicle using proven technologies.
“When we looked at the requirement set from our customer [NASA], and they said ‘Well, we want something that’s safe and affordable, cost-effective, reliable,’ we knew these technologies already existed. We already knew the blunt capsule that we saw on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, that the Russians use, are proven technologies. So we went with that to provide them what they want. They didn’t want a Cadillac, they really just wanted a minivan to get back and forth.”
This is in contrast to the Boeing competitor that is farthest along in its development, SpaceX. SpaceX is operating on its own set of requirements, for which the NASA requirement for Space Station access is just a subset. SpaceX wants to get all the way to Mars. Boeing is focused on the one mission, and says Schindler, drawing on Boeing’s 50-year heritage in space to get there.
“We’ve designed a space capsule that looks very similar to what the old capsules looked like. It actually can carry seven people. It kind of looks like a minivan—you got three [astronauts] on top and four on bottom. We have a pilot and a copilot, but it will fly autonomously. It will have an autonomous docking to the space station. We’ll put it on top of a rocket. Right now for our test program we’ve chosen a very reliable rocket. It’s never launched humans into space, but it’s flown over 100 times successfully, and that’s an Atlas V.”
The company certainly has the wherewithal to build and launch this system, but it is utterly dependent on NASA to make progress, and there’s the rub. “We’re in a design phase right now,” Schindler admitted. SpaceX, on the other hand, is now in flight test, with its first docking with the Space Station planned for April.
“Think of yourselves, in the YPO,” Schindler explained. “If you were trying to make a business case, and you were saying, ‘Well, if I’m going to go invest this money, I’ve got to have a market at the end that I’m going to be able to sell [to] and reclaim that [investment]. And there isn’t a market right now except for NASA. The Boeing company sees there’s a potential market, but it isn’t enough to close the business case on our own.” As a consequence, said Schindler, “We’re kind of hitched a little bit to NASA and Congress, and those things are big unknowns, depending on how much money’s available.”
What this boils down to is that Boeing, the big, established aerospace company with a lot to lose and shareholders to keep happy, isn’t going to lead in the way in creating America’s first commercial orbital spaceships. That’s left to younger, hungrier companies like SpaceX—whose CEO, Elon Musk, is prepared to take the big financial risks required to really move the ball in the field of commercial space flight.
about the author
michael belfiore is an author, journalist, and speaker on the innovations shaping our world. He has written about game-changing technologies for Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, New Scientist, Smithsonian, Invention & Technology, Financial Times, and other outlets. Contact him at http://michaelbelfiore.com
Tags: Apollo program, Atlas V, Boeing, CST-100 spacecraft, Dragon spacecraft, Elon Musk, Gemini program, Human settlement, International Space Station, ISS, Mars, Mercury program, Michael Belfiore, NASA< Commercial Crew Program, planetary exploration, Space, Space Station, spaceflight, spacevraft, SpaceX
Your summary is right on, Mike. The legacy guys STILL won’t do it; it’s up to the new entrants – starting with SpacEx.
That’s why I’m concerned about future Commercial Crew budget cutbacks. There is internal pressure to make sure that Boeing is one of the ‘winners’ – or, to put it bureaucratically: “We need to have at least one of the participants continue on who is ‘experienced’ – like us – and that means Boeing; which means if there is only two selected, only one of the new entrants – likely SpacEx – can be chosen.’ That means others, like SNC and Dreamchaser, might be out, by definition – even with the superior strategic choice.
SpaceX’s work started under the NASA funded COTS program where the space agency is paying most of the costs. I don’t think SpaceX would be very far along without NASA funding.
Making commercial deliveries to ISS is key to its business plan. Once they start meeting their NASA requirements, they can begin making a dent in all those commercial satellites they have on their manifest. Those launches keep sliding to the right along with the COTS flights.
Boeing certainly knows how to do commercial programs with an emphasis on safety, both in space and in the air. There are many advantages to having a company with 50 years of space experience that will be flying on a proven booster, the Atlas V.
It was Boeing’s involvement in CCDev that helped save that program in Congress. They weren’t putting a lot of faith in Elon’s promises.
Oh, Boeing is looking at beyond Earth orbit exploration.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/03/boeing-outlines-new-modulestechnologies-for-nea-missions/
COTS has only provided partial funding required to develop a working spaceship. I don’t have the numbers at my fingertips, but I don’t think it’s “most.” (Anyone here have those figures?) In any case, key to COTS’s success is that the various private companies have “skin in the game,” i.e., that they kick in significant development money of their own.
Clearly Boeing has the technical chops to do the job, but it isn’t prepared to put in enough non-government resources to make it happen. SpaceX does have that commitment as well as the backing, and that’s why they’re in orbital test flight while Boeing is still in the design phase.
Actually, Boeing wasn’t involved in COTS (cargo), which started several years earlier than the CCDev (crew) program that the company is working under. Boeing is putting its own money into that program because it operates under the same “skin in the game” philosophy. The key to making that work is both NASA money and other destinations to go to in LEO (Bigelow space stations).
Being that SpaceX started years earlier than Boeing, it would make sense that they’re ahead because they’re using the same basic spacecraft for cargo and crew.
“Being that SpaceX started years earlier than Boeing, it would make sense that they’re ahead because they’re using the same basic spacecraft for cargo and crew.”
That goes to the heart of this article. SpaceX started up 10 years ago LONG before COTS or any of the other programs that some folks here attribute to their success. All of the SpaceX vehicles have been designed with deep space exploration as the primary goal.
They did the Falcon 1 development and all of the basic design for Dragon on their own. Falcon 9 is NOT a product of the COTS contracts. The design work, engines, fuel systems, etc of Falcon 1 were designed from the get-go to scale up to Falcon 9.
SpaceX certainly charged NASA design fees, and obviously the final engineering work that occurred as the hardware was being built should be counted as a part of the design process, but most of the primary components were developed for Falcon 1.
It’s the same story with Falcon Heavy (which also is not being funded by COTS). It’s just taking the same Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 components and bundling them together to make a bigger rocket. And in fact the original hardware was designed from the beginning to scale up in this fashion.