If I heard correctly, SpaceX got less because they were already running regular resupply missions to ISS and not because they had "worse, less reliable design".
No, that doesn't make sense. SpaceX can achieve much higher profit margins by reusing rockets, even with lower prices, because their costs are lowered by a much greater proportion thanks to reusability.
Also, Boeing doesn't make mistakes as the result of some bizarre conspiracy that turns out to benefit them in the end. Most of Boeing's mistakes hurt Boeing.
> SpaceX can achieve much higher profit margins by reusing rockets
What I've always heard is the legacy defense contractors are used to cost-plus contracts where you don't make bigger profits by reducing costs. They sometimes don't adapt well to firm-fixed-price contracts because changing the organizational culture takes ages. And also the reality is that they can keep raking in money anyway -- Boeing is in fact collecting more cash than SpaceX, so it's not even clear the incentives have changed that much.
That might be the case, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that you can turn a bigger profit by making your rockets reusable. Boeing isn't even just a "legacy defense contractor"--a massive part of their business is commercial airliners. That hasn't gone well for them either lately.
I think the more reasonable explanation for Boeing is that they already have access to ULA's proven launch vehicles, so designing a new one just for Starliner wasn't necessary. I think Boeing just chose a more conservative strategy while SpaceX managed to out-innovate them.
That's the legacy defense contractor strategy -- deliver something that checks off the boxes on the government requirement list at an exorbitant price. It's a very conservative strategy; lots of money, no risk.
The problem is that at some point SpaceX started landing rockets and the formerly safe strategy became extremely risky because Boeing/ULA not only has a competitor, the competitor is cheaper. But getting a fat, lazy organization to innovate and compete is hard even when facing an existential threat, and Boeing/ULA have not (yet?) managed that transformation. They've known it's necessary for years [1] but haven't been able to change course.
Yes, and that NASA expected this from them, that is, they were expected to be a credible, reliable-but-expensive (and not particularly innovative) option.
SpaceX had a pretty different record wrt reliability back in 2014. And to be fair I think it's more likely that Boeing was competing against Sierra Nevada, not SpaceX
I think it's more that the DoD props up Boeing in any way they can, from sweetheart contracts like this, to trade policies designed to destroy competition (the Bombardier thing), to outright industrial espionage of other firms (the leaks of Airbus's foreign negotiations).
Edit: Changed Embraer to Bombardier thanks to emiliobumachar's friendly reminder.
The WTO is run by a very specific brand of economists that don't see the value in a country subsidizing an industry to maintain local expertise in that industry.
I for one disagree pretty heavily with this ruling.
The WTO is run by bureaucrats who enforce the terms of the membership agreement. If national governments think it's important to subsidize local industries then they should negotiate agreements to allow for that. Don't blame the WTO.
That has the effect of cutting yourself off from more or less all trade.
The WTO leaves you with three options as not the US. 1) Capitulate and lose about any industries as the efficiencies of scales of the US economy steam rolls any industries they don't explicitly prop up in your country (the Israel model if you're lucky, the African model if you're unlucky). 2) Cut yourself off from essentially all global trade (the North Korea model) 3) form a large enough economy that you can flaunt more and more of the WTOs rules because what are they going to do? (The Chinese and EU model).
While it might make sense to provide an exemption for local industries that have critical defence or security implications, politicians may find themselves tempted to expand the scope of that to include other "national interest" products, like yoghurt:
No, more indicating that both these companies receive so much patronage from their respective national defense agencies/industries and provide employment cover to their respective intelligence agencies that I’m not sure there’s a clean line between actions of them as private actor vs them as state actor. Doesn’t rationalize espionage or maybe it does, I don’t know. I just don’t think the set-up of Airbus, the innocent industrial, as victims of evil Boeing is a realistic implication. These are both behemoths tightly hooked to their national defense apparatus.
As for China, I think that angle is their acknowledged policy plus some.
Probably not. They have been transferring workers from the programs where contracts are slow (commercial airlines) to those with more steady revenues (DoD contracts) to minimize layoffs. I haven't read up on the newest wave of Boeing layoffs yet.
That's what I meant to say (with the additional info that Boeing claims they laid off fewer workers from the commercial division because the company claims some of them were transferred to defense). I'm sorry if my wording was confusing.
Boeing got the big bucks at $5B or so for their crewed services because they have the "better" more reliable design.
SpaceX only got $3B or so.
Boeing running roughly 60%+ more per seat as well.
So a real accomplishment so far for SpaceX to pull this off.