RCgothic

My opinion on the difference between commercial and govt contacts: 1) A govt agency has a design. It wants the design built, so it goes out to contractors. The contractors haven't necessarily built this before, so because the govt has responsibility for the design, any problems that crop up are the govt's responsibility. The contract is cost+. 2) A govt agency has a requirement. Suppliers bid their own designs to meet that requirement. The supplier has responsibility for the design and any obstacles it might face. The contract is fixed cost.

Dynetics was deservedly rated third, in part because NASA didn't believe they were capable of delivering on the proposed timescale due to low TRLs and negative mass budget, and that's all moot because NASA couldn't afford it anyway. NASA believe SpaceX are most capable of delivering on the required timescale and at a price NASA can afford. That's all there is to it.

I think the Elon Time joke is well past time it was retired. Just doesn't ring true anymore.

From an outsider view, Dynetics seemed to have a better design than Blue and more achievable than SpaceX. If I were NASA I'd have had a preference for Dynetics all other things being equal. But the report rated their technical plan as marginal, and having read the decision summary I agree with it. It's a surprise Dynetics came in third, but on the basis of progress so far, I think NASA were right to rate Blue 2nd and Dynetics 3rd.

This is how the bids were rated at the previous phase: Blue Origin: Technical Rating: Acceptable, Management Rating: Very Good (most expensive) Dynetics: Technical Rating: Very Good, Management Rating: Very Good SpaceX: Technical Rating: Acceptable, Management Rating: Acceptable (cheapest) From April 2021 selection statement: Blue Origin: Technical Rating: Acceptable, Management Rating: Very Good Dynetics: Technical Rating: Marginal, Management Rating: Very Good (most expensive) SpaceX: Technical Rating: Acceptable, Management Rating: Outstanding (cheapest) Blue Origin held steady, Dynetics plummeted on the technical side, and SpaceX more than overcame doubts about its management capability.

Basically, Dynetics' design was overweight and had to find mass to lose. But the report also states there were significant risks of mass *increases* still to come which would also need to be countered, and the report did not expect that was feasible. Sounds like Dynetics bit off more than they could chew with their concept, even though it would have been a great capability if they'd been able to get it to work. This is the sort of thing armchair speculators can't predict. It was a surprise Dynetics was rated this low, but there was no way we could evaluate things like mass budgets or lack of progress on development of the critical MULE refueler.

The report implied that the all up development for Starship is likely to be somewhere in the ballpark of $6Bn to $10Bn for booster, ground systems and starship variants. Considering this is the largest, most complicated spacecraft ever on the most powerful booster by a factor of 2, that's not bad going. Sure, it's not cheap (a lot cheaper than some others) but less than half is tax dollars and the amount beyond that doesn't really matter. As long as SpaceX deliver a working vehicle the taxpayer had nothing to complain about in this, and as long as SpaceX can afford to service the interest on their private debt it's all good.

Another interesting set of wording in the report is that "SpaceX's plans to self fund and assume financial risk for over half of the development and test activities as an investment in its architecture..." That wording is interesting. "More than half". Not "three quarters of" or "the vast majority of". SpaceX bid $2.94Bn. On the basis of the above I think it's likely that this indicates total starship development will be less than $10Bn in total.

The report has an interesting section on abort capabilities. Basically, excess capacity in all things leads to improved survivability. Multiple redundant engines is a plus. Excess propellant gives greater ability to return to rendezvous orbits. Greater consumables storage gives much greater ability to linger waiting for a rescue. This was a significant strength of the lunar starship proposal which stands in stark contrast to the criticisms it gets as a launch vehicle.

Not remotely. We're talking over a thousand tons of propellant transfer.

From the report: "Whilse I recognize that return of cargo and scientific payloads may be limited by Orion's current capabilities" Burn, lol. I guess Starship will just have to tranship them for return to earth in another starship then.

Side by side render comparison, a year of progress.

Wow. That's either incredibly incompetent or extremely arrogant to assume that they could submit a proposal that doesn't comply with the rules and still expect to get an award.

Crew-2 progressing. SpaceX's announcement tweet. And of course what we will knew but old-space is extremely slow to acknowledge: If you're just trying to copy F9 you're destined for failure. Starship may not work reusably, but there's no serious reason not to think Superheavy won't even so be by far the cheapest ride to space on a per kg basis.

Contract is for just one crewed landing and a demonstration mission beforehand.

Wow, I didn't spot the ones above and to the right. 24 landing engines then. What do we reckon, somewhere in the region of 25kN per engine? That's quite a bit smaller than superdraco.

In the darker ring above and to the left of the flag and the NASA logo.

Launch site is not specified. Could be 39A or elsewhere.

No takey-backies.

The first three questions on this press conference were really shallow. How does Starship fit into Artemis, will Starship launch on SLS sort of thing.

It's official!

And this is how you win a major contract:

Sad Vulcan New Glenn and SLS noises.