[ThisIsTheWay]

I also expected the competition between two (or more) contactors to be the choice, but with BO just now approaching human test flights, I can understand why they selected SpaceX to move forward if they could only fund one system.

[Alupis]

And what about ULA? They're a very serious contender here - have a human spaceflight program, and pretty strangely nobody ever seems to give them credit for the massive list of successful launches they have under their belt.

Maybe because they're not run by Musk or Bezos? How strange to put so much faith in a few eccentric billionaires - one of which is clearly building rockets as a pet project.

[nickik]

You are seriously misinformed. ULA is just a launch company. They don't have a human spaceflight program.

First of all, ULA doesn't have that many more launches then SpaceX and by the end of this year, SpaceX will overtake them.

ULA has a perfect record of launches, but they started out with legacy mature vehicles that had failures before ULA was formed (by the military).

They don't get as much credit because they often launched for 300M+ while also getting almost a 1 billion in subsides every year for most of their history.

> pretty strangely nobody ever seems to give them credit for the massive list of successful launches they have under their belt.

Not sure what you are talking about. Everybody seriously interest in space knows about ULA. The CEO Tory Bruno is well known personality on twitter and regularly post on reddit.

And if you want to argue ULA is its parent companies, these were in the HLS competition. Boeing had its own proposal. However, despite them having a human space flight contract, their proposal was judged to be of very low quality. They were remove in the first round.

Lockheed Martin the other ULA parent was part of 'National Team'. However NASA identified a number of problems with their Accent Stage and that was part of the reason the 'National Team' was not selected.

> Maybe because they're not run by Musk or Bezos? How strange to put so much faith in a few eccentric billionaires - one of which is clearly building rockets as a pet project.

ULA practically speaking was part of both Dynetics and Blue Origins National Team.

Why you insist on talking about ULA even while they were not part of this competition at all is a mystery to me. That is why nobody brings them up, because they literally were not in the competition.

[Sanzig]

They were included indirectly. The Dynetics bid proposed ULA's Vulcan Centaur as the baseline launch vehicle with SLS as an option. The Blue Origin bid baselined New Glenn but included Vulcan Centaur as an option.

So both other bidders proposed a ULA rocket either as the primary or back-up launch vehicle.

[kiba]

They have a human spaceflight program? That's news to me. Not to mention that they are owned by Lockheed and Boeing.

Also, I have no faith in Blue Origin. They don't have much if any flight records.

[Alupis]

Seems they're working on it, at least[1].

Did they not bid because of the Starship funding SpaceX is already receiving? If you knew you had zero chance of winning, why bother bidding?

> Not to mention that they are owned by Lockheed and Boeing.

Not sure your point here? Is that supposed to be a negative thing? Both companies have a massive amount of aerospace experience going back decades.

[1] https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/commercial-crew

[kiba]

Seems they're working on it, at least[1].

ULA has never designed a crew spacecraft. They're just launching it.

The Starliner is a Boeing product.

Not sure your point here? Is that supposed to be a negative thing? Both companies have a massive amount of aerospace experience going back decades.

And yet why did NASA chose SpaceX over dynetic, which is full of old companies?

SpaceX is an 18 years old company who developed the Falcon 1, Falcon 9(with further 4 iterations), the first Dragon, Dragon 2(with Cargo and Crew variant). They also achieved reusability with supersonic landing, an industry first.

Boeing mismanaged their Starliner program to the point that they failed their test flight due to program mismanagement and now have to wait years before they can relaunch Starliner, and thus SpaceX was able to start their commercial crew contract first. Boeing also drastically mismanaged the SLS program. As it is years behind schedule and cost billion of dollars.

Lockheed Martin? I don't know much about except the constant controversy surrounding their F-35 program.

I'll have to say this: decade of experience means not much if you're slow, inefficient, and do shitty jobs.

It's not like SpaceX lack decades of experience either. They have industry veterans too, not just fresh graduate from schools. One of the reasons that they were able to get anywhere in the early days was because they have folks who knows the space industry and able to work with the military.

[Alupis]

> The Starliner is a Boeing product.

ULA is Lockheed Martin + Boeing.

> controversy surrounding their F-35 program.

Fair enough, I'm not fan of the F-35 program either. Although it's not entirely Lockheed's fault... the mandate to have a one-size-fits-all aircraft for all branches of the military was doomed to fail from inception. The military knew it, and I'm certain so did Lockheed and all their contractors. Congress didn't want to hear that though... thinking it would lead to costs savings (oh, how hindsight is 20/20).

At a minimum, there should be two competing designs - built through flight testing (if not built to completion and maintained in conjunction to avoid any future safety groundings that stall USA human space flight capabilities). It's nutty to put all eggs into SpaceX's basket.

I also hardly believe saving money on such an important mission is important at all. Getting people there and back safely is paramount to saving what amounts to rounding errors in today's spend-happy congressional budget.

[kiba]

At a minimum, there should be two competing designs - built through flight testing (if not built to completion and maintained in conjunction to avoid any future safety groundings that stall USA human space flight capabilities). It's nutty to put all eggs into SpaceX's basket.

I am sure that the starship program will have the most test flight of any spacecraft development program. I have the uttermost confident in them.

That said, I agreed with you that we shouldn't put all our eggs into SpaceX's basket, no matter how good they are. We just don't have insight in NASA's thinking here, only guesses.

I also hardly believe saving money on such an important mission is important at all. Getting people there and back safely is paramount to saving what amounts to rounding errors in today's spend-happy congressional budget.

What gives you that impression? It seems like NASA gave all the money to SpaceX alone, which is 2.9 billion dollars. The only way that there would be more money is if NASA gets a bigger budget for their lunar program, which would making awarding more than one competitors a more viable option.

[nickik]

> > The Starliner is a Boeing product.

> ULA is Lockheed Martin + Boeing.

You still seem to misunderstand. Yes ULA is LM+Boeing.

However the Starliner has nothing to do with ULA. Its simply a Boeing project.

Just as the Orion is LM product.

ULA does not do anything with the Starliner except launch it.

LM in space domain had massive cost overruns with Orion and just recently had another major fuckup that requires them to do another 6 month work on it. Only because Boeing with SLS is performing even worse do they not get as much criticism for their terrible execution.

> At a minimum, there should be two competing designs

Tell that to congress.

[emilecantin]

Simply because they didn't bid on that contract. The bidders were SpaceX, Dynetics and the Blue Origin-led "National Team" (BO, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper).

[skissane]

Boeing also bid on the original contract, but was kicked out of the competition at an earlier stage. Their bid was rejected because it didn't address key requirements in the contract solicitation.

A senior NASA manager, Doug Loverro, is accused of reaching out to Boeing and trying to help them amend their bid to avoid it being rejected. For a NASA staff member to offer help to one of the bidders is illegal, and due to that, Loverro was forced to resign from NASA, and is now under criminal investigation. He justified his actions on the belief that without Boeing in the lander procurement, the lander was dead. I guess today's announcement just proves how wrong he was.

[zlsa]

Because they're a launch vehicle company and didn't bid for the HLS contract.