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by jvanderbot 774 days ago
Boeing is definitely in on it, but let's be clear, the gov as a consumer was not really asking for 100 launches a year, and was not in the business of paying for the change necessary to completely reinvent lift as a service. So why wouldn't they just keep charging what they were charging, and building what they always did.

There just wasn't an appetite for risk and reinvention, at least not enough to bring it down and start over, the way an eccentric billionaire could.

1 comments

> So why wouldn't they just keep charging what they were charging, and building what they always did.

So that they can keep up with any eventual newcomers?

IIRC, large primes have limited IRAD funding for the most part - in some cases fixed %, so to do research you have to charge more to the Gov. That's just plain a "cost saving measure" enacted by government.