NASA ran the projects. They have specifications to contractors for manufacturing. That’s a far cry from farming out the entire process and renting space on a commercial rocket.
NASA funded SpaceX based on hitting milestones on their COTS program. Those were just as available to Boeing and Blue Origin, but they had less success meeting those milestones and making a profit under fixed price contracts (as opposed to the traditional cost plus contracts). It’s still NASA-defined standards, only with an offloading of the risk and uncertainty onto the private contractors, which was great for SpaceX and terrible for Boeing.
NASA ran the projects. They have specifications to contractors for manufacturing. That’s a far cry from farming out the entire process and renting space on a commercial rocket.
NASA funded SpaceX based on hitting milestones on their COTS program. Those were just as available to Boeing and Blue Origin, but they had less success meeting those milestones and making a profit under fixed price contracts (as opposed to the traditional cost plus contracts). It’s still NASA-defined standards, only with an offloading of the risk and uncertainty onto the private contractors, which was great for SpaceX and terrible for Boeing.
But ultimately it’s still just contracting.
Really interesting— I don’t follow this nearly enough, so thanks