Hi it’s me Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
One of the questions I get asked most often is “who do you like better NASA or SpaceX”
Who do I like BETTER?!?!
WHAT?!
Is that even a fair question!
That's almost like saying, who do you like better, the Chicago Bulls or the NBA or perhaps
Manchester United or FIFA?
Well, it’s not QUITE that simple… but hold on...
In this day and age of extreme SpaceX fandom, of which I’m 100% not guilty of
You get a Falcon 9, You get a Falcon
Falcon Heavy.
Yay SpaceX, ah haha
It’s important we reflect on the relationship SpaceX has with NASA, how they
collaborate, how they differ and why NASA’s future role in space exploration is as important
now as ever.
And although I don’t think it’s fair to compare a government agency to a private company
in general, there is one thing we’ll be comparing in my next video… and that’s
their rockets…
Ok, so, NASA vs SpaceX.
FIGHT!
Or, hug...
I don’t know which one yet so let’s get started!
On July 29th, 1958, president Dwight D Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space
Act into law.
The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics would become a new government agency called
NASA and the Department of Defense would transfer non military space assets to them.
This set a tone for the friendly and peaceful exploration of space.
But despite its peaceful conception, it was formed primarily as a response to the threat
of the hostile Soviet Union having put something into orbit before the United States did.
In just over a decade, NASA went from a fledgling little aerospace entity into a well oiled
and well funded machine, capable of putting humans on the surface of the moon.
NASA went from launching people on top of small intercontinental ballistic missiles
with Freedom 7 in 1961 to launching astronauts on top of a 111 meter or 363 foot tall flying
skyscraper with enough explosive energy to match a small nuclear warhead.
They did so in less than 8 years when they flew astronauts on top of the first Saturn
V mission for Apollo 8 in 1968.
The advancements that took place during the “Apollo Era” are legendary and advanced
our collective knowledge as a species as a whole, ushering a new era of understanding
and scientific discovery.
Not to mention inspiring a new generation of engineers, mathematicians and scientists,
which may definitely helped spark the United States’ leap forward in creating high tech
industry and a booming tech economy.
So not only did NASA learn how to put humans in space and then soon after put them on another
planetary body, they’ve also taught us how to live in space first with Skylab, then the
Space Shuttles and Spacelab, and then they even helped build the International Space Station..
You know, that football field sized flying laboratory that orbits the earth 10 times
faster than a bullet which you yourself can wave to under the right conditions.
Yeah that thing.
Ok, not only that but let’s not forget about the Pioneer missions which were the first
spacecraft to visit Jupiter and Saturn, or Voyager 1 and 2 the first probes to do a grand
tour of our solar system, or how about the 4 wildly successful Mars rovers and 3 Mars
landers, or Cassini-Huygens which explored Saturn, or what about the Hubble Space Telescope?
Ok this list goes on and on and on and the knowledge gained from NASA has been game changing
to say the least.
Despite all of NASA’s wildly successful missions, people are seemingly critical of
NASA these days, citing over budget missions and rockets, red tape everywhere and sort
of having to be told what to do by people who know very little about space,
(cough) Congress (cough)
And compared to NASA, SpaceX is just the new kid on the block.
Having been founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, SpaceX went from almost certain failure, down
to literally their last pennies and just one last attempt at reaching orbit with their
Falcon 1 rocket to being the most popular launch provider, now offering one of the cheapest
rides to space on the most advanced self landing and partially reusable rocket, the Falcon 9!
SpaceX is a private company who sells rides to space.
A customer, say NASA, SES, Iridium, Thaicom, the air force, or anyone else wanting to put
something in space can hire SpaceX and one of their rockets to get the job done.
SpaceX has become the new goal post to which people measure other space companies and agencies
against.
With their very public displays of trial and error, never ending ambition, and super star
CEO, Elon Musk, they’ve inspired a new generation of space dreamers, picking up where NASA left
off after the cancellation of the Space Shuttle program.
So let’s actually start there.
I think this moment in time, when the commercial program was just starting and the space shuttle
program was just ending is the most important moment in time that can help us understand
the current and future relationship of NASA and SpaceX.
Despite wanting to develop commercial options as far back as 1984, NASA finally announced
a program called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services or COTS in January of 2006.
NASA started accepting proposals from companies two months later.
The companies had to show off their concept for delivery of cargo and eventually crew
to the International Space Station
And here’s where the relationship with NASA and SpaceX began.
In August of 2006, SpaceX secured a contract with NASA to develop their proposed vehicles.
NASA’s initial investment to SpaceX was $278 million dollars to develop their Falcon
9 and Dragon Spacecraft.
Hmmm, did you hear that?
NASA paid for SpaceX to develop the Falcon 9.
So right there, I hope we begin to understand the relationship between SpaceX and NASA.
This is starting to sound more like hugs and not boxing gloves…
But let’s keep going.
Before SpaceX even launched their first Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule, SpaceX secured a contract
for commercial resupply services or CRS from NASA.
Now here’s where the big investment comes in, NASA invested $1.6 billion in SpaceX,
insuring SpaceX would have what it takes to get the Falcon 9 going.
So before SpaceX had even flown their workhorse Falcon 9 once, NASA had promised nearly $2
billion in the company.
It’s pretty obvious here that NASA hasn’t seen SpaceX as a competitor, instead they
have always intended to give SpaceX funding to take over and provide services for NASA
so they could pursue bigger rockets and spend more in scientific and experimental endeavors.
You know, keep exploring space.
I think this is a detail that’s often overlooked or forgotten.
NASA is SpaceX’s biggest customer AND supporter.
SpaceX would arguably be nothing if it weren’t for NASA.
Not only with NASA’s funding, but also by tapping into NASA’s knowledge base, their
legacy of public information and leaning on their expertise in certifying their vehicles.
Not to mention, SpaceX goes to NASA when they experience a problem and NASA helps them out.
Don’t forget, Elon has mentioned MANY times how much he loves NASA and I think his previous
password on his computer is pretty telling of that fact.
You know for a long time, my password was "ILOVENASA" That's actually true.
Another thing to remember is SpaceX leases Pad 39A from NASA.
You know, the hallowed ground where humans left Earth to walk on the moon and where most
space shuttles took off from!
So, obviously they have a pretty good working relationship...
So with NASA being famous for basically inventing how to space, let’s take a look at how NASA
traditionally designs, builds and pays for spacecraft compared to how SpaceX does.
NASA has traditionally hired out work with contractors on what’s known as cost plus
contracting.
The idea here is you hire someone to build say a command module, you then pay them to
do that and then they tack on a little extra for their profit.
Cost plus contracting goes way back to World War 2 when urgency was the most critical factor
in getting a product in place.
The cost efficiency goes way down on the list when it comes to war.
Getting someone to work on the project immediately really matters at times of war in order to
get the product done as quickly as possible.
There’s a few big issues with this way of handling contracts.
Number one, there’s little to no incentive for the contractor to complete a project on
budget or on time.
If it just “costs this much to do something” and then they still make a profit on top of
that, it’s just a win/win for the contractor.
Second, if the customer, in this case the government, changes its mind or direction,
like it tends to do with every administration change, the contractor might get paid multiple
times to do the same work over and over as the program changes.
That habit stuck around when it came to NASA’s development and how it handled the hiring
of contractors.
Especially since the space race was essentially a peaceful show of arms, that was really rooted
in military supremacy.
Getting things done quickly really mattered more than the cost.
The cost plus contracting still makes sense when dealing with say a one off martian rover,
like the Curiosity Mars Rover, or something like that.
There isn’t room to have a contractor fail.
So it just makes sense to say, hey build this one thing and we’ll pay you for it.
That being said, the government and the space industry got pretty hooked on this cost plus
contracting thing being the norm, it’s taken up until fairly recently to figure out a better
way to handle these contracts.
And now we get into fixed price contracting.
Fixed price contracting is the concept of basically stating how much you're willing
spend for a project and then contractors can bid to try and win the contract.
This helps offset the risk for the customer and makes the contractor have more skin in
the game.
The problem is, if the project is too ambitious, there’s a chance the project will just simply fail.
A company could spend the money and fall short, and the project would be a big flop.
Historically speaking, fixed price contracting hasn’t always gone very well for the military
featuring a few programs that cost billions of dollars that wound up being cancelled due
to the contractors simply unable to deliver.
So when it comes to NASA hiring SpaceX under the CRS contracts, it’s a new approach that
paid off big time for NASA and SpaceX.
Ok moving on, one of the most interesting aspects of NASA is the fact that its facilities
are spread throughout the United States.
Have you ever noticed that astronauts always call back to Mission Control in Houston, Texas,
even though they launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida?
Well, there are NASA centers in 8 states and many other facilities in even more states.
This can be a little confusing, but there’s a good reason for that.
Since NASA is government funded and the budget for NASA projects are derived by congress,
as NASA and its workforce grew leading up to the Apollo era, it needed support from
as many members of congress as possible.
For instance, by placing a major center in Houston, NASA would gain support from the
Texas members of the house and senate which represents over 8% of congress.
So by spreading their centers throughout the United States, NASA almost automatically has
members of congress on their team who will want jobs in their state and to keep NASA
well funded.
Of course there is some inefficiencies when having to deal with your workforce being spread
throughout the entire country, especially when it comes to building and testing huge rockets.
Parts of the Saturn V rocket were manufactured and tested across the entire US, which is
an unusual way to test and build something.
But it worked!
Between NASA and its contractors, there were nearly 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo program.
But once we landed on the moon, the public almost immediately lost interest.
This is why despite it taking around 200,000 years of humans existence to get humans to
the moon, we only explored for about exactly four years, then we stopped going and have
yet to return.
What a shame.
This led to thousands of well trained, highly educated and intelligent people now twiddling
their thumbs.
Or as a NASA headquarter official described the Marshall Flight Center post Apollo…
“A tremendous solution looking for a problem.”
With its budget shrinking, NASA was left to shift its focus from the moon and Mars to
a low earth orbit infrastructure by developing the space transportation system, better known
as the space shuttle.
The space shuttle was designed to bring the cost of spaceflight down by reusing the majority
of the vehicle.
But, the space shuttle’s design was compromised from the get go by kind of being designed
by committee.
Everyone had a say in what they wanted the space shuttle to be and do…
This led to the military getting a cargo bay large enough to launch large spy satellites,
congress not wanting to spend more to make the vehicle more reusable, and many other
design compromises that ultimately left humanity stuck in low Earth orbit ever since.
Now, when it comes to actually designing and building rockets, SpaceX does things differently
than other traditional aerospace companies.
And this is where some people might be confused.
SpaceX has changed the game for the aerospace industry by developing and manufacturing most
things in house.
They build their own engines, their own flight computers and even their own spacecraft all
under one roof.
This is really unusual.
The fact that the engineers who design the rockets have an office in the same building
as where the rockets are being manufactured means there’s a tight relationship between
the designing and the building of the rockets.
This is another thing that SpaceX does that’s unusual.
They are constantly tweaking their rockets.
To the point where according to SpaceX’s VP of production, Andy Lambert, SpaceX has
“Never built any two vehicles identically, such is the pace of innovation at SpaceX”
According to Lead Materials Engineer, Katie Dwyer, she says she can implement design changes
in a WEEK rather than having to wait months to even have someone take a look at that change proposal.
The fact that they are constantly tweaking and innovating their rockets is unusual.
It leads to break neck evolution of their vehicles, but also has the downside of more
potential risk.
Both failures of the Falcon 9 can be indirectly attributed to SpaceX pushing the boundaries
of their rockets.
But in the long run, they’re learning mountains and are able to create a vehicle that’s
considerably more advanced, capable and still evolving compared to other traditional aerospace
companies, or even say NASA.
So one last thing to note is that NASA HIRES launch providers, say, SpaceX, ULA, Orbital
ATK, Rocketlab, or whoever else comes along to launch their payloads.
The commercial Space Act started in 1998 and was a way to help develop a commercial space
industry in the United States.
This is how NASA puts their scientific payloads on a commercial rocket.
Now here’s where you can insert your opinions on which launch provider, or which rocket
in particular might be best fit for a certain job.
So when people say “NASA VS SpaceX” maybe they should be pointing to a specific mission
and say “When NASA utilized an Atlas V for their Mars Insight Rover, I think they should’ve
used SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for x, y, and z reasons”
Then you can put your glasses back up on the bridge of your nose and know you at least
drew the right conclusion of who vs who here.
So all things considered, I think the most important thing we need to actually solidify
in our heads is what NASA’s role is, and maybe more importantly what it should be.
And I think there’s ONE word that sums it up.
Science.
Science isn’t always profitable.
As a matter of fact, when it comes to understanding physics and our place in the universe, science
is almost never profitable.
I take that back actually… some estimates show that for every $1 we invest in NASA,
we get a $7 to $14 dollar returned on that investment due to spin off technologies.
So…
I guess there’s that.
BUT,
In a world where NASA or other space agencies don’t exist, and it’s all private launch
providers, who’s going to pay to send a probe out to Saturn, then, who pays to operate
that mission for a dozen years, and then who pays to comb through all that beautiful data?
Who trains astronauts to do scientific research?
Who oversees operations of vehicles to ensure they’re safe for people and cargo?
Who will pursue development of advanced propulsion systems that may not work out, like advanced
ION drives, nuclear propulsion, the EM drive, or dare I say, warp drives?
Who’s going to study the effects on the human anatomy in deep space?
Who will study and fight the effects of deep cosmic radiation?
Who will keep an eye on gene mutations after long stays in space?
The universe is BIG, there’s SO much exploring to do, and I think that’s what NASA’s
primary mission should be.
To explore space, and do science that’s broadening our universe, and continue to employ
the greatest minds to make massive breakthroughs in propulsion, habitats, exoplanets, human’s
health in space, and even what it takes to live on other planets.
NASA and SpaceX, as well as all other private companies, will continue to work together.
And they’ll continue to literally broaden our horizon.
It’s not an us vs them thing.
Space is only an US thing.
As I say often, space is the one border us humans share.
As soon as we get off this planet, it’s no longer this neighborhood vs that neighborhood,
this city vs that city, this state vs that state or this country vs that country, no,
it’s HUMANS vs the universe.
Ok, now all this said and done, there is ONE aspect we didn’t get to in this video…
and that’s what happens when NASA builds a rocket… so what’s it look like when
NASA hires contractors to build the SLS rocket and how’s that compare to when SpaceX builds
the Big Falcon Rocket?
Well that video is coming up next, so make sure you’re staying tuned to get the full
picture on this quote un quote NASA vs SpaceX thing.
So now, more importantly, do you think it’s even fair to ask which do you like better,
NASA or SpaceX?
I hope, if anything, we at least helped begin to clear that up.
Let me know if you have any questions about this topic.
What do you think NASA’s role should be moving forward?
Do you still think it’s NASA vs SpaceX?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Bringing space down to Earth for everyday people.