{"id":44828,"date":"2024-09-25T18:30:11","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T10:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/in-the-room-where-it-happened-when-nasa-nearly-gave-boeing-all-the-crew-funding\/"},"modified":"2024-09-25T18:30:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T10:30:11","slug":"in-the-room-where-it-happened-when-nasa-nearly-gave-boeing-all-the-crew-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/in-the-room-where-it-happened-when-nasa-nearly-gave-boeing-all-the-crew-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"In the room where it happened: When NASA nearly gave Boeing all the crew funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of the book REENTRY: SpaceX, Elon Musk and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age<\/em> by our own Eric Berger. The book will be published on September 24, 2024. This excerpt describes a fateful meeting 10 years ago at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, where the space agency’s leaders met to decide which companies should be awarded billions of dollars to launch astronauts into orbit.<\/p>\n

In the early 2010s, NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew competition boiled down to three players: Boeing, SpaceX, and a Colorado-based company building a spaceplane, Sierra Nevada Corporation. Each had its own advantages. Boeing was the blue blood, with decades of spaceflight experience. SpaceX had already built a capsule, Dragon. And some NASA insiders nostalgically loved Sierra Nevada\u2019s Dream Chaser space plane, which mimicked the shuttle\u2019s winged design.<\/p>\n

This competition neared a climax in 2014 as NASA prepared to winnow the field to one company, or at most two, to move from the design phase into actual development. In May of that year Musk revealed his Crew Dragon spacecraft to the world with a characteristically showy event at the company\u2019s headquarters in Hawthorne. As lights flashed and a smoke machine vented, Musk quite literally raised a curtain on a black-and-white capsule. He was most proud to reveal how Dragon would land. Never before had a spacecraft come back from orbit under anything but parachutes or gliding on wings. Not so with the new Dragon. It had powerful thrusters, called SuperDracos, that would allow it to land under its own power.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,\u201d Musk bragged. \u201cWhich is something that a modern spaceship should be able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks later I had an interview with John Elbon, a long-time engineer at Boeing who managed the company\u2019s commercial program. As we talked, he tut-tutted SpaceX\u2019s performance to date, noting its handful of Falcon 9 launches a year and inability to fly at a higher cadence. As for Musk\u2019s little Dragon event, Elbon was dismissive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go for substance,\u201d Elbon told me. \u201cNot pizzazz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elbon\u2019s confidence was justified. That spring the companies were finalizing bids to develop a spacecraft and fly six operational missions to the space station. These contracts were worth billions of dollars. Each company told NASA how much it needed for the job, and if selected, would receive a fixed price award for that amount. Boeing, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada wanted as much money as they could get, of course. But each had an incentive to keep their bids low, as NASA had a finite budget for the program. Boeing had a solution, telling NASA it needed the entire Commercial Crew budget to succeed. Because a lot of decision-makers believed that only Boeing could safely fly astronauts, the company\u2019s gambit very nearly worked.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Scoring the bids<\/h2>\n

The three competitors submitted initial bids to NASA in late January 2014, and after about six months of evaluations and discussions with the \u201csource evaluation board,\u201d submitted their final bids in July. During this initial round of judging, subject-matter experts scored the proposals and gathered to make their ratings. Sierra Nevada was eliminated because their overall scores were lower, and the proposed cost not low enough to justify remaining in the competition. This left Boeing and SpaceX, with likely only one winner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really did not have the budget for two companies at the time,\u201d said Phil McAlister, the NASA official at the agency\u2019s headquarters in Washington overseeing the Commercial Crew program. \u201cNo one thought we were going to award two. I would always say, \u2018One or more,\u2019 and people would roll their eyes at me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The members of the evaluation board scored the companies based on three factors. Price was the most important consideration, given NASA\u2019s limited budget. This was followed by \u201cmission suitability,\u201d and finally, \u201cpast performance.\u201d These latter two factors, combined, were about equally weighted to price. SpaceX dominated Boeing on price.<\/p>\n

Boeing asked for $4.2 billion, 60 percent more than SpaceX\u2019s bid of $2.6 billion. The second category, mission suitability, assessed whether a company could meet NASA\u2019s requirements and actually safely fly crew to and from the station. For this category, Boeing received an \u201cexcellent\u201d rating, above SpaceX\u2019s \u201cvery good.\u201d The third factor, past performance, evaluated a company\u2019s recent work. Boeing received a rating of \u201cvery high,\u201d whereas SpaceX received a rating of \u201chigh.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this makes it appear as though the bids were relatively even, McAlister said the score differences in mission suitability and past performance were, in fact, modest. It was a bit like grades in school. SpaceX scored something like an 88, and got a B; whereas Boeing got a 91 and scored an A. Because of the significant difference in price, McAlister said, the source evaluation board assumed SpaceX would win the competition. He was thrilled, because he figured this meant that NASA would have to pick two companies, SpaceX based on price, and Boeing due to its slightly higher technical score. He wanted competition to spur both of the companies on.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

The room where it happened<\/h2>\n

The decision was to be made on August 6, during a meeting at NASA headquarters. The agency\u2019s head of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, convened his top human spaceflight advisors in the agency\u2019s \u201cSpace Operations Center\u201d at headquarters. This secure room was built after the Columbia accident in 2003 for high-level strategic meetings. Gerstenmaier and about 20 senior officials at NASA sat around a large, rounded table, discussing the source evaluation board scores with the aim of picking a winner.<\/p>\n

After a presentation on the technical scores, Gerstenmaier asked each advisor for an opinion. These were the who\u2019s who of the US spaceflight community, many of whom, like Gerstenmaier, had come up in the Space Shuttle Program, long before the era of commercial space. As he went around the room, each person echoed the same response, \u201cBoeing.\u201d First five people, then 10, and then 15. This seemed to please Gerstenmaier, known warmly as \u201cGerst\u201d in the global spaceflight community, and encouraged potentially dissenting voices to fall in line. McAlister watched this cascade of pro-Boeing opinions sweep around the table, a building and unbreakable wave of consensus, with mounting horror.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m freaking out because I could see them going with Boeing, which in my opinion was an inferior proposal, and only with Boeing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was not groupthink; it\u2019s just that everyone at the time was comfortable with Boeing. SpaceX had only been flying cargo to the space station for two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Having only come to NASA in 2005, McAlister was not part of this human spaceflight firmament. Sitting to Gerstenmaier\u2019s right and reporting to him as the director of commercial space development, McAlister\u2019s mind whirled with possibilities for throwing himself in front of the oncoming bus. He knew that arguing SpaceX had presented the best proposal, based on price and technical merit, would get him nowhere.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Near the end of the discussion, Gerstenmaier solicited McAlister\u2019s opinion. In turn, McAlister started asking questions. First, he turned to Bill McNally, the agency\u2019s head of procurement. Prior to joining NASA, McNally had spent nearly three decades in acquisition for the US Air Force, managing the Tomahawk cruise missile program and leading technology contracts for the \u201cStar Wars\u201d missile defense program. McAlister asked if the veteran procurement official had ever seen a federal agency choose a bidder that cost 60 percent more when both bids were technically acceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had to pick two\u201d<\/h2>\n

McNally shifted uncomfortably in his seat at this question. Eventually he remarked that the source selection official, Gerstenmaier, could do whatever he pleased. McAlister pressed further, repeating the question. \u201cNo,\u201d McNally replied. \u201cThat would be uncharted territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next, McAlister questioned the engineer representing safety and mission assurance, Deirdre Healey. When she had spoken, Healey said the safety division preferred Boeing as long as the company performed an in-flight test of its spacecraft\u2019s abort system\u2014powerful thrusters that push the vehicle away in case the rocket malfunctions during launch. But Boeing did not plan to do so. Their bid included a ground test of this abort system, not one in flight. McAlister seized on this, asking Healey if this meant Boeing\u2019s proposal should really be considered unsatisfactory.<\/p>\n

No, Healey replied, indicating the bid was acceptable to her.<\/p>\n

Another member of the source evaluation board at the meeting, a deputy procurement manager from Johnson Space Center named Lee Pagel, said this question scored points for McAlister. It was strange that so many smart people thought NASA could just snap its fingers and Boeing would conduct an in-flight abort test. \u201cIn all my years of working with Boeing I never saw them sign up for additional work for free,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After addressing his questions to McNally and Healey, McAlister turned to Gerstenmaier.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cI told Gerst he had to pick two,\u201d McAlister said. \u201cHis head of safety and mission assurance just said Boeing\u2019s proposal was unsatisfactory, and the head of procurement said the cost would be difficult to defend. And Elon sues everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a very near thing<\/h2>\n

Typically, a decision is made at this meeting. But Gerstenmaier said he needed to think about all he had heard. He took another month. During this timeframe someone at NASA floated the idea of a \u201cleader\u201d and a \u201cfollower,\u201d with Boeing getting the lion\u2019s share of funding and SpaceX a small amount to keep going. But Musk rejected this immediately.<\/p>\n

At the same time, McAlister kept pushing Gerstenmaier, telling him competition was essential to moving the program forward as Boeing and SpaceX strove against one another to build the safest, most reliable, and most cost-effective system. Eventually, Gerstenmaier agreed. He called the NASA administrator, Charlie Bolden, to say he was going to blow a hole in the agency\u2019s budget. Instead of asking Congress for $870 million in the budget for Commercial Crew the next fiscal year, NASA would need $1.25 billion.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

It had been a very near thing. NASA officials had already written a justification for selecting Boeing, solely, for the Commercial Crew contract. It was ready to go and had to be hastily rewritten to include SpaceX. This delayed the announcement to September 16.<\/p>\n

Seven years later, when Russia invaded Ukraine, tensions between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, exploded. The pugnacious leader of Russia\u2019s space program, Dmitry Rogozin, blustered that he would kick NASA off the station. But because the US space agency had opted for competition between SpaceX and Boeing in its crew program, this was a hollow threat. Dmitry would dance with Dragons and get burned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of the book REENTRY: SpaceX, Elon Musk and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age by our own Eric Berger. The book will be published on September 24, 2024. This excerpt describes a fateful meeting 10 years ago at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, where the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,524,423,21,316],"class_list":["post-44828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-commercial-crew","tag-reentry","tag-space","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}