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.
As always, I owe a huge thanks to my Patreon
supporters for helping make this and other
Everyday Astronaut content possible.
I owe a super extra special thanks to those
Patrons in our exclusive discord channel and
our exclusive subreddit for helping me script
and research.
If you want to help contribute, please visit
patreon.com/everydayastronaut Thank you.
Don't forget to check out my web store for
shirts, hats, mugs, prints of rocket launches
and original artwork and lots of other fun
stuff at everydayastronaut.com/shop
And as always, all the music in my videos
is original.
Feel free to check it out at soundcloud.com/everydayastronaut
Tell a friend!
Thanks everybody that does it for me.
I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Bringing space down to Earth for everyday
people.
