Inspector general slams NASA’s management for bonus payments to Boeing
In a report [pdf] issued yesterday, NASA’s inspector general blasted the agency’s manned commercial space management for issuing a $287 million bonus payment to Boeing to help it avoid delays in developing its Starliner capsule — which would have caused gaps in future American flights to ISS — even though the cost to use Russian Soyuz capsules would have been far less.
Worse, the agency never even allowed SpaceX to make its own competitive offer.
NASA agreed to pay Boeing Co (BA.N) a $287 million premium for “additional flexibilities” to accelerate production of the company’s Starliner crew vehicle and avoid an 18-month gap in flights to the International Space Station. NASA’s inspector general called it an “unreasonable” boost to Boeing’s fixed-priced $4.2 billion dollar contract.
Instead, the inspector general said the space agency could have saved $144 million by making “simple changes” to Starliner’s planned launch schedule, including buying additional seats from Russia’s space agency, which the United States has been reliant on since the 2011 retirement of its space shuttle program.
…NASA justified the additional funds to avoid a gap in space station operations. But SpaceX, the other provider, “was not provided an opportunity to propose a solution, even though the company previously offered shorter production lead times than Boeing,” the report said. [emphasis mine]
I’ve read the report, and from it the impression is clear that when NASA management discovered that Boeing was facing delays in Starliner and needed extra cash, it decided to funnel that cash to it, irrespective of cost. While it is likely that the agency did so because it did not wish to buy more Russian Soyuz seats, it makes no sense that it didn’t ask SpaceX for its own competitive bid. By not doing so the management’s foolish bias towards Boeing is starkly illustrated
Eric Berger at Ars Technica also notes that the report makes clear how Boeing’s prices for Starliner are 60% higher than SpaceX’s Crew Dragon prices, further illustrating how the agency favors Boeing over SpaceX.
Boeing’s per-seat price already seemed like it would cost more than SpaceX. The company has received a total of $4.82 billion from NASA over the lifetime of the commercial crew program, compared to $3.14 billion for SpaceX. However, for the first time the government has published a per-seat price: $90 million for Starliner and $55 million for Dragon. Each capsule is expected to carry four astronauts to the space station during a nominal mission.
What is notable about Boeing’s price is that it is also higher than what NASA has paid the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, for Soyuz spacecraft seats to fly US and partner-nation astronauts to the space station. Overall, NASA paid Russia an average cost per seat of $55.4 million for the 70 completed and planned missions from 2006 through 2020. Since 2017, NASA has paid an average of $79.7 million.
I don’t have a problem with NASA favoring Boeing over Russia, considering the national priorities. I can also understand the agency’s willingness to keep buying some Starliner seats in order to guarantee an American launch redundancy. However, giving Boeing even more money to keep its schedule going, when SpaceX is available to fill the gaps, demonstrates the corruption in the agency’s management. They haven’t the slightest understanding of how private enterprise and competition works.
The report is also filled with the same tiresome complaints about the on-going delays to the manned commercial program, focusing greatly on past technical issues (now mostly solved) while hiding in obscure language how it is NASA’s paperwork that is likely to cause all further delays.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In a report [pdf] issued yesterday, NASA’s inspector general blasted the agency’s manned commercial space management for issuing a $287 million bonus payment to Boeing to help it avoid delays in developing its Starliner capsule — which would have caused gaps in future American flights to ISS — even though the cost to use Russian Soyuz capsules would have been far less.
Worse, the agency never even allowed SpaceX to make its own competitive offer.
NASA agreed to pay Boeing Co (BA.N) a $287 million premium for “additional flexibilities” to accelerate production of the company’s Starliner crew vehicle and avoid an 18-month gap in flights to the International Space Station. NASA’s inspector general called it an “unreasonable” boost to Boeing’s fixed-priced $4.2 billion dollar contract.
Instead, the inspector general said the space agency could have saved $144 million by making “simple changes” to Starliner’s planned launch schedule, including buying additional seats from Russia’s space agency, which the United States has been reliant on since the 2011 retirement of its space shuttle program.
…NASA justified the additional funds to avoid a gap in space station operations. But SpaceX, the other provider, “was not provided an opportunity to propose a solution, even though the company previously offered shorter production lead times than Boeing,” the report said. [emphasis mine]
I’ve read the report, and from it the impression is clear that when NASA management discovered that Boeing was facing delays in Starliner and needed extra cash, it decided to funnel that cash to it, irrespective of cost. While it is likely that the agency did so because it did not wish to buy more Russian Soyuz seats, it makes no sense that it didn’t ask SpaceX for its own competitive bid. By not doing so the management’s foolish bias towards Boeing is starkly illustrated
Eric Berger at Ars Technica also notes that the report makes clear how Boeing’s prices for Starliner are 60% higher than SpaceX’s Crew Dragon prices, further illustrating how the agency favors Boeing over SpaceX.
Boeing’s per-seat price already seemed like it would cost more than SpaceX. The company has received a total of $4.82 billion from NASA over the lifetime of the commercial crew program, compared to $3.14 billion for SpaceX. However, for the first time the government has published a per-seat price: $90 million for Starliner and $55 million for Dragon. Each capsule is expected to carry four astronauts to the space station during a nominal mission.
What is notable about Boeing’s price is that it is also higher than what NASA has paid the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, for Soyuz spacecraft seats to fly US and partner-nation astronauts to the space station. Overall, NASA paid Russia an average cost per seat of $55.4 million for the 70 completed and planned missions from 2006 through 2020. Since 2017, NASA has paid an average of $79.7 million.
I don’t have a problem with NASA favoring Boeing over Russia, considering the national priorities. I can also understand the agency’s willingness to keep buying some Starliner seats in order to guarantee an American launch redundancy. However, giving Boeing even more money to keep its schedule going, when SpaceX is available to fill the gaps, demonstrates the corruption in the agency’s management. They haven’t the slightest understanding of how private enterprise and competition works.
The report is also filled with the same tiresome complaints about the on-going delays to the manned commercial program, focusing greatly on past technical issues (now mostly solved) while hiding in obscure language how it is NASA’s paperwork that is likely to cause all further delays.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
$$90 million for a Starliner ride? What kind of GREED-HEADS are these people at Boeing?!? They sure know how to work the government procurement system! Boeing is dinospace!
David, what grinds my gears is not the per-seat pricing but the fact that Boeing signed a firm-fixed-price contract then threatened to back out of it unless they got more money.
Sure, it’s couched as “a significant consideration for paying Boeing such a premium was to ensure the contractor continued as a second crew transportation provider,” but the implication is clear.
Meanwhile SpaceX gets called out on Twitter by the head of NASA for insufficient zeal. Unbelievable.
Eric Berger also tweeted another comment on his story: “Haha. A good source told me that after Boeing won the commercial crew operations contract in 2014, the first thing it did was gather lawyers into a room to brainstorm ideas to extract more funding from the fixed-price award. I’ve never been able to substantiate that, but …”
Would it surprise any of us? But then, this is common practice for big federal contractors who know how to work the system. The goal is to extract maximum payment from the government, however possible.
And nothing will come of this d***ing OIG report, either, beyond a few questions in the next House hearing. Just yesterday, in fact, the House hearing featured Jed Babin (R-Houston) and other members of the subcommittee criticizing NASA’s Artemis plans, urging instead…the architecture being pushed now by Boeing, in which Boeing would develop and build everything but the Orion CSM. The very contractor lambasted in this (and several previous) OIG report, the contractor so far behind in SLS development, the very contractor with the MAX disaster and all the KC-46 delays on its hands. Babin was all but reading from Cooke’s Boeing-penned op-eds. Whatever Boeing pays its lobbyists, it is getting its money’s worth. It will surely find a way to glide through this storm, too.
“I don’t have a problem with NASA favoring Boeing over Russia, considering the national priorities.”
You know, I don’t, either. I’d pay three times as much as Soyuz to fly Americna astronauts on Starliner. The redundancy is important.
But there should be investigations and high profile hearings to tear into what Boeing has been up to here. And if they stick to these price points, then in Phase II of Commercial Crew, its flights should be slashed in half, and the remainder of its missions given to SpaceX or – my preference – awarded to Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser in a crewed configuration (which would mean 6 for SpaceX, 3 for Boeing, and 3 for Sierra Nevada). There should be consequences for this kind of gouging when good alternatives are available.
Robert: Good on you for focusing on the $287 million bonus payment to Boeing part of the report and not the 60% higher price part of the report that others are focusing on.
First, the $90 million / seat price of the Starliner and the $55 million / seat price of the Crew Dragon are both misleading. Neither Starliner nor Crew Dragon rides are sold by the seat. Both are sold by the launch, with a Crew Dragon mission costing $215 million and a Starliner mission costing $351 million. Both capsules are sized for a seven-man crew and could be configured that way. NASA instead chose to re-configure three of the seats on each capsule to carry high-value cargo. To use the resulting reduced denominator to claim a higher price misleads the same way as taking half the seats out of a 747 and quoting the resulting doubled ticket price misleads. NASA considers the additional cargo more valuable than the additional crew it displaces. Both contractors are responding to their customer’s demands.
Second, we’ve known for some time the mission prices for the two systems. It’s not new news.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35717.msg1921595#msg1921595
Third, Boeing’s price is higher primarily because it’s going up on an Atlas V while Crew Dragon is going up on a Falcon 9.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35680.msg1259026#msg1259026
Starliner is launcher agnostic and could have gone up on a Falcon 9 instead, but NASA wanted dissimilar redundancy so that one failure did not ground both systems, and so pushed Boeing to the Atlas V. If Starliner were going up on the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon on the Atlas V, we’d be marveling at how Boeing could be cheaper than SpaceX. That’s not all of the cost difference between the two, but it’s most of it.
As for the $287 million, I’m not going to try to justify it until I read the report, if even then. Maybe it’s justifiable. Maybe it’s not. I won’t know until I read the report.
Richard M wrote: “The redundancy is important.”
The redundancy is the main reason why there are two commercial companies with contracts on Commercial Crew. It is also why there are two rockets at ULA. The redundancy is so that we still have transport capability should one spacecraft be grounded for some period of time. This was the problem of relying solely on the Space Shuttle. When it was retired, we had nothing as a backup, just as happened for the two periods when it was grounded after fatal accidents.
It is not surprising that one company is more expensive than the other. It is even less surprising that SpaceX is able to cost so little, because it is focused on low cost access to space.
I think I am disappointed rather than surprised that Boeing asked for more money. It knows how to build commercial aircraft for the price quoted, but maybe it is treating the fixed-price contract with NASA as yet another cost-plus contract with NASA, as Richard M suggested.
Another advantage of having two companies supplying access to space is the competitive aspect. NASA can reward the more efficient, lower priced company with additional business, thus encouraging other companies to find their own efficiencies. Unfortunately, NASA seems to have forgotten about this advantage and also seems to be treating this contract as a standard cost-plus contract.
Among the problems of cost-plus is that companies will often bid low in order to get the initial contract, then when the requirements changes come (and they almost always do), the government is willing to pay a lot of money and schedule slip in order to get the new — but probably unnecessary — requirement fulfilled.
Edward,
NASA can reward the more efficient, lower priced company with additional business, thus encouraging other companies to find their own efficiencies.
Thus my hope that Boeing’s flights get cut back in Phase II of Commercial Crew, and given instead to either SpaceX, or Sierra Nevada. Competition: It’s a wonderful thing, when you actually take advantage of it.
But as I also noted ruefully, we have seen just this week how well protected Boeing is on the Hill. This may well have created pressure on NASA managers to accede to Boeing’s $287 million bonus demand. Because it’s Congress the controls NASA’s purse strings.
I’m just here to stir the pot a little.. ;-)
And hopefully raise a good point… In a transparent socialist system, the contracts would go to the best value and proven safe systems… Spending the public’s money wisely is one of the benchmarks of a decent socialist government.
In the race for space, it seems to me that the capitalist system over there in the US is falling to the same problems that we all have… Pork for the areas that require it, and no pork for the already given areas…
It’s all about politics…. The squeeky wheels always get the grease, be you right or left…. It will always be the same.
That all said.. ( mainly to wind my right wing friends up.. ;-) ), it is crazy that SpaceX is getting such an obvious negative bias.. there must come a point when your politicians, and their constituents realize that YOUR tax money is being spent unwisely… NASA consumes so little of your tax payments, but is a guiding light to the rest of the world… It even annoys me, sitting here in Sweden that they are throwing good money after bad, mostly chasing votes…
I have no horse in this race, but it annoys me non the less….
Richard M,
Thank you for mentioning Sierra Nevada. Their Dream Chaser is still on NASA’s radar, and I certainly hope that they are able to participate in Phase II of Commercial Crew. I like their reusable lifting body design, similar to the Space Shuttle, but should not be nearly as expensive to operate. Even SpaceX’s Starship design has left the realm of being a capsule and incorporates the lifting body non-ablative concept for reentry. I think that this concept is the future of space flight, and I am disappointed that NASA moved away from it with Orion rather than incorporate into Orion the lessons learned from the Shuttle.
Lee S wrote: “Spending the public’s money wisely is one of the benchmarks of a decent socialist government.”
I suppose that depends upon what one considers to be a wise use of the public’s money. Does “wise” mean that full employment is assured, or does it mean that value is received at the expense of the workers who are the focus of socialism?
Free-market-capitalist SpaceX employs as few people as possible and develops products in as little time as possible in order to assure frequent, low cost access to space. Central-government-controlled/socialist-like NASA shows the opposite priority for Orion-SLS — maximizing employees and continually slipping the schedule at the expense of the cost and availability of access to space.
What is the difference? SpaceX is wise in efficiently spending its own hard earned money, but Congress’s has a different definition of “wise” when it spends other people’s hard earned money. Please note that Congress’s budgets spend more on redistribution of wealth, in a manner like socialists, than is spent on running the government. Federal budget’s were leaner 110 years ago, before Congress heavily taxed individuals.
I like how everyone talks about a back up launcher in case something goes wrong with one.
First off just how many Atlas V’s can launch inside the next 6 months?
How many Falcon 9″s could be launched inside the next 6 months?
How many Shuttles could be launched inside 6 months if one failed?
A back-up is only good if it can be used inside a reasonable period of time other wise its just the next launch.
If the ISS needed O2 inside the next week what could we launch to help out with the problem? Nothing. The crew would have to abandon the station.
Why not have a 3 time flown Falcon 9 on a 3 day stand by. Un fueled but fully ready to be manned or loaded with cargo and launched in 3 days?
” In a transparent socialist system, the contracts would go to the best value and proven safe systems… Spending the public’s money wisely is one of the benchmarks of a decent socialist government.’
Ladies and gentlemen! We have a comedian in the house! LOL!
Mike Borgelt–
Good stuff!
–there are no ‘decent socialist governments.’
John Stossel:
Sweden is Not a Socialist Success
2018
https://youtu.be/0lxD-gikpMs
5:17
Sweden: Lessons for America?
Johan Norberg
https://youtu.be/jq3vVbdgMuQ
56:54
Socialism only works to some degree in high-trust societies, where the population is more or less homogenous and preferably genetically related (Sweden before the era of self-abolition through mass immigration was an example). Even in these countries, less governmental influence and control (and more freedom to spend your own money as you like) leads to greater prosperity.
hhmmm…..
“A Flock of Sheep”
I’ve heard this “works to some degree” {if/where} “the population is more or less homogenous and preferably genetically related,” stuff, for many years.
I’m not convinced of that proposition at all; to the extent anything is “socialized,” it always parasites off the free-er parts of the market economy, until it consumes them all.
Lee S-
I for one, highly enjoy your pot-stirring, even if we don’t agree on political matters all that much.
Wayne:
A more homogenous society, linked by genes, culture and history, has members whose behavior is more similar and who trust and control each other better than in less homogeneous societies. This is one reason why an immigration country should not (and in the long run cannot) maintain a large welfare state (or socialism). In the long run, one group would try to exploit other groups through the state’s money redistribution.
Replying to mkent.
“Starliner is launcher agnostic and could have gone up on a Falcon 9 instead, but NASA wanted dissimilar redundancy so that one failure did not ground both systems, and so pushed Boeing to the Atlas V. ”
This isn’t accurate. Boeing had to show compliance with two different Consent Orders, one of which was to ensure that they didn’t give ULA preferential treatment in Launch Vehicle selection. So they had to demonstrate to the USG (not NASA) the reasons for selecting Atlas V.
One of their underlying internal reasons was that SX couldn’t assure Boeing that their CST-100 Proprietary Information could be protected, since SX was unable/unwilling to create a fire walled team to integrate CST-100 on F9.
NASA had absolutely no influence on the selection of Atlas V.
Oh, and BTW, at the time, F9 couldn’t perform the CST-100 mission…
pzatchok,
Those are excellent logistics questions.
The concept of the backup launcher is also used by commercial satellite companies, in that they would have a satellite designed to be strong enough to survive launch on at least three different rockets. If one rocket was out of service for an extended period of time while a failure was investigated and corrective actions implemented, the company could switch to another rocket. At least in theory, because the reality was that other rockets tended to be fully scheduled for a year or so in advance. You are correct, “A back-up is only good if it can be used inside a reasonable period of time other wise its just the next launch.”
Generally speaking, Atlases and Deltas take about a month between launches, mostly due to preparations tasks that have to be performed. Depending upon how many Atlas Vs or Deltas are already built or are in production, each of these two rockets can launch about six times in the next six months from each pad, one pad for each rocket at the Eastern Range (Canaveral Air Force Station) and the Western Range (Vandenberg Air Force Base). In addition, ULA has been able to launch two rockets within six days of each other, one in the East and the other in the West. The launch crews are a limiting factor, as they can easily reach burnout if they have to launch too many rockets too often.
SpaceX has been able to launch at a rate of two Falcons per month, but they have three active launch pads, so they also have a limiting factor due to their launch crews.
After each of the two Shuttle catastrophic failures, a year and a half was taken to investigate and implement corrective actions, during which time no Shuttles flew.
NASA’s logistics people go to great efforts to make sure that consumable supplies on ISS, such as O2, water, and food are plentiful for far more than the next week. Three or four years ago there were multiple resupply mission failures, and the supplies were a concern. There were still months worth of supplies available on board even after these failures, but it was a concern. ISS has at least four unmanned cargo spacecraft that can and do resupply the station, so the backups have backups.
“Why not have a 3 time flown Falcon 9 on a 3 day stand by. Un fueled but fully ready to be manned or loaded with cargo and launched in 3 days?”
As I recall, in spring of 2012 SpaceX performed a test of putting a Falcon 9 vertically on the pad and performing a hot fire test within 24 hours. This has become a routine thing for SpaceX to do, launch within a day or so of getting their Falcons vertical on the pad. This makes the limiting factor the time it takes to get the payload to the launch site, mount it to the rocket, perform preflight tests — usually including a hot fire test. However, after Amos 6 was destroyed in a pad explosion in 2016, SpaceX has not been doing as much hot fire tests with the payload on board, meaning that a launch is unlikely to be able to be done on three day notice, at least not any time soon for Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy.
Questioner wrote: “Socialism only works to some degree in high-trust societies, where the population is more or less homogenous and preferably genetically related (Sweden before the era of self-abolition through mass immigration was an example).”
I disagree. Even homogeneous populations do not do well under socialism. It didn’t work with the high-trust religious Pilgrims in North America, it doesn’t work in Cuba, and even pre-self-destructive Sweden’s socialism was not working — however, they still had enough other people’s money (OPM) (made through free market capitalism) to make it look like it worked.
Some socialism advocates say that socialism only works if a capitalist society is turned into a socialist society. Experience show otherwise. As in Sweden, it does not work but only has enough OPM to last long enough for people to be able to claim that it works. Do not confuse the longevity of the OPM for a successful system.
The United States has a lot of wealth that was created through free market capitalism, but in a Fabian way it has been pushed toward socialism for the past century. During Obama’s presidency there was still plenty of capitalist OPM to get us through his administration, but his drastic fundamental transformation of the country into socialism created havoc in several areas, havoc that was declared to be “the new normal.” Fortunately we had enough left over capitalist wealth to weather Obama’s socialism and show that those “new normals” were aberrations that socialism brings.
Some socialism advocates say that socialism hasn’t yet worked because the wrong people have been working it, not the right people. However, if socialism depends upon the “right” people for it to work, then it is not socialism the economic system that works right but the people who work right.
Interestingly, free market capitalism works no matter who works it. Socialist India and Communist China have moved toward free market capitalism in the past quarter century or so, and between these two countries a billion people have come out of poverty. Free market capitalism works even when socialists and communists use it.
Edward-
Good stuff.
Edward I was thinking more along the lines of a catastrophic event on the ISS. Not a few missed supply launches.
A massive impact or explosion. Injured crew and no more emergency escape module.
“Marooned” Trailer
1969
https://youtu.be/SEpHyC72gss
2:24
A massive impact or explosion. Injured crew and no more emergency escape module.
It is honestly difficult to think of such an event that wouldn’t kill the ISS crew anyway, given where the docking hatches to Soyuz and the commercial crew vehicles are located.
The more likely case is that a crew vehicle sustains some minor but critical damage that does not affect the ISS but renders the vehicle unsafe for return with crew. But a case like this is basically like contingency planning for Shuttle post-Columbia: a plan to use ISS as a safe harbor for the crew until another Shuttle can be sent up. It doesn’t appear that NASA is demanding anything like a Launch On Need capability from SpaceX or Boeing; but I also can’t think that either couldn’t “rush” a capsule and rocket to a pad within 90 days or so. At any rate, you’d have two different contractors to try it with. SpaceX could surely get a Falcon 9 to a pad more quickly than ULA could do it with an Atlas V N22 (the second stage being the tricky part), but I am less sure that SpaceX could have a Dragon also ready more quickly than Boeing could have a Starliner ready, too.
Edward,
“Even homogeneous populations do not do well under socialism.”
It works in monastic communities.
But obviously, that is not translatable to anything on the scale of a nation-state, even a very small nation-state. If the apostolic community in the Book of Acts is taken as an example, the monastic community is the only way to translate it: a very small, highly intentional, completely voluntary community, in which departure can easily take place.
But then, even Sweden, pre-mass immigration, was not really a full socialist state, either.
pzatchok “was thinking more along the lines of a catastrophic event on the ISS. … A massive impact or explosion. Injured crew and no more emergency escape module.”
For lifeboat capabilities, the ISS is dependent upon the spacecraft that bring crews to and from the ISS. It is similar to an ocean liner, in that if a catastrophic event damages the lifeboats as well as the ocean liner then the passengers and crew are in more trouble than accounted for in the contingency plans.
Manned spacecraft have rarely had any lifeboat capability brought along with them, and Dragon and Starliner are not exceptions. One Apollo mission used its Lunar Module as a temporary lifeboat but still needed the Command Module for reentry. Starship also has no lifeboats for its voyages. Except for space station missions and eight Apollo flights, space travel is very much like airline travel: everyone on board is totally reliant upon the craft being able to return to Earth’s surface safely.
NASA had started work on a lifeboat for ISS, the Assured Crew Return Vehicle, but it was cancelled for budget reasons. Wikipedia has some interesting notes on pzatchok’s concerns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Return_Vehicle
Richard M noted: “It works in monastic communities.”
You mean where they take vows of poverty and have lives of seclusion? That sounds like a population that is just getting by, not one that is doing well. Plus, aren’t they dependent upon others for funding their food and housing?
Edward:
Is not a family, which is basic element of every healthy society, fundamentally a socialist unit? You give your money to your children voluntarily, because they carry your genes.
Yes, and like in socialist systems, we control every aspect of our children’s lives. However, unlike socialism, over the next 18 years the goal is to wean them from this dependency and encourage rational thought and independence, lest there be a “failure to launch” (to get back to space-related topics) and they are living in your basement at 35.
Questioner asked: “Is not a family, which is basic element of every healthy society, fundamentally a socialist unit?”
It is more of a feudal unit. There is no pretense of equality, there is a defined hierarchy, and loyalty flows upward and downward in the hierarchy — even if they are still living in your basement at 35.
IMDb, Failure to Launch: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427229/?ref_=adv_li_tt
“A thirty-something is still living with his parents until they hire an interventionist to help him graduate out of the house.“
Off-topic, but important:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1197271943180771329
Elon Musk: Absolutely, but to move to Mk3 design. This had some value as a manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different.
Edward,
You mean where they take vows of poverty and have lives of seclusion?
Depends on the community’s precise charism, but yes, that’s often the case to some real degree.
That sounds like a population that is just getting by, not one that is doing well. Plus, aren’t they dependent upon others for funding their food and housing?
This also depends. Most often, the monastic community would have sufficient lands to raise their own food, and even market a surplus of it. Today you often see such communities doing the later to supply whatever their own lands can’t. The Monks of Norcia in Italy, for example, market some outstanding beers. (Beers long being a monastic staple through the centuries.)
But however you cut it, you can’t translate the monastic model to any larger scale. It works precisely because it’s small, and wholly voluntary, requiring a total degree of commitment. And that ain’t Denmark.
A socialist society can not form and survive without a capitalist society feeding it. Parenting it.
Exactly how socialist depends entirely on how much the capitalist side is willing to give. And people only give until it hurts.
Convince them to give it all and you very soon have a communist society. Not an economy that lends itself to free growth, expansion and scientific advancement.
All societies have a portion of socialism inside them. Even if its only the citizen handing the beggar a coin. I am not counting in the extended family even though it is, I believe, the beginning and basis for all socialism.
pzatchok:
I would put it in more general terms: no socialist institution can survive in the long run without exploiting the productive population, degrade existing infrastructure and damaging nature. But the working population is also exploited in the unrestrained capitalist system, so we need a middle ground, a balanced approach to the distribution of tasks in an economic system. Free entrepreneurs with social responsibility for example and who are constrained by higher values as God, family and (real) Nation.
Richard M,
“But however you cut it, you can’t translate the monastic model to any larger scale. It works precisely because it’s small, and wholly voluntary, requiring a total degree of commitment.”
It still sounds like it is not prosperous and is just getting by, staying small by design. I’m not sure that this is a model of socialism, unless the people collectively are the owners. (Not all forms of socialism require group ownership, and not all group ownerships are socialists.)
pzatchok wrote: “Even if its only the citizen handing the beggar a coin.”
Up to now, I thought that was a charitable act — a Christian act, for example. Free market capitalism has been full of charity and donation, given freely, not by coercion. Who would have thought that charity was the “entry drug” to socialism?
The Monastic socialist idea was tried by a group thet at least in America got pretty large for a time.
The Shakers.
They had one problem though. They were sworn to celibacy. So you can see how their group would shrink over time.
They were very productive though.
Charitable acts are fine. Fine in the short term but destructive to the individual and then society as a whole in the long run.
Knowing that long term charity to an individual is destructive to them is it still charity? Are you doing it for their betterment or yours?