Tu Ca wrote:
“The elephant in the room that everyone is pretending not to see is the problem with NASA’s entrenched contractors (NASA doesn’t build rockets, their contractors do; Boeing, locmart, ATK, P&W...)
These contractors are in most cases single source suppliers. If you want an SRB for the shuttle, there is only one company in the world to buy it from. The result has been exploding costs. Project Constellation was hemorrhaging money while slipping years behind schedule. For example, the Ares I was predicted to cost $40 billion to develop while being five years behind schedule. That’s 100 times what SpaceX’s Falcon 9 cost to get into space. The second stage engine for the Ares I was from the Apollo project, decades ago. P&W got a $1.2 Billion contract to ‘upgrade’ it. That’s ten times what Space spent to create a new company from scratch, and two new rocket engines from scratch, and the launch sites, and a rocket (Falcon 1), and make it into space.
These huge fat entrenched contractors also have a few politicians on their side (big surprise there) who are good at making a lot of noise. Canceling Project Constellation was the right thing to do. Cancel one bloated project and give a young lean company with fire in the belly a small contract. It should shake thing up a bit.”
(From the Times article comments)
And one of the main characteristics of porkerized activity are the likes of ATK - companies with one customer who are the sole source for what they do.
The real challenge for a future space program is to keep every one of our 535 Congressthings from packing pork into every nook and cranny of the launch vehicle.