SpaceX is beginning to get the hang of human spaceflight
How totally they have beaten Boeing is quite amazing. Boeing received almost 2 billion more money (or will if they actually finish). SpaceX total development contract was for only 2.3 billion.<p>Boeing high price was partly justified by &#x27;higher schedule certainty&#x27;. They were selected over Sierra Nevada who had a 3.6 billion $ proposal using the Dreamchaser aircraft.<p>Some news emerged that Boeing believed that SpaceX could not deliver anyway and if they both didn&#x27;t deliver the could renegotiate with NASA and demand more money. Unfortunately for them, SpaceX delivered without asking for more money.<p>Since then Boeing has failed its first test flight and has run into major issues with the second one, and it will not launch for many more months. All of these costs are carried by Boeing, only when they complete further milestones will the get paid.<p>This is very unlike the contracts that Lockheed Martin and Boeing work under for the Orion capsule and the SLS contract. Just in comparison, those system already at up almost 20 billion each, they have sometimes over 2 billion a year in funding. The extra cost for failing to deliver these systems is paid by NASA.<p>So the complete Dragon capsule development is basically 1 yearly budget for one of those programs. Dragon could do almost everything Orion does with a few enhancements (certainty not costing billions every year).<p>SLS and Orion are left over from the dark days and they need to be canceled, all future human spaceflight need to be done at fixed cost. If you want to play, you need to be willing to risk your company on it.