NASA Admits they Favored Boeing over SpaceX

NASA and Boeing have completed major reviews of Boeing's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test in December 2019 and have 80 recommendations that need to be addressed prior to the first crewed flight. Publically, NASA always said they treated the Starliner and Dragon teams equally, but behind the scenes, NASA administrators and managers favored Boeing over SpaceX due to their more traditional approach to spaceflight.

[bdavr]

Boeing: NASA we will do better.


SPaceX: Already docked at the ISS, with crew.

[juanserrano]

Imagine having favoritism over all companies and still failing against a private company

[Columbus]

SpaceX: "What do we need to do to get into the NASA commercial space market?"
Boeing: "Who do we need to pay off to get into the NASA commercial space market?"

[davidwayneprins]

When the Commercial Crew program was announced, I was like "who is SpaceX?" as Boeing had the name recognition and at the time, a perception in my mind meant that they knew what they were doing because they're Boeing.
It's pretty obvious now that SpaceX, a company which did not even exist 20 years ago, has turned the aerospace industry upside with all their innovations and forward thinking.
Meanwhile, Boeing has been plagued with cost overruns, delays and problems but the Feds are willing to go along with because they're Boeing.

[KenOtwell]

"We had more familiarity with the Boeing approach"... so therefore you let it fail? I thought being "familiar" would make you more likely to recognize issues early on. In this case, "familiarity" is just code for "trusted blindly."

[markdavis]

Nice episode thanks! In a world where nobody "owns" their mistakes, this is quite refreshing!

[Asterra]

The perpetual dissembling I'm hearing is frankly disgusting, but not unexpected. What's disappointing is that they are chalking SpaceX's success, as well as Boeing's failure, to their own influence—basically implying that the reason SpaceX succeeded where Boeing failed was primarily down to NASA's imbalance of oversight between the two, as if it would have been a different story with a different oversight balance. This doesn't sound like admitting anything at all to me. All I'm hearing is old guard talking heads making excuses and finding a way to pat themselves on the back in spite of everything.

[IntRocketLaunch]

Boeing went from building the Saturn V first stage to not being able to get a capsule to the right orbit. Kinda disappointing. Great video 👍

[THX..]

I think this give us a final answer on why Doug Loverro was forced out days before the maiden launch of Crew Dragon. He was giving Boeing inside information while at the same time failing to properly oversee Starliner. Meanwhile SpaceX built Crew Dragon faster better and cheaper.

[techman]

I just wish that my bosses throughout my engineering career were this incredibly grateful for the wonderful learning opertunities that came from the major screw-ups that I made. For some reason through, they didn't see those mistakes as 'gifts'. Weird.

[fritzgeraldoberiano]

Space X has the vision. No matter what happens elon still wants to colonize mars no matter what.

[nigelsheldon]

Am I the only one who is not surprised at all?

[WatchesTrainsAndRockets]

This sounds so much like what we heard after Challenger and Columbia. NASA seems systemically unable to learn from and correct the errors of their past. They were so concerned about load and go fueling because "it was never done that way before" and spent no time considering that maybe the old way was not necessarily the safest way. Much safer for the astronauts and closeout crews to work around an unfueled rocket and have only the astronauts, already strapped in with the abort system armed, on site when fuel loading does occur. For the early rockets such as Atlas which needed to be pressurized at all times fueling first was the better option. The problem is that NASA was too wedded to the past and the old ways of doing things. It appears to be a culture with way too much inertia.

[peterthomson]

The "Boeing Moment" - that moment when you realise you've totally destroyed your company's reputation. Again.

[markhull]

Trying to "explain away" the egg on their face with the Boeing blunders, while SpaceX sent Dragon with American astronauts back the space first, is very gratifying. SpaceX is the bang-for-the-buck that taxpayers have.

[TheRealMrRobles]

This just wasn't a mistake. I was a huge mistake. Space X is the future.

[planetmuskvlog]

Thanks for taking the time to put that together for us. I likely would not have found it have you not done this video. Much appreciation

[IronsightV]

Space X sends astronauts to the ISS from american soil while the Boeing starliner gets maybe nasa should rethink that.

[skyhiker]

Boeing is in decline. Ten years from now they will be a secondary company a great distance from the cutting edge. So sad.

[daniels]

Boeing was *supposedly* given more money to fund CST-100 development because they claimed to have *less* capsule experience than SpaceX, who had been flying the Cargo Dragon for years! That was NASA's defense for giving Boeing more money. Yet, despite that, they treated Boeing as the "more experienced" vendor overall. But the truth is much simpler, Boeing has a long-standing lobby in place for federal contracts and they are used to getting what they want with less arguing. But since this comes on the tail end of the 737 MAX debacle, NASA probably should have conducted deeper scrutiny into Boeing software development before the CST-100 even flew, as it was known that Boeing has problems there.