From some perspectives, yes. From others it's not so bad. I love having cover from the top to do engineering and qualification to have better solutions. Normally it's "we don't have time or resources to make it, get back to the spreadsheet mines".
For LEO you can scoot by pretty easily with non-hardened solutions and better systems engineering and software. For deep space you'll need to be more clever.
> It got there by challenging conventional wisdom, she adds. Most launchpad air conditioning systems, for instance, cost nearly half a million dollars, but SpaceX execs wondered why it cost so much more to cool an area the size of a conference room than the $75,000 it cost to cool their entire headquarters and manufacturing plant. The company brought the cost down to about $35,000, says Shotwell.
I wouldn’t take them seriously, except that SpaceX has a full decade of very reliable launch services at a fraction of the cost. You might ask how they did that, and SpaceX says “here are some examples”. It’s not just reusing rockets.
> You might ask how they did that, and SpaceX says “here are some examples”.
Right, but why would you believe what they say? I believe they know how to launch rockets, but that doesn't mean they are telling you the reason. They may not want it public, they may want to kiss someone's a-.
If there’s any company you should pay attention to when they report successful cost cutting, it's spacex. You can hate or love Musk but Gwynne Shotwell is the real deal there. Not sure how she keeps Elon from blowing the whole business up but somehow she does and quite successfully at that.
If she says you can keep cool whatever needs cooling for 10% of the Boeing price, you’d better believe it.
