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0 pointsJumpCrisscross1y ago0 comments

> NASA has additional requirements they must manage (e.g., political risk) that SpaceX has less exposure to

This doesn't appear to be the issue with ML-2, whose problems are closer to Boeing's subcontracting addiction than e.g. the F-35's sticker-collection approach to manufacturing.

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bumby1y ago

I’m sorry, I don’t follow. Can you elaborate? Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I think sub-contacting is heavily related to political risk mitigation, as it’s a method of spreading project money across many political districts.

IMO NASA has done the same with their selection of major center locations. It doesn’t make a lot of logistics sense to have your biggest centers in CA, OH, VA, and TX but it makes a lot of political sense if your goal is to avoid large programs being mothballed.

JumpCrisscrossOP1y ago

> sub-contacting is heavily related to political risk mitigation, as it’s a method of spreading project money across many political districts

Good point, I'm unclear whether Bechtel was awarded the contract by NASA/Congress after selecting its subcontractors or before. (And if having a roster of subcontractors was an implicit ask from NASA or a decision made by Bechtel to future-proof their contract.)

We see something similar with Boeing, and while that was also partly politically motivated, there was also the financial desire to be asset light. The OIG's story about "one subcontractor, [to] which Bechtel allocated approximately 46 percent of the fabrication work to" selling off "all of its shop space to a non-NASA customer because Bechtel's steel fabrication plan lacked a signed contract with the subcontractor" forcing Bechtel "to find another subcontractor with available shop space" sounds like incompetence, not savvy politics [1].

[1] https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ig-24-016.pd... page 19

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