SpaceX vs. NASA: Cost
SpaceX is 10X cheaper with 30X lower cost overrun than NASA in lifting payload into space. Why? Because SpaceX is platform-based, NASA not.
By Atif Ansar and Bent Flyvbjerg
“The space race is dominated by new contenders,” claims The Economist (18 October 2018).† Chief among them is SpaceX that has gone from a ridiculed upstart in 2002, when Elon Musk founded it, to capturing nearly two-thirds of the global commercial launch market by 2018. SpaceX deployed a disciplined platform strategy to outperform its competitors, public and private.
We report comparative results — NASA vs SpaceX — on four variables (cost, speed-to-market, schedule, and scalability), measured for a sample of 203 space missions. This article covers cost.
Across these metrics, SpaceX’s platform strategy has vastly outperformed NASA’s bespoke strategy in some cases by multiple orders of magnitude.
Before reporting the results in detail, it is worth reiterating with emphasis that the aim is not to put down the public sector and aggrandize private enterprise. The aim is to illustrate that platform-based projects, whether adopted by public or private enterprise, systematically outperform quantum-leap projects. Moreover, the success of SpaceX is the…
