The carrot did change, though. What’s fundamentally different about this carrot is that it is the first time large service contracts for space have been leveraged. Previously it was product contracts. In the latter, the govt provides specs on the hardware and drive the design. The entire mechanism of the CCP carrot is designed around a relatively hands-off approach to the hardware design to instead just specified the purchase of a ride. It doesn’t matter if it’s sci-fi tech or a donkey, as long as it gets the job done.
I still give SpaceX credit that they did a much better job of raising the bar in response to that incentive. I have some reservations about the way they’ve gone about some of it, but at the end of the day I think they have done a much better job than the legacy aerospace companies.
I still give SpaceX credit that they did a much better job of raising the bar in response to that incentive. I have some reservations about the way they’ve gone about some of it, but at the end of the day I think they have done a much better job than the legacy aerospace companies.