I’ll tell you, what SpaceX had to do to effectively do business with the United States Air Force embarrassed us in public. No service secretary likes to be embarrassed in public. They look at us and said, “hey, I don’t like that, go fix it.”
But the interesting thing about that relationship — I hope it’s not lost to history — but that turned into a mutually beneficial partnership. We in the United States Air Force helped teach SpaceX what mission assurance really was. What it took to build a rocket that would work every time. That’s a hard thing to do. And SpaceX taught us that you could do that in a commercial model and actually go fast.
The two weren’t mutually exclusive. It was difficult for our culture to accept that, and difficult for their culture to accept that. It was the merging of the culture that created a great partnership.
That was General John Hyten, Vice Chairman of the JCS, speaking at CSIS. Some additional commentary on that talk is here.
According to USA Spending, SpaceX received $1.09 billion in contract obligations from the DoD (mostly Air Force) since 2008 and $5.7 billion from NASA.
I think it’s interesting General Hyten believes that the Air Force taught SpaceX mission assurance. Back in 2018, SpaceX and Blue Origin voiced a great deal of criticism over Air Force regulations governing launch operations at federal ranges. They were based on technical specifications rather than performance-based outcomes.
Congress seemed to agree, and began pushing the Federal Aviation Administration to streamline commercial launch. The Space Frontier Act of 2019 — still a bill — would require regulations that are “neutral with regard to the specific technology utilized in a launch, a reentry, or an associated safety system” and would establish “clear, high-level performance requirements.”
FAA policy roll outs, however, seemed to ignore Congressional intent. A committee report found that “the proposed [FAA] rule fails to implement a streamlined and performance based approach to regulating an industry whose continued growth and innovation is critical to national security and civilian space exploration.”
Did SpaceX “learn” mission assurance from the Air Force? Or did it simply decide to clear the hurdles, while working on the back end to change the rules — particularly for commercial launch?
As someone who lived this relationship first hand, I can tell you with certainty ther’s more to the story. Most of won’t become public unless SpaceX determines it’s no longer Proprietary. Both the USAF and SpaceX came with strong positions and intentions. It took a while to build the relationships needed, and engineering/flight progress, to create the relationship that exists today. I find it fascinating that people claim to know what happen, but don’t appear to be talking to those of us who lived it and were responsible for it.
General Hyten’s points about Mission Assurance will likely be judged by the reader’s experience in the AF/SpaceX relationship. It’s fair to say there was learning on both sides; the amount and associated value will be left for history to judge. Readers should understand they’re not the full story.
Thanks for the comments Bob. This is why I wish important programs like the one you ran had embedded program historians dedicated to interviewing participants and putting together a narrative. Data reports on costs and specs can’t tell that story.
Embedded Historians in Programs is an interesting idea. SMC has a very small (3-4 people) staff to cover all the Center’s work. They do create a standard annual summary of the major events in each Program, but don’t capture the context of “why” many key decisions were made or other observations. Starting a dialogue with the new Space Force on this idea would be timely – perhaps making a Post about it could generate a good discussion within the community while there’s time document things in near real time. I’d be happy to chime in on the merits of this idea if you choose to post it.