Facts, facts, facts!!! They make you sick don’t they?

At least we all know that MPCV WILL fly on some EELV in the not so distant future, 2014 is it now? With or without LAS, with or without SM, with or without parachutes, with or without a crew… Anyway, we know that an EELV will fly sometime in the future. Maybe. Now if they write MPCV on the shroud that MUST be an MPCV under the shroud. Come on it would be written on it. And that my friends is a fact. Or some fact, well some kind of a fact. A not so real fact.

Dare I say factitious? Could not help, sorry.

Yes. A little later in my earlier post, I wrote:

“The independent Aerospace Corp. and Augustine Committee put the earliest Ares I/Orion flight at 2017, with a most likely date in 2019.”

To be clear, this was a major conclusion that the Augustine Committee put in its report, based on analysis by the Aerospace Corp. It wasn’t just a statement by Augustine himself or Greason.

Understood. Since none of these companies (Space X included – except that it can be assumed that all their lobbying money is going to space related activities) are going to give their breakdowns it is impossible to get an idea of how much they are spending pushing any particular area.

Having been a Boeing Stockholder I can tell you that (at least in the past) they used to make more money selling buses to towns/cities than they did on space.

“No, before Constellation was terminated, Ares I/Orion was showing March 2016, not 2014, for its first ISS crew rotation. “

Didn’t Augustine or maybe Jeff Greason say that it was going to be 2017-2019 before a crewed Ares 1 flight?

I couldn’t find how they broke up their lobbying efforts, short of looking at every individual on the house and senate committees.

I had read an article relating to this and it had Boeing spending about 10 times the amount of SpaceX, 2.5mil versus 250k, but I couldn’t find that link so the numbers I gave was from the open secrets website.

They had industry spending by committee but it looked like aerospace wasn’t a catagory they were tracking.

The usual villains. That’s hilarious. Of course, what you’re after is a metric for crassness. Right? Or maybe to see who can stoop lower. Sort of a space limbo, eh? Yep, that’s the dance they’re doing. I guess you’d call it dirty dancing.

“Therefore, comparing Boeings totals to Space X totals just does not tell you anything.”

Nor does SpaceX’s totals. Lobbying is an investment to get ones message across. I think lobbying budget is far less significant in political action than political contributions. If I’m a legislator, and I have a big check from Boeing, the fact that SpaceX’s check is smaller is what counts. I don’t care if it’s about commercial airliners or defense hardware or space. I don’t care if SpaceX is sending only ten people up to the Hill instead of the fifty from Boeing. If the check is from Boeing, and it’s big, whether it’s to me or a PAC I like, that’s what counts.

“So the part of that 21 million that would be devoted to space lobbying would likely be commensurately smaller”

Lobbyists are lobbying specifically for just one product or service, but for the company in general. If the product in play today is jet fighters, then they focus on jet fighters. If the product tomorrow is spacecraft, they focus on spacecraft.

Keep in mind too that it’s also a brand that they are pushing, so in that case they don’t even has to say a product, but just Boeing has been a loyal supporter of Congressperson X, or has X amount of Boeing employees in their district, regardless if that’s where the government spending in question will happen – you scratch my back, I scratch yours type of stuff.

SpaceX has far fewer employees, and far less impact on the number of congressional districts, so it has to focus more on pushing single issue lobbying. That’s a lot harder when you’re a company that has only been around for 10 years versus a company that is synonymous with a whole sector of the economy.

Accepting your numbers as accurate, those are total numbers.

Boeing is a very big company with many different interest for which they have reason to lobby. I worked in their space organization for quite a while and the internal joke was that we were a hobby for upper management – they liked us, but we were just not that important. So the part of that 21 million that would be devoted to space lobbying would likely be commensurately smaller

Space X is a small company devoted (as far as I know) entirely to space (their name certainly suggests that). All of their lobbying money would be devoted to space.

Therefore, comparing Boeings totals to Space X totals just does not tell you anything.

“The plan for the CCiCap phase of commercial crew has always been to downselect to two performers this year:
“Officials are in the middle of evaluating industrial bids for the commercial crew program’s next phase, with a goal of selecting at least two companies by August to continue developing rockets and spacecraft for the next two years.””

Not that this is likely to do any good, but someone saying they have “a goal of selecting at least two companies” is not the same as your saying “plan …. has always been to downselect to two performers”.

At “at least two companies” could be any number two or greater (presumably limited in this case to four).