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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 18 2019, @01:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the follow-the-money dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956__

Boeing received 'unnecessary' contract boost for astronaut capsule, watchdog says

Boeing’s multibillion dollar contract to build U.S. astronaut capsules received an “unnecessary” extension from NASA, a watchdog report said on Thursday, the latest management blunders in the agency’s program to restart domestic human spaceflight.

NASA agreed to pay Boeing Co (BA.N) a $287 million premium for “additional flexibilities” to accelerate production of the company’s Starliner crew vehicle and avoid an 18-month gap in flights to the International Space Station. NASA’s inspector general called it an “unreasonable” boost to Boeing’s fixed-priced $4.2 billion dollar contract.

Instead, the inspector general said the space agency could have saved $144 million by making “simple changes” to Starliner’s planned launch schedule, including buying additional seats from Russia’s space agency, which the United States has been reliant on since the 2011 retirement of its space shuttle program.

[...] In a response to the inspector general’s report, NASA “strongly” disagreed with the report’s findings that it overpaid Boeing, though it did agree the “complex and extensive” negotiations with the aerospace company could have resulted in a lower price.

“However, this is an opinion, three years after the fact and there is no evidence to support the conclusion that Boeing would have agreed to lower prices,” the agency said in a letter to the inspector general.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @03:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @03:52PM (#921544)

    Some contracts make no sense to bid as "fixed price."
    This may have been one of those. The govt chooses, so it's one them.