Comment Re:Quality (Score 1) 38
No, these are fixed price contracts. When Boeing's OFT-1 flight needed to be repeated, Boeing took the hit financially to the tune of around $500M, not NASA. Boeing doesn't stand to gain anything by delaying commercial crew. Not only do they make themselves look bad compared to SpaceX, but they lose money. Payments are tied to milestones, not costs. Basically the opposite of SLS, which is a huge cost plus contract for Boeing.
SpaceX is getting paid less than Boeing because that's what SpaceX asked for. NASA wanted to choose 2 companies for fixed price commercial crew contracts and ran a blind bidding process. SpaceX bid super low because they had no idea what others were bidding and wanted to win the contract. SpaceX's COO has since admitted that they will most likely lose money on commercial crew due to their very low bid.
Congress doesn't need to examine NASA's procurement methods. NASA has done a great job with commercial crew. They funded the development and follow-on missions for 2 different capsules with a relatively small budget compared to what they would have spent. And assumed very little financial risk due to the fixed price contracts, which is unusual for high-dollar space vehicle contracts. Congress is the one that consistently forces NASA to spend more on SLS than they ask for every year despite the program being far over budget and behind schedule. If congress had their way, NASA would have never done COTS or commercial crew and stuck to cost plus handouts to Boeing & Co.