So how would you characterize that difference, both in terms of strengths and weaknesses? I have a few thoughts but would be curious to hear yours first.
While this is an interesting question I'm not going to give an especially interesting answer. I see things as you might imagine. And while it might seem unfair I'd also appeal to reality. It's now been more than half a century since a human left low earth orbit. NASA and Boeing (et al) had all this time to succeed. They failed, and there's no real excuse for their failures besides themselves, and their own motivations.
Keeping it brief SpaceX/engineer is genuinely trying to get people to Mars, largely driven by ideological reasons with extensive technical creativity/competence backing them up. Accountant/Boeing wants to make more money. Outsource our software development to guys in India bidding $9/hour? Awesome! That's another 0.037% profit, what could go wrong!? Something doesn't work? Who cares!? We're on a cost+ contract baby, what you call "failure to deliver", I call delivering value to my shareholders!
And then there's the politician. In this particular case, he's not only a life long politician but also 80 years old on top. The only 'bright side' is that, due to his political influence, he's gone to space before. On the other hand Charles Bolden was a genuine astronaut and absolutely everything one would think they would want from a NASA head, yet he was a miserable failure. It may simply be that political style leadership (even when not a politician) isn't really conducive to meaningful progress in modern times.
>They failed, and there's no real excuse for their failures besides themselves, and their own motivations.
I'd argue the incentive wasn't there until CCP. That was the fundamental difference in the last 20 years. Without CCP, I don't think SpaceX would be successful, either. But I will say they've done much more than the Boeing at executing on that incentive.
I do think you may be overly cynical in your characterization, though. It wasn't too many years ago that Boeing was listed as the most desirable company to work for by college students. The reason isn't that they thought it was because they couldn't wait to gouge the public coffers, it was because aerospace has always been considered a sexy engineering discipline. You'll almost never find a civil engineering firm on those lists because "roads and commodes" just aren't considered cool.
Back to the question, I'll weigh in with my perspective. They are all responding to incentives, albeit different ones. But we have to acknowledge the downsides of each. SpaceX is awesome, but they aren't without their own psychological pressures and biases. I've brought it up elsewhere in this thread, but they have wanted to rapidly iterate rather than fundamentally understand some of their design issues. I suspect this is partly cultural (where operational tempo matters more than scientific rigor...i.e., "we don't need to know why it works, as long as it works") and some of it is business (i.e., they have specific contractual deadlines to consider). Those are also some of the issues that lead to mishaps dating back to Apollo and Shuttle.
Considering you seem to think the legacy downsides are due to the business/shareholder side, do you see the same issues encroaching on SpaceX if they go public?
Absolutely, I do believe that SpaceX going public will largely be the death of that company. And, depending on when this happens, it could even herald the second death of space in America. The one thing that's good here is that Elon has stated that he will not be taking SpaceX public until transit between Earth and Mars is well established.
The point I'd make is that leadership really matters. Boeing, at its peak, almost certainly had orders of magnitude more talent than SpaceX did in its early years - in no small part because of what you mentioned. And they absolutely had many orders of magnitude more money and access to funding. But their leadership was just absolutely abysmal, and consequently the potential of that talent was left completely untapped.
But on the other hand, like you mentioned there are incentive problems. Even though Boeing failed to tap into their potential, their stock price has been constantly and steadily going up for decades. Even their planes literally falling out of the skies was but a brief stumble, the damage there largely repaired owing to the start of a profitable new war. So in this regard I doubt their leadership is particularly disappointed with their results. They achieved what they set out to do after all. And that's pretty disappointing.
>The point I'd make is that leadership really matters.
I wholeheartedly agree. You're probably aware, but there have been a number of good write-ups detailing an overall erosion of engineering leadership at Boeing [1].
>Elon has stated that he will not be taking SpaceX public until transit between Earth and Mars is well established.
I think maybe the difference between you and me is that I take many of Musk's promises with a boulder of salt. If I was a gambler, I'd bet that we see some wordsmithing about what the definition of a "well established Mars transit" when it comes time for an IPO.
A decade ago, the word was that SpaceX would go public "when we are reliably launching F9." Then Tesla went public and Elon decided he didn't want anything more to do with public companies. If anything, I think that statement should only be interpreted as it absolutely not happening before that condition is fulfilled, not that it will happen once it is.
... they have wanted to rapidly iterate rather than fundamentally understand some of their design issues.
You say this with seeming knowledge of the thoroughness of SpaceX's failure investigations. Care to elaborate how you can say this with such authority?
