A New Paper Studied Whether NASA Actually Saves Money by Hiring Corporations to Build New Spacecraft, and the Results Are Embarrassing

For decades, NASA has increasingly leaned on corporate contractors to develop the spacecraft it uses to explore the solar system. Triumphs have included SpaceX’s Dragon vehicles, which can now reliably shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station and beyond.

The widely parroted idea is that players in the free market will be able to operate more efficiently than NASA’s own stock of engineers, who masterminded the agency’s triumphs of decades past, like the Apollo Moon missions and the Space Shuttle.

But are corporations actually more efficient at realizing NASA’s goals? A recent paper in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets set out to settle the score through a close look at the finances of 69 space-faring projects of all sizes, including 22 spacecraft built by NASA, and 47 by