basically huge grants of $ from Gov with tech. transfer..no real limit on keeping sensitive stuff sensitive.

A philosophy they put forth was that you were there because you loved the space rocket thing. And would sacrifice time and $ to fulfill your dreams.

I never worked for them, but heard from others.

officially they are not grants or ocntracts...they are Other.

i worked outside of them, they were buying tech.

NASA didn’t care for them because NASA liked their normal oversight and Space X would invite them only for their mandatory inspections and meetings.

That was a good way for them to keep the costs low.

SpaceX invited whoever they wanted...didn't appear to be a lid on things unless mgmt had a bug for some reason.

I couldn't figure out any rules they used with any consistency.

and they were immune for any liability.

The best thing they were able to do was bring back the cores for reuse.

All others that tried to devise recovery methods were really quite primitive.

What were the cores u refer to?

Engines & tanks.

the solid fuel cores?

👍

Space x doesn’t do solids, at least yet.

who made them UTC?

They’ve not used them at all that I’m aware of.

so liquid fuel still UTC. I used to liver near them, when they did test blasts at there company you could hear all over the valley.

I was involved in a proposal that was to be a solid to kick the payload way out, but couldn’t get the price right. They ignored needed requirements for success. I wasn’t into submitting numerous change orders to get the price back up to what we needed.

ECO's money makers..go in low ECO the sh** outta it.

CSD part of UTC was near Holloster. They did solids there. After the accidents, the contracts were split among the remaining players.

👍 that's right...I was in s. san jose

I ended up on THAAD after it was moved.

Raytheon👍

I liked the program and the employees that came over with it.

We sent them to Redstone where LM finished the integration.

After the 90's DoD industry consolidations Raytheon was on a buying spree

Raytheon is the big cat in defense armaments.

I working in Cruise Missile

That’s for sure.

then Predator

I know many who have hopped over to Raytheon.

All known quantities. Good companies.

Amazing talent.

never shortage of engineers around.

I kinda miss it, but it will never be like what I hired into again.

Scientist from UCB and Stanford didn't hurt that industry did it.

I gotta relish the great memories and experiences.

I would spend about 2wks/mo on DC, saw the same people different companies on the same flights and airports...it was a hoot.