I was thinking about the problems Boeing is having now compared to what problems may have been "in the moment" back when NASA and partners were developing Apollo — problems that are all but forgotten since the climax of the work was of such import.
Obviously the Apollo I fire is not forgotten although I was older before I learned about it — older of course than when I learned that astronauts had walked on the Moon.
YouTube has a trove of "quarterly reports" (and even older material — Manned Spaceflight Reports, for example) that apparently were created as a means of tracking progress and/or setbacks (and money spent?) on the space missions.
As a space nerd since I was quite young, I find these reports somewhat fascinating. (They make interesting "filler material" for my TV app that plays content every day on my home "channel".)
I can't point to a specific report but do recall the odd one talking about a tank rupturing on a pressure test or an engine test-stand being destroyed during an engine run-up.
They paint a picture of a fascinating time when the work was brisk and well-funded — whole facilities being developed, concrete poured, barges built - for this singular goal of ... well, showing up the Soviet Union, I guess.
Some playlists I found (they may not be complete) when quickly searching this morning:
Apollo NASA is a main suspect here. I recall reading that long before the fire, NASA had seen that even asbestos burns in a pure oxygen environment. So there were grounds for concern and for engineering investigation.
Not to go down the rabbit hole of assigning blame, but the gains from a pure oxygen environment were of course substantially reduced vehicle pressure. Mercury and Gemini both had used pure oxygen environments with obviously no mishaps.
> Mercury and Gemini both had used pure oxygen environments with obviously no mishaps.
Pure oxygen atmosphere is pretty dangerous. I worked with it at a steel mill where it was a process gas. Oxygen lines had to be "oxygen clean" before put into service. This meant no oil or grease or particulates that could strike a spark if propelled along the line. Also the line had to be sized for a maximum flow velocity or the oxygen would "scarf" the line. Think rapid oxidation like combustion.
I read a fatality report where a pipe fitter descended into an oxygen valve pit and burst into flames. The report speculated that the fitter had some grease on his gloves that spontaneously combusted in the presence of pure oxygen.
I suppose it's less hazardous at reduced pressure, but still not an atmosphere I would want to work in.
It would be on a Dragon Capsule the Starliner is not just having helium problems, it has functional problems that compromise the return to earth mission they are trying to resolve(...I mean manage what this really means NASA has already contacted spaceX) it an announcement will be made tomorrow.
I wonder if such an evacuation happens what would subsequent relations between NASA and Boeing be. NASA could be rather sensitive to the optics of the events like that...
Likely no change. NASA contract with Boeing because it is politically useful, and will continue to do so as long as Boeing exists, regardless of outcomes, as it will continue to be politically useful. Boeing sponsor a great many politicians to ensure this.
Somebody quipped wouldn't it be funny to return them on a Dragon.
Embarrassing as that is another alternative is Roscosmos if the Dragon is unavailable (i.e. it's required for emergency use).
Asking the Russians would cause national embarrassment so my money's on the former, but this may actually be a case of politics getting in the way, as, had this been 5 years ago the Russians would have been the go-to partners, they still could be if NASA truly followed realpolitik.
Or as the saying goes "cutting your nose off to spite your face" (using a docked Dragon puts those on the station at more risk than just sending up a new Russian Soyuz).
Tldr; This means astronauts may now be at an additional risk because of (inter)national politics.
They're already following realpolitik by keeping coordination between the two countries active.
The problem with Soyuz is that you no longer have a usable escape plan up on the ISS once it's used so it should only be used in a true emergency. If the Boeing module really was bad, better to send up a Dragon and send the Boeing module down unmanned than to use Soyuz.
There are lots of ways to consider "nationalization" but here are some examples.
The US temporarily became a majority owner of GM as part of their 2009 bankruptcy.
> Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program the US Treasury invested a total $51 billion into the GM bankruptcy.[93] Until December 10, 2013, the U. S. Treasury recovered $39 billion from selling its GM stake. The final direct cost to the Treasury of the GM bailout was $11[94]-12 billion ($10.5 billion for General Motors and $1.5 billion for former GM financing GMAC, now known as Ally).[95] Local tax incentives amounted to $1.7 billion, most of them in Michigan.[96][97] A study by the Center for Automotive Research found that the GM bailout saved 1.2 million jobs and preserved $34.9 billion in tax revenue.[95]
Conrail was a consolidated nationalization of multiple failed or failing railroads. In hindsight it effectively served as a way to consolidate, restructure, and then re-privatize the operation of the railroads.
Worked fairly well. The last few decades have seen antitrust regulators asleep at the wheel, though, so we're back to 2-3 biggies again with all the mergers.
The side-effect of unhinging Bell Labs from a commercial monopoly is seen from afar, like someone putting a spanner into the global wheel of progress. You may have gotten cheaper phone service in the US, but I’m still waiting for a Bell Labs level invention to come out of the free market system.
It depends on which piece did your local telco. If you have Frontier, you're likely not liking it very much.
The breakup isolated the companies servicing wealthy areas from those servicing more expensive areas, and this has greatly widened disparity.
It's unclear how breaking up Boeing would help, as the people running the company already divested large chunks of the company into other companies, and this is part of the problem.
> If the cops come to your house, divide up your possessions, and give them to a bunch of neighbors, you'd certainly feel briefly nationalized
Sure. That’s not what happened. The cops came in and divided my pile of stuff into different piles. They’re still mine. They’re just not allowed to talk to each other.
AT&T’s shareholders famously did well out the break-up [1].
> The cops came in and divided my pile of stuff into different piles. They’re still mine.
As a shareholder, you're not permitted to put the piles back together, nor are you permitted to have the same top-level management of the system as before in place. You are under very significant new constraints imposed by the government.
> AT&T’s shareholders famously did well out the break-up.
Nationalization needn't involve a loss for the people losing the control. If the US government nationalizes Boeing for 2x its market cap, it's still a nationalization.
> you're not permitted to put the piles back together
One, literally what happened. And two, you’re describing every company when it seeks merger approval.
> under very significant new constraints imposed by the government
Agreed to between AT&T and the government to settle the government’s case against it.
> If the US government nationalizes Boeing for 2x its market cap, it's still a nationalization
Correct. But that requires the government taking ownership or control of the company. What you’re describing is just regulation.
There are fringe types who regard any government regulation as nationalisation. But this isn’t common usage. (In technical terms, legally, financially and economically, it’s strictly wrong.)
> Nationalize Boeing, split it up, turn the pieces into work-owned and controlled co-ops.
Bell didn't turn into co-ops, but otherwise that's the same play. A forcible breakup by the government is fundamentally a nationalization, even if it's just for an instant.
Nationalization can be involve control instead of ownership.
If the President orders Google to switch all efforts to producing nuclear bombs, Google has been nationalized, even if they've still got private shareholders.
Socialism will necessarily involve nationalization. Nationalization doesn't necessarily require a socialist ownership structure for the nationalized asset.
This makes no sense on multiple levels. Socialisation is a system, nationalisation an act.
> Nationalization can be involve control instead of ownership
There are zero legal scholars or historians who consider break-up orders nationalisation. Because at that point, every merger denial or FDA approval is also nationalisation.
> Socialisation is a system, nationalisation an act.
Socialism, the system, requires widespread nationalization in the form of both control and ownership of assets.
> There are zero legal scholars or historians who consider break-up orders nationalisation.
Again, nationalization is taking state ownership or control. A forcible government breakup of an organization is clear state control of it, albeit for a brief period.
Thought experiment:
Venezuela, instead of outright confiscation, chooses instead to leave shareholders in possession of their shares in oil production. They install state-selected management and impose a 100% tax on profits. Is this nationalization?
> forcible government breakup of an organization is clear state control of it
You’re defining control in a way that extends to all regulation.
The AT&T break-up has been heavily cited and written about. Do you have a single expert who agrees with your claim that it constituted nationalisation? (Let’s even assume AT&T was actually ordered to break up, versus voluntarily doing so to settle a lawsuit.)
> instead of outright confiscation, chooses instead to leave shareholders in possession of their shares in oil production. They install state-selected management and impose a 100% tax on profits.
Now remove the confiscation of profits and selection of state-selected management.
Since you didn't qualify your question, the US essentially nationalized almost all industrial production for World War 2 and had no problem converting it back at the end when conditions changed.
> they do change who fundamentally has control of the company during that time
No, they were contracts authorised by the War Powers Act of 1941 [1][2].
Management was conserved and largely left to its own decisions. When workers struck, mines and factories were nationalised [3], but that was the exception.
> The Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or any
other officer, board, commission, or governmental corporation author-
ized by the President, may acquire by purchase, donation, or other
means of transfer, or may cause proceedings to be instituted in any
court having jurisdiction of such proceedings, to acquire by con-
demnation, any real property, temporary use thereof, or other interest
therein, together with any personal property located thereon or used
therewith, that shall be deemed necessary, for military, naval, or other
war purposes, such proceedings to be in accordance with the Act of
August 1, 1888 (25 Stat . 357), or any other applicable Federal
statute, and may dispose of such property or interest therein by sale,
lease, or otherwise, in accordance with section 1 (b) of the Act of
July 2, 1940 (54 Stat . 712)
> Deliveries of
material under all orders placed pursuant to the authority of this
paragraph and all other naval contracts or orders and deliveries of
material under all Army contracts or orders shall, in the discretion
of the President, take priority over all deliveries for private account
or for export.
> Deliveries under any contract or order specified in this subsection (a)
may be assigned priority over deliveries under any other contract or
order ; and the President may require acceptance of and performance
under such contracts or orders in preference to other contracts or
orders for the purpose of assuring such priority. Whenever the
President is satisfied that the fulfillment of requirements for the
defense of the United States will result in a shortage in the supply of
any material or of any facilities for defense or for private account or
for export, the President may allocate such material or facilities in
such manner, upon such conditions and to such extent as he shall deem
necessary or appropriate in the public interest and to promote the
national defense.
> "The President shall determine the amount of the
fair and just compensation to be paid for any property requisitioned
and taken over pursuant to this Act and the fair value of any prop-
erty returned under section 2 of this Act, but each such determination
shall be made as of the time it is requisitioned or returned, as the
case may be, in accordance with the provision for just compensation
in the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States .
Two different processes: condemnation and contracting. Most defence production was contracted. (Look at the actual command and prioritise history and it’s rarely there. From my knowledge of our war history, that isn’t out of omission.)
The condemned property was absolutely nationalised. But this was more the case for land for bases or production facilities that the contracted businesses used.
Businesses were seldom nationalised (or commanded). Raw inputs, e.g. property and mines, were nationalised/condemned.
> threat of condemnation as the alternative is presumably a hefty one when negotiating a contract for necessary military materiel
Again, do you have a single source for this? I could similarly argue everything in America is today nationalised because someone could issue a NSL and make their management’s life miserable.
> Shortly after its creation in 1942, the federal War Production Board (WPB) sharply curtailed or banned the production of nearly 300 items judged "nonessential" to the war effort. The manufacturers of the targeted products could either choose to convert to the production of items deemed to be essential, or try to make do with substitute materials. Some of the banned items were near and dear to American consumers, who would soon learn the importance of conservation.
> Production of most durable goods, like new housing, vacuum cleaners, and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended.
If you're an appliance maker, and the government bans production of civilian appliances... how much are you going to fight over a contract to make them for the military?
Fair enough. I agree the potential for abuse was quite high. I’m just hesitant to call it mass nationalisation without even some historical anecdotes folks in the decades thereafter. Particularly if we’re using WWII as a template for nationalising just Boeing in peacetime.
The nationalization I’m referring to is a temporary vehicle for re-organizing into worker ownership and control. I don’t mean for these to be controlled by the government directly in the long term (though I would be open to such an arrangement, but I understand it makes many Americans squeamish).
As for the experience with nationalization in other countries, I am hesitant to try to draw lessons from nationalization in socialist countries. Given how much capitalist states meddle whenever a socialist state takes root, I think it’s really hard to disentangle possible perverse outcomes of nationalization (which should be discovered and mitigated against!) from the skullduggery taking place as part of attempts to thwart socialism.
What makes you think such a system would work better than private or state ownership?
> attempts to thwart socialism.
Nobody is better at that than the (so called) socialists themselves. It simply doesn’t work without coercion, restrictive capital controls and other policies which aim to minimize the competitiveness of private enterprises (if they are not banned outright). This almost leads to lack of innovation, poor productivity, extreme corruption and authoritarianism.
>> re-organizing into worker ownership and control
> What makes you think such a system would work better than private or state ownership?
Why would private ownership where the majority of shareholders are employees be worse than other types of private ownership?
I can think of a few advantages, like the shareholders being more motivated by long term sustainable business practices instead of squeezing for quarterly profits at the expense of the health of the business, or PE schemes like selling assets and leasing them back to the company to extract temporary value while setting the business up for failure.
> What makes you think such a system would work better than private or state ownership?
How much longer should we stand by and let Boeing crumble? What’s next, put tariffs on Comac planes and force Americans to fly and die on sub-standard Boeing planes?
Boeing going bust would leave the world's airlines looking at half as many available new airliners as usual, with any potential competitor taking a decade or more to start up, and Airbus unlikely to be able to double production on a short timeline.
Comac expects to deliver single-digit numbers of C919s this year after four in 2023, with nearly a thousand in their backlog. The C929 is delayed to 2030.
> Nobody is better at that than the (so called) socialists themselves. It simply doesn’t work without coercion, restrictive capital controls and other policies which aim to minimize the competitiveness of private enterprises (if they are not banned outright). This almost leads to lack of innovation, poor productivity, extreme corruption and authoritarianism.
Capitalists don’t even like competition. They say they do when it’s convenient as it’s the politically correct thing to say. But behind the scenes they seek monopoly to thwart “ruinous competition”. I wasn’t suggesting nationalization and running Boeing as a conglomerate. I was talking about nationalization as a vehicle to break up the company into work-owned and controlled units. This, combined with consistent application of anti-trust regulations would do more to foster competition than the sclerotic financialized monopoly that Boeing is now.
Boeing has competition? Even in civil aviation, the barriers to entry are so high and capital costs so high that I the “market” for commercial airplanes is essentially a natural monopoly. In weapons manufacturing, I don’t think there is anything close to a competitive market in place.
Yes, like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and now also SpaceX.
Nationalizing Boeing will only make the problem worse, because guess what: Nationalized companies won't fail, so there is absolutely no incentive to be good which is worse than the situation now.
The three companies you mentioned aren't in commercial aviation, which has been the bulk of discourse about the problems concerning Boeing. There is no other U.S. company in competition with Boeing for commercial aviation. And based on how Boeing has been behaving, it seems like they already feel no incentive to be good.
>commercial aviation, which has been the bulk of discourse about the problems concerning Boeing.
Then you haven't been paying attention. Most of their problems have been in the military aviation sector, between problems and failures in the KC-46 Pegasus, V-2 Osprey, Air Force One version 2, F-15EX, and F/A-18 Super Hornet programmes among others.
Their failures in civilian aviation and space are all intrinsically linked with their military failures all likely having common causes, it's plaguing their entire company from top to bottom across all their markets.
The KC-46 is a 767; AF1 is a 747. Lockheed and Grumman don't compete with those sorts of aircraft; Boeing at the very least holds a monopoly on US-made large airliners.
If the failure is severe enough, ultimately yes. There is only so much bailing out that a capitalist free market country can provide.
No doubt the US government will bail out Boeing at least once, but I would expect that to be it. A one last chance point of no return. If Boeing ever gets to that point and still fails further, the US will have no choice but to have them fail.
On the plus side, it's not like Boeing going under is an actual national security threat. There is nothing wrong with relying on Airbus who will no doubt move into the newly vacant market spaces, we are all NATO allies aren't we? To say nothing of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who do a better job of military aviation anyway.
I'm also not sure "we'll probably only bail you out once" is a great position to take in motivating Boeing and its ownership and governance to make major changes to survive as a company.
The governments of France, Germany and Spain are the largest shareholders in Airbus but they aren't majority shareholders as together they total only about 26% of shares?
