Boeing is clearly a company in the death spiral stage of institutional decline. It happens to most institutions, unfortunately, and it will probably happen to spacex one day.
That’s why it’s critical to maintain a regulatory environment and supportive infrastructure so that scrappy innovative new competitors can rise up. To do that, the dead standing wood needs to be felled.
Despite Boeing doing an admirable job of falling down on its own, it would probably still be useful to not keep feeding the decay.
I think Boeing is an object lesson in what happens when you have an MBA without an engineering background run a company whose product is cutting edge engineering.
You can’t innovate when you have to justify every cost. That’s not how innovation works, and in Boeing, engineering was a profit center… but leadership thought Boeing was a manufacturing company, and engineering was a cost center.
So,
You cut corners to make manufacturing cheaper, stop innovating, try to fix aerodynamics problems with software, try to pretend like the big changes you made aren’t, underplay the need for training pilots on what are substantially new aircraft because you don’t want to admit they are actually a lot different than the good selling previous models, etc.
All just bean counter shenanigans instead of focusing on what Boeing was actually great at: delivering value through superior engineering.
So, all the engineers that actually wanted to engineer left to do interesting things, and you’re left with the ones that want to do as little as possible, along with the bean counters that want to minimise ‘spensive stuff like actually innovative projects.
At this point it’s almost like a zombie brand, I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing boeing branded Chinese dollar store crap any day now.
Starliner works. It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. It just happens to obscenely expensive.
There are no competitors that are even remotely close to competing with SpaceX and Boeing without first spending tens of billions of dollars like SpaceX and Boeing have done.
Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures?
There has been one, a second stage that failed to relight the engine due to a sensor issue that was quickly fixed. Since then they have had more successful launches than most companies fly in entire years. The other failures were:
- A booster that failed to land after the most flights any booster in the fleet has had, a problem only SpaceX is capable of having right now
- A second stage where the engine shutdown during a deorbit burn was a few milliseconds later than expected.
On the other hand, the "minor issue" on Starliner had Boeing burning hundreds of millions of dollars trying to replicate the issue on the ground, after so many years of waterfall-style development.
People forget that on Apollo 13s return there was a legitimate concern that the explosion had damaged the heat shield and the fear was it would fail and the craft would melt and break up entirely during deorbit.
Due to their nature they're sensitive and easy to compromise. Which is also why NASA knew from day 1 that icing was going to be a huge issue on the shuttle. They were retrofitting the vehicle, the launch platform and even the software to reduce heat shield risks very early on.
Some of their earliest flights included EVA experiments where the astronauts translated themselves to the thermal tiles, did inspections, and even did mock repairs to test the feasibility of the idea and of the quality of the adhesives in near total vacuum.
After the final accident they started doing something they could have and should have been doing since the beginning. That was simply taking up a camera that could be attached to the Canadarm, swung "underneath" the shuttle, and used to take a comprehensive survey of the thermal management system immediately on orbit.
In any case, point is, human rated space flight will always require this level of attention to detail and ongoing effort to derisk every possible aspect of every mission performed. NASA management did an outright terrible job at this. From incentivizing the wrong behavior, falling in love with paper targets, and completely failing to audit their own internal risk estimations for errors.
> they started doing something they could have and should have been doing since the beginning. That was simply taking up a camera that could be attached to the Canadarm,
First shuttle launch, Columbia STS-1 12 April 1981.[0]
The Canadarm was first tested in orbit in 1981, on Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-2 mission [1] (12 November 1981)
It was always intended to be on the shuttle. It's not as if they conceived, designed, and then created it between STS-1 and STS-2. It was baked into the software and into the rear flight deck controls. It was late.
Launching a prototype rocket with the expectation that it will probably blow up and then having it blow up isn't a failure, especially when the goal is to see what happens.
You said "unexpected catastrophic explosive failures". But
1. They were not unexpected. They very very clearly communicated months ahead.
2. "Catastrophic" is a bit much too, as they were indeed expected and planned for. In fact, the biggest failure in the Starship development was that the rocket did NOT explode fast enough once.
3. "Failures". Well.. no. These are prototypes intended to learn from. Experiments if you will. A scientist that never has a negative result is a fraud. Same here.
> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious.
We don't know if it was serious or not. If Starliner managed to land this time, will it be able to do it repeatedly, or it was just luck this time?
If we are trying to deduce seriousness of the issue from data, then one point of data is too low. Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning. But if we are relying on causal reasoning, then we have no clear understanding of causes, Boeing engineers are still unable to explain how their thrusters fail exactly, and what they could do to make them robust.
>Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning.
This in fact is a shining vindication of Musk's "Waste metal, not time." philosophy.
Boeing is operating in the old school "Spend lots of time planning, go for a hole in one." philosophy, so if they proceed to fail they need to spend lots of more time planning and going for more hole in ones to demonstrate sufficient statistics.
SpaceX? They wasted metal instead of time and got statistics out with sheer numbers before Boeing even got a number, because the only way you get numbers is by getting numbers.
Boeing should be fired and ideally bankrupted, and everyone else needs to get with the times so they don't become the next Boeing.
No, the Soviets lost simply because we wasted more metal than they did.
Consider that just the Apollo programme had twenty one (21) launches in a span of about just 8 years before Apollo 11 landed the first men on the Moon.
Gemini had twelve (12) launches in a span of just 2 years, and Mercury had twenty six (26) launches in a span of just 4 years.
Contrast 4 launches of N1, 6 launches of Voskhod, and 13 launches of Vostok from records we know of.
Boeing also deleted a lot of software code they deemed not necessary despite being a hard requirement. They also shouldn't had an issue to the point that NASA lost confidence in Boeing.
We all make mistakes, but some mistakes are being made due to shoddy work. It was thankfully not a capsule destroying mistake, but on something high stake such as a human rated capsule, shoddy works shouldn't be tolerated, especially with corner cutting such as removing entire capability in software.
I’m curious if they would use the same logic for russian roulette. If you spin the barrel with one bullet, pull the trigger against your head and survive does that mean that the danger wasn’t that serious?
NASA wasn’t saying that they know for certain that the Starliner will have a catastrophe on the way back. What they said is that they cannot be certain that the probability of it having a catastrophe is lower than some decision threshold.
Using the russian roulette as an analogy NASA has a revolver with a barel for a million bullets, and they decided they are fine to pull the trigger against the astronauts heads if there are less than 5 bullets in it. But due to nobody really understanding the mechanism of previous anomalies they don’t know how many bullets there are in the barrel. There might be six or more so they are not willing to pull the trigger. (The number of bullets, and the number of chambers is merelly illustrative. I don’t know what is the real number NASA uses.)
Thank you! It seems wikipedia confirms what you are saying. Sadly the article it references is no longer available, so i can’t dig into it. But it sounds 1/270 is for the requirement for overall mission while the ascent and descent phases have 1/500 apportioned to them each.
Was trying to put this 1/500 number into perspective for myself. It sounds like it is rougly similar to the mortality of having appendicites. [1]
It still had problems during the return flight, i.e. additional unexpected component malfunctions, but not serious enough to prevent a successful return.
Therefore the decision to not use it until the causes for all such malfunctions are understood was completely justified.
Problem: "one of the Starliner’s reaction control system (RCS) thrusters did not function".
Why it was not serious: "there are plenty of backup RCS thrusters".
Even if the redundancy ensured a successful return, the causes must be understood, because otherwise at a future return more than one thruster could malfunction and the redundancy may be insufficient.
what about that bezos company, blue origin, wouldnt they be a viable competitor? they seem to know what theyre doing and dont share the incompetence of boeing or the comedy of spacex.
As long as there's competition, it is fine. Boeing fits at least that role easily. Plus, they've built the vehicle with no drama and without purchasing Twitter in the middle. This is worth something.
We see similar situation in automotive. Other companies do allow to keep Tesla in check, so there's less opportunity to force "Cybertrucks" onto the market as the only option.
No, they don’t. Starliner is a paper competitor. The money NASA sends it ensure SpaceX maintains a practical monopoly.
Boeing is the “competitor” everyone wishes for. Sucking up the oxygen in the room a real competitor might need while doing absolutely nothing to contest your market share.
> they've built the vehicle with no drama
Late to launch, billions over budget and strands its astronauts but has a CEO you can’t remember because their planes kept falling apart is a weird way to spell “no drama.”
One of the benefits of the commercial crew program was supposed to be that NASA would just be one customer of many, thus justifying why the company takes on the risk of making a fixed price bid.
Starliner does not even attempt to compete on the commercial market, it has a fixed number of Atlas V's stored away for the NASA contract, and then someone will have to cough up money to try to put it on another rocket.
So, they aren't even in the market, let alone doing anything to even appear to compete.
The only positive thing I can say about his purchase of Twitter was that it finally stopped me wasting time on the site.
Despite Musk's… what, breakdown? Radicalisation? Temper tantrums? Whatever that is, SpaceX is still astoundingly fast at both launching stuff to orbit and also making new and better rockets than almost everyone else on the planet combined.
I'd like to see the money that was given to Boeing, instead given to another space startup that might do something interesting.
You can just say "he has a few different opinions than my peer group" and leave it at that. Heck, you yourself can even form your own opinions -- it's fine -- don't look so aghast.
I put spreading conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines (this week), plots by Jews, vaccines caused Lebron James' son to pass out, Paul Pelosi's attacker was actually his gay lover, etc in a different category than "he has a few different opinions than my peer group". Something has gone terribly wrong.
I don't think he's actually as dumb as that, he is just playing the same counter-intelligence game as other people on the right, because telling the truth isn't as advantageous for them.
People buying into that stuff are morons, but useful to the republican party all the same.
Different opinions is not the problem. My own opinions differ plenty from my peers. Even that the opinions are outside my Overton Window isn't itself a problem, because (as with most of my nationality) that window excludes the 2nd Amendment and yet I can be here on this American website.
Problem is, quite a lot of the weird stuff looks like defections in the IPD sense.
Stoke Space looks really interesting. Everyday Astronaut visited a year ago and got a tour of their test facilities and rocket design, which is really innovative and aiming for full rapid reusability. Their development approach is similar to SpaceX's.
I have a feeling that Gwynne Shotwell has basically told Elon to stay away from everyday operations. He's demonstrably unstable at this point, and SpaceX operations are too life-threatening to have Elon be more than a figure-head and financier at this point.
Could be, you're certainly not the only one with that vibe.
If so, she's a miracle worker given all the rest of what we're seeing.
That said, the way he talks about the rockets? Sure, he's ambitious, but he does seem to act like he recognises the laws of physics don't respond to "screw the rules I have money".
He's away from everyday operations, but he is most definitely the actual chief engineer of Starship - the one with final word, not necessarily the one doing all the work.
SpaceX hasn’t had much competition for years now and they just pulled off catching the largest booster in history like a pair of chopsticks. I don’t think competition is what is motivating them.
Exactly. They're motivated by reducing dollars per kg of payload. They have their own agenda for a Mars mission, and they'll build a business taking third party gigs to fund their long term mission to get people to Mars.
Who can tell? Musk has gone full Kanye at this point. He still has intelligence, but years of people telling him he's the most talented person on the earth have led to a downward spiral of egomania and lack of self awareness. I don't think anyone can guess his motivations at this point.
Musk made his goals for SpaceX well known from the beginning, has for decades maintained that was his goals and his actions with SpaceX are all consistent with those goals.
Long term probably yes. Once it becomes a monopoly (I guess it already is really) but if it is one for too long it will get just as sloppy as Boeing. Remember Boeing used to actually be good.
I doubt Boeing could ever be that competition though.
So maybe NASA can drop a diversity and inclusion training course or two, and train some American kids to build and eventually design a rocket.
Having one major commercial success story is often the way the market leans, the missing piece here is NASA's own competency lost to its history of politics and bureaucratic bullshit - the missing piece is NASA's own lost greatness;
And people need to stop punishing SpaceX for everyone else being retards.
If there is no competition to a corp, consider the option of nationalizing it. Suddenly the prospect of being without competition will look far less desireable to them.
I guess that would make sense if the company without competition had a stranglehold on the industry and was taking part in anticompetitive behaviour to build a moat around themselves but as far as I know Space X isn’t doing this?
What would you expect them to do differently under this proposed scenario?
