[HN Gopher] NASA freezes Starliner missions
___________________________________________________________________
NASA freezes Starliner missions
Author : rntn
Score : 230 points
Date : 2024-10-17 19:56 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Boeing really needs to get a break pretty soon.
|
| Feels like they broke a mirror and have 7 years of continuous bad
| luck.
| tiahura wrote:
| Boeing gets a break every day there is a jet duopoly, and both
| are booked years out on orders.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| And if you try to compete you will be hit with a 300% tariff
| which was removed once bombadier was sold to airbus for $1
| (the eu has the ability to push equivalent tariffs and also
| has assembly facilities in the us which Canada does not
| allowing it to avoid such tariffs). https://www.reddit.com/r/
| todayilearned/comments/192dfwh/til_...
| barbazoo wrote:
| Poor Boeing and their billions and billions in guaranteed
| government defence spending. They're fine.
| namaria wrote:
| Nah. The families of the people killed in avoidable crashed of
| the 737 max after Boeing misrepresented training requirements
| and hid data about new mission critical automated systems.
| Those include pilots accused of Boeing of incompetence to try
| and cover up this issue.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| My comment was directed to they have to show that whatever they
| build actually works in the near future. And not that they
| don't have money or they'll go out of business anytime soon.
|
| With the current state of affairs, it is not hard to believe
| that in 10-15 years they might be a shell of their former
| selves and they do only maintenance on existing airplanes.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >Boeing really needs to get a break pretty soon.
|
| Boeing, a corporation facing criticism for its CEO's $20+
| million compensation package and involvement in fatal airplane
| incidents and skimp out on safety because of its greed needs a
| break.
| elintknower wrote:
| That took long enough. Insane that the gov was entirely silent
| after this week's starship launch as well...
|
| Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for
| political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches
| at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our
| country.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| One way to read the delay was that the technical teams were
| working against a deadline clock that started as soon as the
| vehicle landed, to analyze and propose remedies for the
| thruster failures and helium leaks. And now they've hit that
| deadline, having found no good fixes.
| verzali wrote:
| I suspect it's more at a program level. Boeing have lost a
| lot of money on Starliner, may lose a lot more, and already
| seem lukewarm on continuing with the project. It's actually
| NASA that's keener on keeping it running, so that they are
| not entirely dependent on SpaceX for human spaceflight.
| justinclift wrote:
| NASA might need to redo the tender for the 2nd supplier of
| crewed missions, regardless of the (even further)
| reputational hit to Boeing.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| ISS is not going to stay up there for long enough for a
| new second supplier to make sense.
| elintknower wrote:
| Yes, because they're an inferior option to supply launch
| services to the ISS.
|
| Stop apologizing for a company that let their standards slip
| and endangered the lives of multiple astronauts not to
| mention wasting billions of tax payer dollars.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I wish I had any idea on how to deal with the Elon situation. I
| genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly what it
| is without him, but he's obviously also going way off the deep
| end these days and it's uncomfortable to watch one man with
| that much power getting increasingly unhinged.
|
| It's something I constantly wonder about, I strongly believe we
| should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working
| hard to flatten society, but I also worry that we need insane
| people in power sometimes to get stuff done. Starship (hell,
| even F9) is an astonishing achievement and there's zero chance
| that innovation would be possible anywhere except SpaceX or
| another entity with very strong leadership (Valve or Steve
| Jobs' Apple if they made rockets)
| Mistletoe wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-employees-
| denounce...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-employees-elon-
| musk-f...
|
| >SpaceX employees say they are relieved Elon Musk is focused
| on Twitter because there is a calmer work environment at the
| rocket company
|
| He sounds like that kind of boss we have all had where you
| actively avoid interacting with him because his ideas will be
| stupid and get your project off track. I think SpaceX
| succeeds despite having to deal with current Elon.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Having read the Isaacson biography, Elon's management style
| is essentially to be hands off then show up in "surges" of
| extreme work. It makes sense that most people would be
| happy when surges end.
|
| There's also essentially zero chance his organizations
| succeed in spite of him. This is just wishful ignorance.
| larkost wrote:
| What evidence do you offer that there is no chance of
| SpaceX succeeding in spite of Elon Musk? I really don't
| have enough detailed knowledge about his actual
| contributions to the various companies he runs.
|
| But given the sheer number of projects at the companies
| he runs I don't find it hard to believe that he is
| largely not responsible for the technical successes.
| Again, I have no evidence for it, but it would not be
| hard to believe. Do you have anything other than faith
| for that statement?
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| There are plenty of very respected people confirming that
| Elon is extremely hands on and key to Starship
| development. Also SpaceX engineers who worked directly
| with him on Reddit - take a look, it's interesting to
| read.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The fact that none of the other space startups prior to
| SpaceX, which had access to more resources, succeeded?
| Same goes with Tesla. You have to really stretch
| believability to argue that the one factor in common
| between two companies which broke into extremely hard to
| break into industries and ushered in paradigm shifts,
| happened to do so for no reason related to that common
| factor, let alone arguing that they did so in-spite of
| that common factor.
|
| We also have pretty detailed books on the history of
| SpaceX, written from employee interviews, which also
| indicate that Musk is fairly hands on. There's also this
| tweet from the designer of the Merlin rocket engine that
| is usually thrown around when these kinds of claims are
| made: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXMasterrace/comments/
| 15am9pl/t...
| sealeck wrote:
| > Same goes with Tesla.
|
| Isn't BYD a success?
| kortilla wrote:
| Yes, 15 years later
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >What evidence do you offer that there is no chance of
| SpaceX succeeding in spite of Elon Musk?
|
| Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, after
| revolutionizing e-commerce with Amazon.
|
| Two years later, Elon Musk launched SpaceX in 2002, which
| has since surged ahead of Blue Origin.
|
| Is that enough evidence?
| tagami wrote:
| Thank Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX COO
| tlrobinson wrote:
| > not responsible for the technical successes
|
| He's not doing the nitty gritty engineering day-to-day,
| but he understands enough to ask the right questions,
| give his teams permission to try ideas that seem crazy at
| first, and sometimes come up with those ideas himself
| (e.x. supposedly catching Starship with "chopsticks" was
| his idea).
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| So you think Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX and whatever else
| succeeded in spite of Elon?
| blonder wrote:
| Tesla in 2024 is certainly succeeding in spite of Elon.
| From firing the supercharging team because he had some
| kind of mental break to the tens of millions of dollars
| and engineering hours wasted on the cybertruck instead of
| another practical vehicle he clearly isn't contributing
| much to what is at this point a matured company that
| doesn't need a maniac (for better or worse) at the helm.
| skellington wrote:
| Watching stupid people criticize brilliant people is pure
| popcorn fun!
|
| You have no idea what the future of Tesla is and it isn't
| cars....
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| What you say makes sense, but this isn't the first time
| he's acted this way at any of his companies and they're
| all still going well. At some point you have to admit
| either his methods work or there's more to him than what
| you the general public see.
| DennisP wrote:
| Electric pickup trucks aren't all that popular yet, but
| the cybertruck is selling better than any of the others.
|
| https://qz.com/tesla-cybertruck-ford-f150-lightning-
| electric...
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| > I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit
| out of people and working hard to flatten society.
|
| I'm very curious about this mentality.. Do you beleive that
| meritocracy leads to better outcomes? Why do you think that
| the government is better positioned to allocate resources
| than the people who made the money?
|
| If Elon would have been "Taxed the absolute shit out of"
| after his sell of Zip 2, he wouldn't have founded paypal. too
| much tax on the paypal sell, he couldn't invest in Tesla or
| start SpaceX.
| everforward wrote:
| > Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes?
|
| Do you believe that being rich implies merit? I would argue
| most exceptionally wealthy people are likely to be at or
| above average intelligence, but the unifying element is
| luck. Being in the right place at the right time with the
| right amount of money, and knowing the right people to
| bring it together.
|
| Very few people have the means to even try to build SpaceX,
| so it's hard to say how the average person measures up.
|
| > Why do you think that the government is better positioned
| to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
|
| I don't, but I do think letting private citizens fling
| around "space program" quantities of money is going to end
| poorly. The state depends on the monopoly on violence to
| function, and every day we move closer to that monopoly
| only existing because rich private citizens choose to allow
| it.
|
| Building a Rods From God platform is not out of Elons
| reach. I don't think he would do it, but the potential is
| concerning to say the least. It would be better to reign
| that in before it becomes a problem than to wait until it
| is a problem.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| He can't build Rods From God for his personal use because
| the government won't allow it. Or are you suggesting he
| builds it then uses it to perform a one-man military coup
| on the US and disables all their defenses? That's
| complete nonsense.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > but the unifying element is luck
|
| Smart people make their own luck. You don't get lucky
| posting on the internet.
|
| > Very few people have the means to even try to build
| SpaceX
|
| Musk didn't either - he created a series of companies,
| each one financed by the success of the previous one.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Do you believe that being rich implies merit?
|
| To some degree, yes. You don't get rich by being
| incompetent, and even if you get a headstart with an
| inheritance or endowment you're still going to end up
| broke if you can't keep making money.
|
| >the unifying element is luck. Being in the right place
| at the right time with the right amount of money, and
| knowing the right people to bring it together.
|
| In Japan we say that luck is just another element of your
| abilities. We also like saying that you don't wait for
| miracles, you make them yourself.
|
| Considering that Japanese society has a fairly
| unambitious culture, them saying that should tell you
| something.
|
| >every day we move closer to that monopoly only existing
| because rich private citizens choose to allow it.
|
| The US government exists at the pleasure of the people,
| the US military serves in our interests at our pleasure.
| Government of the people, by the people, for the people
| as President Abraham Lincoln once said.
|
| Americans choosing to allow the US government is the
| system working exactly as intended.
| pests wrote:
| Starlink is prepped to add ICBM launch sensors in select
| satellites and then potential "deactivation" measures. A
| global iron dome.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I mostly feel like you didn't read my comment since you're
| pointing out the exact conundrum I did, however yes
| obviously the government is better positioned to spend some
| of that money, there are a lot of things that have long
| term positive externalities that are not captured by
| capitalist incentives. The rest of it? Why don't we just
| take it from the rich and give it to the poor. We can have
| a progressive tax that approaches 100% as you get into the
| 100s of millions of dollars that's redistributed as UBI.
| Estate taxes that prevent the buildup of generational
| wealth etc.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I think it's an organisational problem. The financial
| problem is an outcome, not a cause.
|
| Society devolves to status hierarchies, and the people
| who climb those most successfully are narcissists and
| sociopaths.
|
| So there's a default assumption that you have to be that
| kind of crazy, glib, abusive, exploitative,
| bullshitter/charlatan to do remarkable things.
|
| _Occasionally_ you get someone who is both narcissistic
| and exceptionally talented. They get shit done, but they
| leave a trail of human wreckage behind them.
|
| Sometimes - often - it eventually turns out that it isn't
| even the right shit.
|
| Meanwhile talent that lacks that narcissistic edge is
| overlooked and sidelined.
|
| This is cripplingly inefficient, because so much ability
| is just wasted.
|
| And it's very literally disastrous, because crazy people
| can't be trusted to have a sane relationship with the
| physical world or with other humans.
|
| So the problem is engineering effective hierarchies which
| are reality-based, have enough incentive to reward drive
| and talent, but exclude - or at least strongly constrain
| - unhealthy and toxic Cluster B types.
|
| Easy, isn't it?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > but they leave a trail of human wreckage behind them.
|
| Musk has not left a trail of human wreckage behind.
| wombatpm wrote:
| His children and ex wives might disagree
| WalterBright wrote:
| Musk's personal life is none of yours nor my concern.
| rapsey wrote:
| Someone worth 100B is rich as hell. Giving out that money
| to every american means less than 300 dollars each.
|
| So for that amount of money, you just killed the startup
| economy and killed all grand vision projects like SpaceX.
| Nothing gets off the ground.
|
| Sounds very much like the socialist paradise I live in
| called Europe. Where the smartest most ambitious people
| leave for the US.
| skellington wrote:
| The Marxists are downvoting you because they don't
| understand that there is no other place in history or the
| world where SpaceX/Tesla/etc. could exist other than the
| US now. But that door is rapidly closing.
|
| In not too many years, the light of human ingenuity will
| be extinguished. Elon is just in a race against time.
| rapsey wrote:
| There is another place but Americans don't like to hear
| it. The number of STEM graduates every year in China is
| equal to the entire STEM working population in the US.
| They realize the only way out for them is innovation.
| travisporter wrote:
| Please read more about the space race. Soviets were
| kicking our ass for a while until we got into high gear.
| And there was no rich billionaire, or entire govt
| institutions to help with technical debt
| 303uru wrote:
| Wait, do you actually buy into the myth that billionaires
| are billionaires because of merit?
|
| Hell, let's do a true meritocracy. Zero inheritance, zero.
| High quality public schools for all, homeschooling and
| private schools made illegal. Public and free health
| insurance, no private options. Keep that line of thought
| and you might get close to an actual meritocracy.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > do you actually buy into the myth that billionaires are
| billionaires because of merit?
|
| Yes.
|
| For example, I've missed at least 4 opportunities to
| become a billionaire, because I was too stupid to see the
| obvious in front of my face.
|
| I am the son of a mid-level Air Force officer, and
| attended public schools. After he passed I sorted through
| his tax records, and discovered that I made more money my
| first job out of college than he was making at the time
| at the end of his career.
| UberFly wrote:
| Coming up with and executing a billion dollar innovation
| is hardly a myth. While there are plenty where the term
| merit doesn't even come close to fitting, your outlook on
| the world is pretty damn jaundiced.
| smolder wrote:
| > Why do you think that the government is better positioned
| to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
|
| It might not be, mainly because it's corrupt. Secondarily,
| because popular causes are not always wise. On the flip
| side though, in theory, government works on consensus, and
| making money is not the same as merit. Oftentimes, making a
| lot of money means you took the low road and stole it from
| a worthy cause, like treating your employees or customers
| fairly and not swindling them.
| travisporter wrote:
| Why is it a blanked statement that "govt is corrupt" such
| a universal truth?
|
| People can be corrupt too - musk redirected Tesla
| resources to build his glass house
| 7952 wrote:
| But with a flatter society you could widen the pool of
| people allocating resources. Elon would have less money but
| the rest would have more.
| DennisP wrote:
| But if you want entities like SpaceX, all those other
| people have to be able to invest in them. That's not the
| case today.
|
| I think we should loosen up those rules so they can, but
| that does mean some people who aren't rich or
| sophisticated will lose their money on ill-advised
| startup investments.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit
| out of people and working hard to flatten society
|
| We wouldn't have SpaceX or Tesla with that policy.
|
| > I genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly
| what it is without him
|
| It simply wouldn't have existed without him and the
| conventional wisdom would instead be that what he's
| accomplished is impossible.
|
| > insane people
|
| Musk is the sane one. It's the rest of us that are insane.
| skellington wrote:
| there is that very famous quote:
|
| "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
| unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to
| himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable
| man," by George Bernard Shaw.
| stouset wrote:
| > We wouldn't have SpaceX or Tesla with that policy.
|
| Neither you nor I have no idea what we'd have or wouldn't
| have under a completely different set of policies.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yeah, we do, because we've seen flattened societies and
| the results.
| snailmailman wrote:
| We landed on the moon with taxpayer money. We just don't
| prioritize NASA as much anymore.
| ljsprague wrote:
| What makes you think he's unhinged? His odd tweets?
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's not just "the gov". Elon was a controversial figure just
| last year, but now the entire Internet is giving Musk-related
| everything a transparent child treatment. It's almost
| unsettling how fast the hype is going down.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Our current administration is damaging to the country. This
| anti-Musk insanity started pretty early when Biden invited all
| EV companies to the EV summit, except Tesla. Which, at that
| time produced more EVs combined than the rest.
|
| And now people are wondering why Musk doesn't like current
| administration. What a mystery.
| treflop wrote:
| This is some conspiracy BS.
|
| Why would Tesla have been invited to a summit that was
| primarily centered around United Auto Workers? Tesla is non-
| union. "EV" was only a pretext.
|
| The summit didn't invite any non-US carmakers, who also make
| EVs. It was an event about UAW. Everyone invited was UAW.
|
| The administration even said as much:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/05/white-house-answers-
| why...
| skellington wrote:
| We know that. The problem was the theater. Biden praising
| GM for "leading" in the EV space when they are so many
| years behind Tesla. Even now they sell a tiny fraction of
| the EVs.
|
| UAW will be the reason why the big 3 are all bankrupt in 10
| years.
| fallingknife wrote:
| That excuse was made up after the fact. They didn't even
| have their message straight. One of the links in the
| article is about Pete Buttigieg giving a totally different
| explanation as to why Tesla wasn't invited:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/05/u-s-secretary-of-
| transp...
|
| If it was a UAW event, perhaps he should have called it
| that and not the "EV Summit". Elon Musk has every right to
| be annoyed that he was not invited to such an event,
| although he has taken it 100x too far. But Elon Musk isn't
| a public official and Biden is the president. He has public
| duties. He ought to have been smart enough not to snub the
| richest man in the world, who rightfully should have been
| invited, over a stupid PR event.
| travisporter wrote:
| Tesla still gets tax credits and NEVI funds.
|
| One side accuses govt of favoritism and corruption and are
| trying hard to make that true. The truth is most people try
| to do the right thing.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| To what end is the government obligated to "notice" Starship?
| It's not enough that its FAA works with SpaceX to get launches
| certified (and coordinate air/sea restrictions, etc.), its NASA
| has already agreed to fund part of Starship's development (and
| be its first customer with a historic crewed mission) /
| routinely flies Falcon missions like Europa Clipper this week,
| and its DOD is a huge customer? I see no reason for a
| government agency to do media for an event outside one of their
| missions.
|
| Edit: Plus, here is NASA Administrator Bill Nelson publicly
| congratulating SpaceX after the catch anyway:
| https://x.com/SenBillNelson/status/1845461454977196294
| agiacalone wrote:
| If it's Boeing... ...I don't think anyone is
| going...
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| ...or coming back....
| euroderf wrote:
| The answer, my friend,
|
| Is Boeing in the wind.
|
| Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Iv seen the word Boeing used as a verb.
|
| "He got the Boeing treatment"
| jraph wrote:
| That would not be a verb. A verb would be:
|
| He boeinged. Or he was boeinged.
| smolder wrote:
| Or let's try not to boeing this design.
|
| Or let's boeing this whistleblower.
| schiffern wrote:
| Original NASA blog post:
|
| https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/15/nasa-update...
| OutOfHere wrote:
| > The space agency will now judge how the Starliner could be
| eventually certified to fly
|
| Methinks this will require firing all Boeing management, and
| taking it private :)
| butterlettuce wrote:
| I'm all for Elon buying it and trusting that he makes the
| necessary changes.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I think I saw recently that SpaceX is worth about 2x Boeing
| right now.
| Loughla wrote:
| Spacex is at 180bn
|
| Boeing is at 96bn
|
| I was actually prepared to call bullshit on you, but I
| stand corrected. I figured Boeing would be worth more with
| all the other things it does.
| Pedro_Ribeiro wrote:
| Airplane companies are worth surprisingly less than
| expected for how crucial and important they seem at first
| glance.
|
| The market is also not as big as you'd think.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It says a lot about the profitability and certification
| costs in the commercial market.
|
| It's a critical long lead-time, institutional industry,
| for a nation. But a moneymaker, it's not.
|
| (Even Airbus, if I'm reading it right, is at a USD$120b
| market cap)
| Crunchified wrote:
| Diverging slightly from the topic, Palm (the Palm Pilot
| company) at one point had a market cap higher than all US
| airlines combined.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Boeing is looking like an old, struggling company in a
| mature industry.
|
| This is also suggesting to me that commercial aviation
| isn't going to be seeing that much advancement going
| forward, rather than incremental changes at a
| decelerating rate. Strong headwinds, say from the energy
| transition, may actually shrink it a lot.
| wongarsu wrote:
| SpaceX is dominating the space launch industry and is
| responsible for just under half of all rockets launched
| last year (or 90% of US launches). They also have an
| extremely successful satellite internet service. And most
| importantly in both sectors SpaceX is innovation leader
| and rapidly growing.
|
| Boeing is the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the
| world (behind Airbus and Lockheed), has been in an
| ongoing crisis for 6 years over the quality of an
| airplane that was rushed out of the door to react to
| Airbus's A320neo, is looking to sell ULA which is most of
| their space launch business, with few success stories
| about the remaining space-related products under the
| Boeing brand (like Starliner or SLS). And their defense
| arm has a decade of stagnating revenue (on the same level
| as their 2002 revenue).
|
| Everything at SpaceX is pointing to growth, while
| Boeing's only saving grace is that customer lock-in,
| their size and importance to national interests (and
| national security) is slowing their fall.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| That would probably mean the end for Starliner.
|
| The government deliberately chooses nore than one supplier
| for things with high risk to mitigate exactly these kind of
| issues. Merging them might not even be allowed
| wyldfire wrote:
| I suppose this might be a joke? But it would be a ludicrously
| anti-competitive move that the government (as one of the main
| customers) would certainly block.
| solardev wrote:
| At least then we'd get all onboard Starlink and tweets
| warning us when the door's about to fall off.
| butterfly42069 wrote:
| Nah, sell Boeing to Bezos.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| I eagerly await my boeing prime membership to start out
| good and get increasingly overpriced and junk rapidly over
| time.
| uoaei wrote:
| Every second part in the rockets would be counterfeit
| inside of 5 years.
| notahacker wrote:
| But when you get the comingled aircraft in your fleet,
| will the Chinese knockoff 737s be more or less defective
| than the next generation Boeings?
| butterfly42069 wrote:
| As long as initially I can get shipped off this rock with
| free delivery it doesn't sound so bad.
| Karellen wrote:
| Part of the benefit of having Starliner and SpX is
| redundancy. Having multiple vendors to choose from/have
| compete each other/use as backups if one is grounded, is a
| large part of the point. Having anyone, including Musk, have
| control over both defeats the purpose of redundancy.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Soyuz already provides redundancy, albeit not exactly
| commercial competition. The whole point of the ride sharing
| agreement with Russia is to prevent both countries from
| having the other rely on a single vehicle, to ensure the
| station can continue to operate if either America or Russia
| is grounded.
|
| Anyway, Boeing isn't a serious competitor to SpaceX and the
| money should be given to another instead. This should have
| been done several years ago, but as they say, the second
| best time to plant an apple tree is now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the benefit of having Starliner and SpX is redundancy_
|
| Starliner provides zero redundancy. It doesn't work. If it
| did, it can't spin up quickly enough. If it could, it has a
| limited number of shots for having been designed for an
| obsolete launch vehicle
| threeseed wrote:
| Elon is under investigation by the DOJ/SEC so there is the
| possibility he ends up with jail time given his record.
|
| Also he should probably focus on Tesla and X given how poorly
| both are doing right now.
| BadHumans wrote:
| There is absolutely a 0% chance Elon goes to jail.
| threeseed wrote:
| > How long do you think my prison sentence is going to
| be? Will I see my children? I don't know.
|
| Elon Musk at least thinks it's a greater than zero
| possibility.
| watwut wrote:
| Elon Musk is pretty skilled at manipulating masses. What
| he says is what he thinks will make his fans react how he
| wants it. It does not mean he thinks he will go to prison
| nor the opposite.
|
| But, he is too rich, too politically connected, too good
| at making people outraged, so chances he goes to prison
| are very low regardless of what happened.
| airstrike wrote:
| Even after everything that's gone wrong for them, Boeing is
| still a $140B enterprise value company, of which ~$55B alone is
| debt, so even if their stock drops by another 50% they're still
| worth somewhere close to $100B... I doubt it's going private
| any time soon
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Its market cap is 95B. If 55B is debt, that leaves a market
| value of just 40B as I see it.
| airstrike wrote:
| I'm afraid that's not right. It's the other way around. The
| market cap is the equity value, i.e. just the portion owned
| by shareholders. The portion owned by debt holders is the
| debt (though you should reduce that by the amount of cash
| on the balance sheet, since it can be used to pay off part
| of the debt. I left it out for simplicity as it doesn't
| change the answer).
|
| Enterprise value (the value of all of Boeing) is the sum of
| the two (plus or minus other things like minority interest
| and whatnot, also left out for simplicity)
| gchokov wrote:
| It wasn't good while it lasted ;)
| aSithLord wrote:
| divide et impera.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Would be clearer to say that its return to flight has been
| delayed to at least around a year from now.
|
| For the fall/winter 2025 rotation they're going to plan with it
| being a Crew Dragon flight for now, subject to change depending
| on how Starliner's fixes go.
|
| They also somewhat misleadingly say that NASA will also rely on
| Soyuz because of Starliner's unavailability, but that's just
| about the seat swap arrangement which helps to ensure that both
| the US and Russia can maintain a continuous presence if either
| side's vehicles have trouble. IIRC the agreement is expiring and
| NASA's interested in extending it, but Roscosmos hasn't agreed
| yet. I say misleading because I think they intended to extend
| that agreement regardless of Starliner's status.
| closewith wrote:
| > Would be clearer to say that its return to flight has been
| delayed to at least around a year from now.
|
| I think this is a soft cancellation of Starliner. System
| certification is indefinitely paused.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Agreed. Soyuz is old but reliable and SpaceX is new and
| reliable. Why go for something in between ?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Would be clearer to say that its return to flight has been
| delayed to at least around a year from now_
|
| No. The ISS is decommissioned in 2030 and Boeing is losing
| money on the programme. It makes sense for nobody to continue
| this charade.
| notahacker wrote:
| Would think that timeline is more likely to be extended than
| shortened. There will be successor missions, and other space
| use cases for which derivatives of an astronaut transfer
| vehicle have value.
|
| The bigger question will be whether it's better for Boeing to
| take the _relatively_ low cost option of fixing the
| propulsion system which to some extent is their third party
| supplier 's issue, in a funding environment where operating
| actual missions is more favourably funded than R&D, or
| whether that's sunk cost fallacy when SpaceX is clearly ahead
| of them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that timeline is more likely to be extended than
| shortened_
|
| For the ISS? Based on what? It's most likely to remain
| where it is.
| lupusreal wrote:
| It probably won't be extended, but there isn't no reason
| for people to think otherwise. It has been extended in
| the past, and NASA's own white paper from this year says
| that extension is a possibility if there are no
| commercial LEO stations suitable to NASA by 2030 and if
| Russia agrees to continue their participation. This is
| despite the contract for the Deorbit Vehicle already
| being awarded to SpaceX; it would simply wait until
| later.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/iss-
| deorbit-...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there isn 't no reason for people to think otherwise_
|
| It's possible, not probable.
|
| It would take an act of the Congress to keep the ISS
| funded. There is zero indication that _status quo_ will
| change nor a strong constituency for changing it.
| notahacker wrote:
| This basically. Either there's a functional commercial
| replacement which is theoretically also a use case for a
| properly functioning Starliner or the ISS gets extended.
| Plausibly both. It doesn't have a fixed life limit,
| hasn't stopped working, hasn't stopped being used for
| experiments, and a commercial space boom era when
| microgravity experiments started turning into businesses
| would be a weird time for the US to decide it was a waste
| of money and give the space station monopoly to China...
| lupusreal wrote:
| The ISS may not, but Starliner does have a fixed life. It
| is meant to fly on the Atlas V, which is end-of-life.
| Once those are gone Starliner would need to be integrated
| and recertified to fly on a new rocket, probably Vulcan,
| but it's doubtful Boeing would want to spend the money to
| do this.
|
| In response to your other point, I am very skeptical of
| microgravity experiments becoming a big industry. I think
| NASA (as an organization, I'm not talking about
| individuals in NASA) is mostly interested in continuing
| human space flight simply because it keeps the public
| interested in space, which makes NASA's funding more
| secure.
| dchichkov wrote:
| It is unhealthy to not have competition to SpaceX.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _unhealthy to not have competition to SpaceX_
|
| Agree. That's why Starliner should be killed. To open those
| resources to someone who actually intends to compete with
| SpaceX.
| dchichkov wrote:
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Boeing fits at least that role_
|
| 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."
| dotnet00 wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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.
|
| Spin-launch, perhaps.
| Exoristos wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| 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.
| smolder wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| Neither I nor thinkcontext said "dumb".
|
| What you describe is still a defection in the iterated
| prisoners' dilemma sense.
| Intermernet wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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".
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| Not surprising considering his physics background...
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| 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.
| DennisP wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8nbSwjtEY
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >Boeing
|
| [...]
|
| >no drama
|
| Come again?
| usefulcat wrote:
| Intends, and (more importantly) is able to.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| 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?
| boxed wrote:
| The shuttle worked. It had many successful flights.
|
| Then it killed 7 astronauts.
|
| Then it worked again they said.
|
| Then 7 more died.
|
| > Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year
| SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic
| explosive failures?
|
| Well that's just a straight up lie.
| akira2501 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > 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)
|
| So, not exactly since the beginning
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_m
| issions
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
| akira2501 wrote:
| 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.
|
| They didn't call it "flying the arm" for nothing:
|
| https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-
| sts077-307-017-19-29-may-1...
|
| In any case, STS-1 was an insane test flight, and had
| it's own share of thermal tile problems.
| Aaron2222 wrote:
| >> Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year
| SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic
| explosive failures?
|
| > Well that's just a straight up lie.
|
| I'm guessing they're confusing the _expected_ ,
| catastrophic explosive "failures" on experimental
| Starship prototypes with payload-carrying F9/FH flights.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Yes, when you redefine failure to mean success,
| everything can be a success.
|
| That kid who got 1% on his test? He passed, if you
| redefine the threshold for passing to mean something that
| everyone else would consider a failure.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Well that's one way to tell the world you've never built
| anything new.
| Aaron2222 wrote:
| 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.
| gridspy wrote:
| Especially when each rocket successfully makes it further
| into the test, beyond the point where the previous
| iteration failed.
| kortilla wrote:
| I want to short anything you're involved in
| boxed wrote:
| 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.
| blankx32 wrote:
| The shuttle worked within its constraints, bad management
| killed the astronauts
| krisoft wrote:
| > It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so
| serious.
|
| How do you know how serious the issue was?
| jerkstate wrote:
| My guess is because it returned to earth (unmanned)
| without any problems
| krisoft wrote:
| 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.)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| IIRC NASA requires a 1/270 chance of failure in space.
| krisoft wrote:
| 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]
|
| 1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-
| abstrac...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| >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.
| globalnode wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the comedy of spacex
|
| What?
| kiba wrote:
| 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.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Tell me you own Boeing stock without telling me you own
| Boeing stock.
| ordu wrote:
| _> 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.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >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.
| tagami wrote:
| New Glenn, eventually.
| K0balt wrote:
| 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.
| Yeul wrote:
| Boeing is just bizarre to me.
|
| The aviation industry is seeing massive growth in new
| Asian markets, their only competition has a massive
| backlog and STILL Boeing is sinking.
|
| God knows if they could survive an actual recession.
| zarzavat wrote:
| There's completion but it will come from China. Nobody else
| is paying attention.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Musk is getting older. I bet his motivation is to fulfill
| the mission of humanity on Mars before he passes.
| Intermernet wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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.
|
| What more could you want?
|
| > downward spiral
|
| Oh come on.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| 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.
| yarg wrote:
| 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.
| atoav wrote:
| 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.
| charrondev wrote:
| 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?
| Yeul wrote:
| I think the Chinese already fill that role.
|
| We all know why America (and the Chinese) want to go to
| Mars and it ain't for science.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Perhaps I'm the only one who doesn't know. Care to
| enlighten me?
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| I'm confused about your "no" here. The comment to which
| you're replying is clarifying misleading wording, but your
| comment is an opinion on what should happen.
| schiffern wrote:
| s/should/will/
| schiffern wrote:
| Since apparently I'm being misunderstood: the comment
| wasn't "clarifying" anything, it was only attempting to re-
| impose _euphemistic and deceptive PR language_.
|
| Everyone knows Starliner is as good as dead. It's what
| Boeing wants even, since Starliner is a huge money pit.
|
| The only ones propping up this continued "delay" fiction
| are the NASA and Boeing PR departments.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| > No. The ISS is decommissioned in 2030 and Boeing is losing
| money on the programme. It makes sense for nobody to continue
| this charade.
|
| There is an important point here that needs to be emphasized.
| To fix starliner you need to build up personnel familiar with
| construction, operations, and build/test enough hardware to
| iterate kinks. This requires investment that Boeing being a
| publicly traded company cannot do for free (or they will get
| sued) and NASA is unlikely to pay them to do it. So this is
| catch 22, they will fix current issues, but given how long it
| will take, there is a high chance of causing new issues due
| to loss of essential personnel who would know how to
| integrate fixes with existing design constraints... so
| unfortunately charade characterization fits.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I have to imagine that as a company, investing back into
| the company for the future will be a pretty easy lawsuit to
| win.
|
| Especially when your stock price has returned back to where
| it was before a lot of divestment started.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Investing back into yourself is _generally_ true, but
| only under healthy economic conditions. Boeing exists in
| a really weird place of being "too big to fail" (ie a
| monopoly) where investing money into personnel and
| improved processes is actually wasteful towards the
| shareholders because it isn't necessary to maintain the
| core business.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Boeing is only too big to fail in the business of
| building passenger airliners. Maybe there is some
| strategic interest in keeping their defence arm afloat.
| But their space business is subject to market forces.
| There are plenty of players willing and able to replace
| Boeing in that specific industry.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| But the shareholders have been taken care of, right? Is the
| sacred shareholder OKAY?
|
| Never mind that a famed company has been dismantled to pump the
| stock for a few years (and how long it took is a testament to its
| former excellence).
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Blind-Tragedy-Fall-Boeing/dp/0...
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| What do shareholders have to do with it? Why are they so
| different from shareholders of Microsoft, Apple, Google,
| Facebook...? Do you really think they are happy now? No-damn-
| body would trade enormous future profits from one of the
| biggest opportunities of the future for some measly one-time
| millions today, in today's dollars. Space industry is going to
| produce many trillionaires.
| tjpnz wrote:
| This is the company which famously asked its engineers to put
| the shareholders at top of mind when making all of their
| decisions.
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| So what? That doesn't mean anything. The shareholders
| didn't say this, the management of the company did.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The shareholders are supposed to fire management when
| they are being stupid.
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| It's not that easy with such a big company. Look at Tesla
| and Musk. A management-aligned board can put a stop to
| many things the shareholders would like to do.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Since the shareholders elect the board, I guess there
| might be a lesson for democracy in here too.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| I think the problem is that the shareholders do not care
| about _long-term_ profits either. They keep the
| management because the management prioritizes the
| shareholders and not the company or its customers.
|
| We live in the stupid times. After watching others get
| rich off of Bitcoin, GameStop, and companies with
| fantastical valuations, everyone wants it to go the Moon
| ASAP.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Thinking about shareholders in one broad stroke isn't
| useful.
|
| There are shareholders who care explicitly about long-
| term (at least 20~30+ years) profits. These are investors
| who are investing for retirement. The problem here is
| most of them hold index funds or have the money managed
| by a third-party, so they are indirect shareholders who
| may or may not have voting rights themselves and may not
| care to vote in the first place. Bogleheading is
| explicitly about not giving a damn, after all.
|
| The shareholders who hold stocks directly may or may not
| care about long-term profits. Investors holding for
| retirement do, though whether they would vote is anyone's
| guess. Traders don't care who or what the stock is, all
| they care about is whether they turn a profit in the next
| second. Investors holding for income today (read:
| dividends) care about short-term profits, though again
| whether they vote is anyone's guess. Shareholders who
| hold for biased reasons ("I love <company>!") will
| probably vote, but whether they care about profits at all
| is anyone's guess.
|
| Anecdata: I hold Boeing stock (BA) through SWPPX which is
| an S&P 500 index mutual fund. Most of my interest is
| returns in about 20 to 30 years' time when I reach
| retirement age. I do not have voting rights as far as I
| am aware, and frankly I can't be arsed to care about
| voting.
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| Retail is _very insignificant_ holder of this kind of
| stock. Less than 10-30% total in most cases of S &P
| stocks. It's mostly the pension funds, and big investors.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If we're talking institutional investors, logic suggests
| most of their votes would favour intermediate-term
| policies overall since their various interests encompass
| the whole breadth of short-, mid-, and long-term.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Its not that shareholders dont care, its that ownership
| isnt concentrated enough in a shareholder that both cares
| and is competent. I wrote my undergrad econometrics paper
| on this, it was actually pretty interesting. You
| inevitably end up with board capture and short term focus
| unless there is an elon or group of elons with enough
| shareholder votes to threaten management because
| uninvolved shareholders tend to listen to the managent
| and management wants to capture the board so they can
| vote themselves higher comp which relies on short term
| performance for the payout, which is much larger for the
| ceo than longterm returns on existing comp holdings. It
| has likey gotten much worse since passive blackrock et al
| etfs gained such large market share because they vote the
| shares in ways that benefits them which is only loosely
| correlated with beneffitting the ultimate share owner.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| And moved its headquarters 2,000 miles away to not be close
| to those annoying "engineers".
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Any member of management, at any company, whose focus is more
| on their next-quarter or end-of-year payout (which seems to
| be most of them), will cheerfully trade enormous future
| profits for _other people_ for a short-term profit for
| _themselves_.
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| That's my whole point. It's the management/possibly board,
| not the shareholders.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Sadly I expect the vast majority of shareholders would
| individually trade the future health and profits of the
| company for their own immediate benefit as well, were
| they in a position to make the same choice. You're right
| that since they collectively don't benefit from such
| short-sighted focus, they wouldn't make the same choice.
|
| It's outside my bailiwick and I'm not quite sure how it
| happened, but it seems to me that over the course of a
| few decades (70s to 00s?) we went from a model of
| corporate management where the various mechanisms of
| "cripple the company for the short-term benefit of upper
| management (plus a few well connected others)" were
| neither sophisticated nor, well, _thinkable_ , or at
| least not acceptable, to one where both the ability and
| the practice of doing so are near-ubiquitous.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| We have a serious problem with corporate governance in this
| country. To be clear, it should NOT BE POSSIBLE to hollow out
| and destroy a company in this way and be rewarded for it by
| wall street. We keep blaming the bad actors, but the truth is,
| the regulators are at fault: It should be impossible to profit
| in this way. Changes to corporate governance rules would leave
| this still possible for private companies, but public companies
| would be judged differently and to a higher standard. Anyone
| here a public policy wonk who can explain how to change this?
| g-b-r wrote:
| > Anyone here a public policy wonk who can explain how to
| change this?
|
| Stop considering the bad actors legal persons that can buy
| off the regulators
| jfengel wrote:
| Yeah. You start by not electing a political party who hates
| government in general and regulators in particular.
|
| Their opponents aren't always great shakes but it's no
| surprise that government functions badly when it's so often
| under the control of people whose existence is devoted to
| making it work badly. Maybe they could make a case for making
| it work better, but for decades they've said over and over
| that the only thing they want is to drown it in a bathtub.
|
| I apologize for being political but surely people can see a
| connection between regulatory failure and management by an
| explicit hatred of all regulators.
|
| Not precisely a policy wonk but I live surrounded by them.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| If the aerospace industry doesn't have enough regulation
| for you I'm puzzled to think of one that does.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's funny to say that, when propping up Boeing is a
| bipartisan thing. They're both willing to move Heaven and
| Earth to give taxpayer money to Boeing, regardless of
| performance.
| zaphar wrote:
| You fix this by letting Boeing fail. They keep going because
| our government keeps bailing them out. We deem them too
| important to fail so we keep holding their corpse up Weekend
| at Bernies style and hope the voodoo music doesn't cut out.
|
| Fix the regulatory regime but also streamline it so other
| companies can begin to compete. We'll be without a domestic
| Airliner manufacturer for a bit but I don't think you fix
| this without eating that pain for a while.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Boeing is failing because the government let it "self-
| regulate". This is directly related to the MAX tragedies.
| The assumption that a company will do the worst possible
| thing as a "citizen" should always be the starting point.
|
| Air travel did not become one of the safest ways of
| transport out of the pure, intrinsic will of the industry
| to be better. it took decades of beating them into doing
| what's right.
|
| Why don't we still have video recordings of cockpits for
| the Black Box? It would dramatically help in solving
| accidents, but the industry has been fighting this tooth
| and nail. "It's expensive!". "Safety" never comes up -
| that's the government's job.
| zaphar wrote:
| Boeing is failing because it's a private company with no
| market consequences for doing badly and no domestic
| competition. Those are not caused by self-regulation they
| are caused by bad economic policy. Regulation is a part
| of the story but the rot at Boeing started long before
| the self-regulation did. Their quality and ability to
| compete at a profit has been dropping for longer than the
| regulatory issues.
| tootie wrote:
| Honestly this feels like an indictment of privatizing space
| travel. SpaceX is a perfect storm of a benefactor with
| unbelievable wealth being able to hoard the best engineers money
| can buy. And now the advancements they've made are proprietary.
| Ideally Boeing and SpaceX could just collaborate and not have
| fight each other and waste a load of time and money. If the point
| is an open, competitive field driving space exploration forward,
| it seems we don't have that.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Boeing has (had?) more money than Musk ever did, so Boeing's
| failures are their own fault.
|
| When an entire fucking conglomerate including a substantial
| portion of the military industrial complex loses to a lone man,
| the problem isn't the lone man.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's an interesting take. My take is that SpaceX shows the
| enormous benefit of privatizing space activities, and of a
| vertically integrated provider.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| But... that's the model of the US space program from the get
| go. We're just trading one private company for another. Apollo
| 11 was contracted out to Boeing, Rockwell, and Grumman. The
| Space Shuttle was the United Space Alliance (Rockwell /
| Lockheed Martin), the engines were made by Rocketdyne...
|
| The only change right now is that NASA is no longer the only
| party designing missions, because entities such as SpaceX have
| enough integrated expertise to run their own show start to
| finish.
|
| It's also the most successful space program in the world, so
| what's the benchmark we're comparing it to? The failings of the
| US space program had relatively little to do with private
| contractors, and a lot to do with politics and the voting
| public not liking risk.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| There's also the fact that companies like Boeing have grown
| fat off of blank check contracts from the government, such
| that they are no longer capable of doing the job.
|
| Boeing has already openly stated that they won't bid on fixed
| price contracts anymore, and lately we have all sorts of
| other damning information like how repairs for the ground
| support systems for SLS are running so late they might cause
| Artemis 2 to be delayed further, while SpaceX effectively
| nuked their launch pad last year and was ready to fly, with
| upgrades, just 6 months later.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Cost plus contracts are an absolute disease that atrophies
| any company's ability to ship on a budget
| TMWNN wrote:
| > SpaceX is a perfect storm of a benefactor with unbelievable
| wealth being able to hoard the best engineers money can buy.
|
| Musk began SpaceX with $100 million of his own cash, almost his
| entire wealth from having been the majority owner of PayPal
| when eBay bought it; lots for you and me, but not so compared
| to the budgets of the Boeings and Airbuses of the world. He and
| it certainly didn't have infinite amounts of capital during the
| years it developed Falcon and Dragon, and both came very close
| to bankruptcy early on. Until Tesla's market cap blew up during
| the COVID-19 era, Musk had a "mere" few tens of billions of
| dollars.
|
| In any case, infinite capital guarantees absolutely nothing.
| Jeff Bezos has been among the world's wealthiest men for far,
| far longer than Musk's entry into that group. He founded Blue
| Origin, his own rocket company, before Musk founded SpaceX, but
| Blue Origin has yet to send a single rocket to orbit. Let me
| paraphrase an excellent comment I saw on Reddit, in response to
| one of the usual lies about how the only reason SpaceX is a
| decade ahead of the rest of the world is that it got zillions
| in subsidies from the US government:
|
| >If large amounts of funding is the only thing required to
| succeed, Blue Origin would now have a nuclear-powered
| spacecraft orbiting Pluto.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Plus, back when Musk and Bezos entered aerospace, a common
| joke was "how do you become a millionaire in aerospace? Start
| as a billionaire!", SpaceX was the exception to the trend,
| and had fewer resources than even other previous space
| startups.
|
| Part of the reason NASA was so doubtful of SpaceX at first
| was that they had previously heavily supported other space
| startups, only for them to fail to deliver.
|
| Arguing that SpaceX is hoarding all the talent is also funny
| when considering that many other space startups are by ex-
| SpaceX employees, and SpaceX is often described as having a
| high churn rate.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| This is an absolutely ridiculous take. Look at Arianespace:
| https://videopress.com/embed/DYF1wrn8?hd=1&cover=1&loop=0&au...
|
| Is there any world where any western government created
| reusable rockets by 2025 without space x? No chance.
|
| And should we talk about the enormous dysfunction of NASA?
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/10/02/sls-is-still-a...
|
| This isn't because their best engineers get hired by space x,
| it's because the system is set up to fail and there's
| absolutely no accountability.
|
| Are there some well-functioning organizations? Sure. Would they
| have been able to accomplish anything remotely close in cost,
| speed, or safety of space x? No.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > Honestly this feels like an indictment of privatizing space
| travel
|
| NASA has involved the private sector for over half a century.
| Taking that out of the equation leaves you with SpaceX
| absolutely killing it and Boeing bumbling along despite getting
| bigger contracts from the government, so it's hard for me to
| draw this same conclusion.
|
| > a benefactor with unbelievable wealth being able to hoard the
| best engineers
|
| Hmm.. the implication here doesn't ring true at all. "Oh how I
| wish I could work at Boeing where all the real innovation
| happens, but here I am stuck at SpaceX due to these darn golden
| handcuffs". I hope SpaceX people get paid a lot, but I suspect
| the draw for most is what they are doing and the speed at which
| they are doing it.
| panick21_ wrote:
| You should consider first learning the facts before you just
| make up stuff.
|
| > SpaceX is a perfect storm of a benefactor with unbelievable
| wealth
|
| This is nonsense. Musk is rich BECAUSE OF SPACEX (and Tesla).
| When SpaceX was created Musk 'only' had 100 million $ and all
| of that was invested in SpaceX. After that, Musk never again
| put money in the company.
|
| If you look into the history of this, you will see many other
| people with that much money that failed to get anywhere.
|
| SpaceX is successful because they successfully executed on
| contracts and found many costumers.
|
| > hoard the best engineers money can buy.
|
| This is another completely made up statement. SpaceX did not go
| after the best established engineers. In fact SpaceX became
| famous for giving incredibly amount of responsibility to
| underpaid junior engineers.
|
| Are you just making up stuff because you don't like SpaceX?
|
| > And now the advancements they've made are proprietary.
|
| And how much money does NASA save by using non-proprietary
| technologies? If they cost 10-100x more, what's the benefit of
| NASA owning things?
|
| > Ideally Boeing and SpaceX could just collaborate and not have
| fight each other and waste a load of time and money.
|
| Why would SpaceX collaborate with Boeing? SpaceX doesn't need
| anything from Boeing.
|
| If NASA would have wanted to save money, they could have only
| given the Crew contract to SpaceX. This was unlikely, more
| likely would have been giving the contract to only Boeing.
|
| Many large cooperation working together has a long history of
| not working. Consider the cost of SLS for example. Or the
| Orion. What bases of data do you take into account here that
| suggest NASA would have saved money if they had forced SpaceX
| to work with Boeing?
|
| But NASA considered that it was actually cheaper to give two
| fixed price contracts rather then a single cost plus contract.
| And it seems to have worked for NASA.
|
| > If the point is an open, competitive field driving space
| exploration forward, it seems we don't have that.
|
| And yet the US has the most competitive most active space
| flight industry in the world. China and Europe would kill to
| have even 1/10 the amount of success.
|
| So what are you basing your statement on?
| tootie wrote:
| I'm not indicting SpaceX at all. They've very obviously been
| very successful. My hypothesis is there isn't room or
| capacity for more competition. They caught lightning in a
| bottle and it may never happen again. I may be wrong idk why
| people seem mad.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I'm not sure you expressed that well and some of your facts
| were just false but are expressed confidently, that tends
| to wind people up a bit.
|
| > They caught lightning in a bottle and it may never happen
| again.
|
| Sure but doing it the old way you all but guarantee that
| its not gone happen again.
|
| In terms of engineering success, SpaceX didn't have some
| magical pill. Suggesting that these new processes could
| result in other successful companies. The recent successful
| moon lander in the CLIPS program is at least amazing as the
| Falcon 1 was.
|
| > My hypothesis is there isn't room or capacity for more
| competition.
|
| We have to differentiate the markets. Are you talking about
| human space flight only? Then you might be right in the
| short term. But NASA can at least guarantee flights if
| somebody else invests in it.
|
| In other markets much more competition exists.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin _before_ SpaceX started, and he
| was certainly a hell lot richer than Elon Musk at that time and
| many years longer. The narrative of SpaceX owing their success
| to Elon Musk being rich doesn 't align with the facts.
| senderista wrote:
| He also deliberately kept their budget small and headcount
| low, on the theory that "constraints breed innovation". Read
| _The Everything Store_ for details.
| dboreham wrote:
| Good to see that proved wrong with a controlled experiment.
| mkl wrote:
| I haven't read that book, but that contradicts what I've
| read elsewhere, and it's from 2013. Wikipedia says: "By
| July 2014, Jeff Bezos had invested over $500 million into
| the company, and the vast majority of further funding into
| 2016 was to support technology development and operations
| where a majority of funding came from Jeff Bezos' private
| investment fund. In April 2017, an annual amount was
| published showing that Jeff Bezos was selling approximately
| $1 billion in Amazon stock per year to invest in the
| company. Jeff Bezos has been criticized for spending
| excessive amounts of his fortune on spaceflight." --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin
| renewiltord wrote:
| Guys, we shouldn't have private spaceflight that is cheaper. We
| should have government spaceflight that's more expensive.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Seems pointless to keep persisting with it given the ISS is
| approaching EOL. There are also a finite supply of boosters left
| it can fly on.
| mglz wrote:
| Wasn't it also supposed to go to the moon station for Artemis?
| Or is that also a non-starter if Starship works out?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Nope, Starliner is not designed to go beyond low Earth orbit.
| You might be thinking of the commercial space stations
| intended to replace the ISS, where, yes, Starliner was
| proposed as the crew transport for Blue Origin's station.
| asau wrote:
| While I always knew what Starliner is supposed to be, when
| worded in this way:
|
| > Starliner is not designed to go beyond low Earth orbit
|
| It's actually hilarious they chose this name.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The name of the specific Starliner that got stuck at the
| ISS?
|
| Calypso.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner_Calypso
|
| Who/what is Calypso?
|
| >In Greek mythology, Calypso was a nymph who lived on the
| island of Ogygia, where, according to Homer's Odyssey,
| she detained Odysseus for seven years against his will.
| She promised Odysseus immortality if he would stay with
| her, but Odysseus preferred to return home. Eventually,
| after the intervention of the other gods, Calypso was
| forced to let Odysseus go.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_(mythology)
|
| Yeah. Whoever named Starliner and that specific one are
| bloody geniuses.
| DavidMankin wrote:
| I heard on NPR (I think) that it was astronaut Suni
| Williams herself that named it Calypso. Hope she's not
| detained for seven years!
| Melatonic wrote:
| Self fulfilling prophecy - hilarious !
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You're probably thinking of Orion which is being manufactured
| by Lockheed Martin and Airbus.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)
| perihelions wrote:
| That's Lockheed Martin's unrelated Orion [0] spacecraft
| (which launches on the SLS orbital rocket, which is
| contracted primarily to Boeing). It's been under development
| since 2004; spent $29.4 billion; flown twice without
| astronauts--in 2014, and in 2022; and still doesn't work [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/nasa-confirms-
| independ...
| dgrin91 wrote:
| I wonder if Boeing will cancel starliner since they already lost
| 1B+ and won't have a chance to earn on it for a while
| Vecr wrote:
| If they don't fix it, what will their reputation be like? In
| isolation giving up is probably the correct thing to do, if it
| wasn't so extremely public.
| solardev wrote:
| Does Boeing still have any reputation left worth saving?
| Seems like they gotta start from scratch regardless.
| panick21_ wrote:
| If they drop this program they basically fuck over NASA.
| And Boeing is still the prime contractor on SLS. Meaning
| that NASA could very well finally stop playing nice over
| SLS.
|
| And if Boeing wants to ever recover a chance on major NASA
| contracts, they can't let NASA down on this. Unless the
| want to just leave the space business.
| solardev wrote:
| > Unless the want to just leave the space business.
|
| Do they really have a choice...? I haven't been following
| this very closely, but it seems like SpaceX is eating
| their lunch regardless, and Boeing the overall
| organization is in crisis, isn't it? Will they even still
| be around in a year or two, much less continue to make
| space things for NASA?
| lukeschlather wrote:
| I mean, yes they might close up shop entirely but that's
| not really an outcome they want.
|
| Really, Boeing needs to have a come to jesus moment on
| several different things - they need to say "hey so
| clearly SLS is a mistake, we need to develop something
| like Starship, give us $5 billion we'll make it happen."
|
| Although it also seems like they need to have a better
| engineering culture and organizationally they would
| prefer to retaliate against engineers trying to improve
| their culture. If they don't fix that, probably can't fix
| anything. But also if they had a good engineering culture
| they probably would've scrapped SLS 5 years ago.
| mshockwave wrote:
| NASA used to be nice over SLS was that they really didn't
| have a choice + congress pressure (hiring people who lost
| their jobs due to space shuttle cancelation) but now it
| seems like NASA _does_ have a choice to choose an
| alternative (and waaay cheaper) vehicle over SLS. Curious
| whether those senators will keep their pressure.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Boeing is still the prime contractor on SLS. Meaning
| that NASA could very well finally stop playing nice over
| SLS_
|
| NASA has been trying to cancel SLS for a decade. It's
| nicknamed the Senate Launch System for a reason.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That's not really true. Can you show me the evidence for
| that?
|
| The reality is that large parts of NASA are extremely
| supportive of SLS. We know from reporting that this is
| true. It was NASA Johnson engineers who pushed the
| design. No NASA Administrator has ever dared to even
| question the SLS or publicly speak in criticism at best
| the have lightly pushed for solutions around SLS.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Europa Clipper was supposed to fly on SLS. That not
| happening saved several billion dollars. SLS is a fat
| disgusting barrel of pork that should be canceled and
| hidden for the sake of NASA's own reputation, not to
| mention taxpayers. If they continue with SLS when
| Starship is in serial production and flying regularly, it
| will make NASA look like one of the most inefficient and
| corrupt organizations in American history. It will be
| NASA's own neck on the chopping block if they don't
| distance themselves from SLS soon.
| travisporter wrote:
| Sadly this is wishful thinking. But I must push back
| against the "corruption". NASA cannot allocate its own
| resources by design. It's all from congress who happily
| will pour money into jobs in their districts.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The contract is set up in such a way that there was initially
| some development money (that wasn't actually enough to cover
| development), but the bulk of the payments in the contract come
| from flying the actual operational missions, which Boeing is
| yet to fly any of.
|
| The neat part from government perspective is that it doesn't
| matter how much Boeing has already lost on the contract,
| whether it makes sense for them to go on depends strictly on
| whether they believe they can fly the remaining contracted-for
| flights for less than the payouts. And this is probably still
| true. Yes, they will lose money overall on the contract, but
| they will lose less money if they complete it.
| mjevans wrote:
| I wonder how expensive a proper thruster redesign will be
| though? The lose less money depends on as is rather than as
| correctly designed and validated which they're at the very
| expensive last few percent to reach.
| ein0p wrote:
| Sanity prevails. A rare turn of events for US government whose
| main motto in life is "we don't care - we don't have to"
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| I've noticed some negative comments about Elon Musk.
|
| However, let's focus on the issues at hand.
|
| Boeing's track record, including Starliner and commercial planes,
| raises legitimate safety concerns.
|
| It appears they've compromised safety for financial gains. Should
| we prioritize supporting Starliner despite these issues merely
| because of personal opinions about Musk?
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| It's something when a ball of talent manifests in such a way that
| a forum of scholars and engineers look for someone to blame.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's too bad that Elon Musk and Kelly Johnson never met. Both are
| engineers' engineers doing impossible things, and I bet they
| would have had a blast.
| defrost wrote:
| One is a qualified engineer with a Bachelor's and Master's
| Degree in Aeronautical Engineering and demonstrated hands on
| ability designing and building complex new designs, the other
| _manages_ Engineers with a "Physics for Business Majors" unit
| and a Homer Simpson approach to practicality.
|
| Hats off to the Engineers Engineers that Engineered the
| chopsticks catch, there were quite a few getting into the
| technical weeds:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F2...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yes, anyone could have done what Musk did. But only Musk did
| it.
|
| P.S. I've read full length biographies of both, and am an
| ME/AE engineer myself. I think I have at least some grasp of
| what they have accomplished.
| gradschoolfail wrote:
| May the gods of equanimity forgive my snarky intrusion.. if
| a bit-hacker gets into a fight [bitva] with a it-hacker,
| i'm ever only going to side with the it-hacker (even if the
| elite ex-it-hacker bit-hacker has a history of lauding
| (/laundering the reps of reputed) it-hackers..
|
| I dont know what the general solution is here.. make sure
| (organizational) Hierarchies are as fluid as the Recompense
| (including, by reputation) & Responsibilties, i suppose
|
| nu_H = nu_RR
|
| where nu has units of viscosity
|
| Failing so, i'd prefer to defer judgement after we've had
| blood samples from both Kelly n Musk. (For lead, fluoride,
| other psychoactives etc)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| what about volume viscosity? or did "fluid" imply
| incompressible Hierarchies?
|
| (IMX rapidly expanding Hierarchies do not [pace Landau]
| relax on a negligible time scale)
| fallingknife wrote:
| Nobody deserving of the name "engineer," or more generally
| anybody who is actually mentally capable of any kind of
| creativity or innovation, gives the slightest shit about
| those worthless credentials and bureaucracy other than to be
| irritated by having to waste time obtaining them.
| defrost wrote:
| They do care about the ability to calculate loads across
| truss configurations, develop inverted pedulum feedback
| controls, etc.
|
| One of the people metioned was good at that kind of work,
| the other .. not so much.
| fallingknife wrote:
| OK, now you're talking about actual skills and not what
| credentials you have. I do respect those skills. It's
| just that if I took the time to learn those things, the
| odds that I could do it are close to 100%. On the other
| hand, if you asked me to:
|
| 1. hire and retain the top performing aerospace
| engineering team in the world 2. make suggestions for
| major engineering decisions that that team actually ends
| up using
|
| I think my odds would be 0.00001% or less.
| dmead wrote:
| I'm really surprised people still think he's doing the work and
| not just a salesman.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Why was NASA/Boeing/Bezos/Branson/Russia/etc unable to do it?
|
| BTW, Musk took enormous personal risk on these ventures,
| betting his whole fortune on it.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| I wish we had many more "salesmen" like him in other
| industries.
| dmead wrote:
| Amazing bootlicking guys. 10/10.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I will _ecstatically_ lick the boots of a guy who 's taking
| us where no man has gone before like it's the 1960s and 70s
| again.
|
| Catching Starship 5 like they did was something straight
| out of anime, and I still can't entirely believe that was
| real. Please give us more of that, Musk.
|
| Don't even get me started with Starlink redefining
| satellite internet, Tesla lighting a bonfire under every
| car manufacturer's arse, or Mysterious Twitter X becoming
| actually good if not necessarily profitable. Jeez.
| dmead wrote:
| Gross.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| Read a biography instead of just NYT headlines.
| __m wrote:
| One of them is a real engineer, the other one is a back seat
| engineer.
| osigurdson wrote:
| As soon as a company ceases to be cool it is game over.
| Professional management takes over and works in managing costs.
| Fine if you are a REIT, otherwise = death for most businesses.
| TeslaCoils wrote:
| Might as well start calling it McDonnell Douglas Starliner ;)
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