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> No, this isn’t normal at all. Hm. Significant delays and missed timelines aren't normal you say? Let's see (aerospace only): • all SpaceX projects so far (U

by qayxc 5y ago

> No, this isn’t normal at all. Hm. Significant delays and missed timelines aren't normal you say? Let's see (aerospace only): • all SpaceX projects so far (USA) • Virgin Galactic's space tourism plans (USA) • Boeing's 787 and 777X (USA) • HAL's Sukhoi-30-, Jaguar Darin III-, and Tejas LCA projects and production (India) • BAE Systems Plc/TAI TF-X project (UK/Turkey) • EADS's MRH-90, Tiger, and A400M (EU) • Airbus A380 (EU) • Comac’s C919 project (China) • ... TBH, it'd be easier to list projects that actually finished on schedule and didn't face significant delays, such as the Airbus A350XWB. And most of the companies listed aren't even money-starved start-ups that required investor attention and media hype. It's almost as if developing, testing, and certifying cutting edge aerospace projects is kind of hard and just as easy to predict and schedule as large software projects...

iab 5y ago
Interesting comment about the XWB. The hype-driving is obviously necessary - nothing is ever more than ~5 years away, because that is the limit of VC/consumer patience.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  Worked out quite well for Theranos didn't it?
  - iab 5y ago
    The exemplar of the wrong mix of engineering and hubris
  - simplicio 5y ago
    Theranos isn't really the same thing though, they didn't pretend that they were on the verge of a breakthrough, they said they had already had the breakthrough and the tech was working and deployed. That's less "hype" and more just straight up "fraud". Boom Supersonic is obviously overly optimistic in their deadlines, but they at least aren't pretending that they're meeting them when they aren't.
    - rjzzleep 5y ago
      Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that Boom is Theranos, I wish them well. I merely pointed out that your reasoning of not holding people to account to deadlines that are 10 years over the initial estimate. Maybe it's time to address this at a VC level, because some things absolutely do need 10 years and the current VC culture absolutely gives rise to fraud at different levels. They are a lot more similar that you like to admit though. Both of their hype descriptions are to support the hype culture that powers the environment they live in, namely silicon valley(even if they're not physically there). It's just that at some point Theranos decide to resort to lying to keep the whole thing going. The scope that Theranos promised was actually physically infeasible, some subsection of it might have been possible. Boom will hopefully not do that. But in terms of engineering, Boom also has yet to produce even a prototype of their plane. A test version is scheduled to testflight in 2021. We'll see about that, I don't think it will happen. Although 7 years for a supersonic jet from scratch would have been quite impressive. Theranos could have chosen to build a bigger machine with a more limited amount of tests once they realized it's not possible, but they decided to tackle too many problems at once and double down on them. But what we conveniently like to ignore is that investors, politicians and media perpetuated the whole lie. It wasn't just Holmes, it was an entire culture of VC's and politicians that had a vested interest in perpetuating the lie and to some extent helped silence critics. Besides the obvious scammy and blatant lies that Theranos leadership did(down the line). There was also the aspect of feature creep (i.e. 200 tests per tiny blood vial) and ignoring both leadership and biochemical specialists(i.e. sample size and machine size). In the case of Boom I like to think that at least Josh Wilding seeing that he has been an Aerospace engineer for 20 years has mentioned the issues with the timeline, and was overruled probably by either his peers or VCs, but we won't really know for sure. But if the engineering cofounder is already not involved at this point, let's hope that other issues won't follow.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Well, if you are so stupid that you basically require people to lie to you, you will be lied to. It's amazing that there are so many people willing to lie in order to make honestly good ideas viable, instead of everybody just being like Theranos.
  - oivey 5y ago
    Theranos was magic tech that they managed to never have to prove worked. We’ve been building supersonic jets for a very long time.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Yeah. There's zero question that a 50 passenger supersonic commercial jet can be built. The questions are things like timeline, cost, and specs.
- cma 5y ago
  How real of a commitment is this announcement? General Motors announced all that stuff with Nikola and then was able to pull out of it pretty quickly when it turned out Nikola had faked a demo.
aaronblohowiak 5y ago
Also the SLS and the JSF...
throw0101a 5y ago
> • Boeing's 787 and 777X (USA) Don't forget the KC-46 tanker. Even though they had a working KC-767 to start from.
chx 5y ago
Bombardier C-Series, anyone? It was authorized by the board in 2005, first flight was planned for 2008, entry into service was planned in 2010. First flight was 2013, it entered in service in 2018 (January, but still).
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Bombardier Canada had/has chronic funding problems, so those are combined funding/engineering milestones, which is not similar to US development programs with their unlimited budgets. In fact, what Bombardier accomplished is so amazing that Boeing had to crush them or have the 737 market eroded. The A220 is rocking,
ketamine__ 5y ago
First one is easy. Elon is a pathological liar.

by qayxc 5y ago

iab 5y ago

Interesting comment about the XWB. The hype-driving is obviously necessary - nothing is ever more than ~5 years away, because that is the limit of VC/consumer patience.

rjzzleep 5y ago
Worked out quite well for Theranos didn't it?
- iab 5y ago
  The exemplar of the wrong mix of engineering and hubris
- simplicio 5y ago
  Theranos isn't really the same thing though, they didn't pretend that they were on the verge of a breakthrough, they said they had already had the breakthrough and the tech was working and deployed. That's less "hype" and more just straight up "fraud". Boom Supersonic is obviously overly optimistic in their deadlines, but they at least aren't pretending that they're meeting them when they aren't.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that Boom is Theranos, I wish them well. I merely pointed out that your reasoning of not holding people to account to deadlines that are 10 years over the initial estimate. Maybe it's time to address this at a VC level, because some things absolutely do need 10 years and the current VC culture absolutely gives rise to fraud at different levels. They are a lot more similar that you like to admit though. Both of their hype descriptions are to support the hype culture that powers the environment they live in, namely silicon valley(even if they're not physically there). It's just that at some point Theranos decide to resort to lying to keep the whole thing going. The scope that Theranos promised was actually physically infeasible, some subsection of it might have been possible. Boom will hopefully not do that. But in terms of engineering, Boom also has yet to produce even a prototype of their plane. A test version is scheduled to testflight in 2021. We'll see about that, I don't think it will happen. Although 7 years for a supersonic jet from scratch would have been quite impressive. Theranos could have chosen to build a bigger machine with a more limited amount of tests once they realized it's not possible, but they decided to tackle too many problems at once and double down on them. But what we conveniently like to ignore is that investors, politicians and media perpetuated the whole lie. It wasn't just Holmes, it was an entire culture of VC's and politicians that had a vested interest in perpetuating the lie and to some extent helped silence critics. Besides the obvious scammy and blatant lies that Theranos leadership did(down the line). There was also the aspect of feature creep (i.e. 200 tests per tiny blood vial) and ignoring both leadership and biochemical specialists(i.e. sample size and machine size). In the case of Boom I like to think that at least Josh Wilding seeing that he has been an Aerospace engineer for 20 years has mentioned the issues with the timeline, and was overruled probably by either his peers or VCs, but we won't really know for sure. But if the engineering cofounder is already not involved at this point, let's hope that other issues won't follow.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Well, if you are so stupid that you basically require people to lie to you, you will be lied to. It's amazing that there are so many people willing to lie in order to make honestly good ideas viable, instead of everybody just being like Theranos.
- oivey 5y ago
  Theranos was magic tech that they managed to never have to prove worked. We’ve been building supersonic jets for a very long time.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yeah. There's zero question that a 50 passenger supersonic commercial jet can be built. The questions are things like timeline, cost, and specs.
cma 5y ago
How real of a commitment is this announcement? General Motors announced all that stuff with Nikola and then was able to pull out of it pretty quickly when it turned out Nikola had faked a demo.

aaronblohowiak 5y ago

Also the SLS and the JSF...

throw0101a 5y ago

> • Boeing's 787 and 777X (USA) Don't forget the KC-46 tanker. Even though they had a working KC-767 to start from.

chx 5y ago

Bombardier C-Series, anyone? It was authorized by the board in 2005, first flight was planned for 2008, entry into service was planned in 2010. First flight was 2013, it entered in service in 2018 (January, but still).

redis_mlc 5y ago
Bombardier Canada had/has chronic funding problems, so those are combined funding/engineering milestones, which is not similar to US development programs with their unlimited budgets. In fact, what Bombardier accomplished is so amazing that Boeing had to crush them or have the 737 market eroded. The A220 is rocking,

ketamine__ 5y ago

First one is easy. Elon is a pathological liar.