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This comment is your regularly scheduled reminder that they were supposed to be the safe option. The people who'd come in clutch when SpaceX failed (and it was

This comment is your regularly scheduled reminder that they were supposed to be the safe option. The people who'd come in clutch when SpaceX failed (and it was assumed in certain quarters that SpaceX would fail to deliver on time). They were paid 2x more than what NASA paid SpaceX. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-will-pay-boeing-more-than-twice-as-much-as-spacex-for-crew-seats/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-will-pay-boeing... RIP Boeing.

mezeek 3y ago
To be clear to readers, the were only paid for their achieved milestones, which is nowhere near the full contracted amount since they haven't flown anyone. As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted. Mostly. NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. > NASA instead requested Boeing “propose prices for additional flexibilities to fill an anticipated crew access gap, including shortening its lead times for rocket and spacecraft production,” the report states. After what OIG described as “prolonged negotiations,” NASA agreed to pay Boeing an additional $287.2 million for those mission flexibilities. > The OIG report concluded that much of those payments were not necessary, since there were other methods to provide schedule flexibility to mitigate gaps in crew access to the station. The report specifically notes that, five days after NASA agreed to the additional payment to Boeing, the company submitted a proposal to NASA offering to sell five Soyuz seats it has acquired from Russian company RSC Energia for $373.5 million. > The report concluded NASA’s payment of $144 million to accelerate the timetable for two of the four Starliner missions was unreasonable, and that it overspent by $43 million when it granted Boeing authorization to proceed on one Starliner mission a year earlier than necessary. > OIG also criticized NASA for not giving SpaceX, the other company with a commercial crew contract, an opportunity for offering its own proposal to address any gap in crew access to the ISS. “In our judgment, contacting both providers would have been a prudent approach to maximize the Agency’s options while also ensuring fairness,” the report concluded. https://spacenews.com/nasa-inspector-general-criticizes-additional-boeing-commercial-crew-payments/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-inspector-general-criticizes-addi...
  - OrvalWintermute 3y ago
    > NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. Actually, a multiple award approach for a very high risk, technically challenging widget makes perfect sense, and is the same thing seen for similarly challenging weapon systems e.g. the Advanced Tactical Fighter F-22 vs F-23 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-23-stealth-fighter-vs-the-lethal-f-22-raptor-who-14461 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-23-ste... > The report specifically notes that, five days after NASA agreed to the additional payment to Boeing, the company submitted a proposal to NASA offering to sell five Soyuz seats it has acquired from Russian company RSC Energia for $373.5 million. This looks like Boeing was doing some horse trading that could have been pretty financially risky particularly considering the value of money. > The report concluded NASA’s payment of $144 million to accelerate the timetable for two of the four Starliner missions was unreasonable, and that it overspent by $43 million when it granted Boeing authorization to proceed on one Starliner mission a year earlier than necessary. Sometimes when thinking about the Industrial Base of the United States, there is a good rationale for keeping an incumbent's design & engineering capabilities active, while bringing competition to the table and potentially displacing it with a more agile competitor. If truly getting the best and most efficient designs out there was the true goal, there should have been more awards, and for funded development to enable a greater diversity of competitors with designs being put forth.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      The Starliner was gone get built if they dropped 100M extra on Boeing or not. There lots of more relevant and important technologies that need more funding. The CommercialCrew program was not done for research, it was trying to solving a particular problem at the time and do it fast and efficently. If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do it.
      - OrvalWintermute 3y ago
        > If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do it. SpaceX has been built on launch contracts displacing ULA. It is clear that the longterm for SpaceX, and their competitors, is going way past mere launch services (as complex as those are) to cis-lunar and interplanetary missions. Getting a healthy ecosystem with robust competitors is just the start. NASA and peer govt organizations are looking for partners on this, since companies are expected to bring their own funding to bear too. https://www.space.com/nasa-funding-moon-power-exploration-tech-july-2023 https://www.space.com/nasa-funding-moon-power-exploration-te...
api 3y ago
I'm sure they'll discuss that at the meeting they'll schedule in the next meeting scheduling meeting.
- supportengineer 3y ago
  Has the scheduling meeting been approved and budgeted via all the proper channels?
  - FreshStart 3y ago
    There are always some teething problems in Gremiums of 1000 people that need to agree unanimously.
ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
SpaceX has a fail safe where the human capsule can eject, I hope Boeing also have this
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > SpaceX has a fail safe where the human capsule can eject, I hope Boeing also have this They do.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  They have a very similar system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pad_Abort_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pad_Abort_Test
  - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
    You know, that looks scary to be in the capsule for, but far less scary than the Saturn V's Apollo Pad Abort Test, where the rocket was ON TOP of the capsule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system#/media/File:Apollo_Pad_Abort_Test_-2.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system#/media/Fi...
    - myfavoritetings 3y ago
      Whether you are being pushed or pulled by a rocket doesn't really matter. From the inside would feel very similar.
      - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
        It'd presumably feel a bit warmer for the case where you're underneath the rocket.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        Probably no significant impact, and probably no significant difference between the two. It's angled so it largely doesn't touch the capsule (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_Pad_Abort_Test_-2.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_Pad_Abort_Tes...) and the capsule is made to keep the occupants safe through reentry, which reaches higher temperatures and lasts much longer than the second or two the pad abort rockets fire. (It might even be less heat impact to the capsule than the Dragon-style rockets, as the hot spent rocket remains on the capsule; Apollo-style abort towers jettison.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
notquitehuman 3y ago
Boeing has offices in nearly every congressional district, and has been openly bribing congress for decades. They will never fail, experience hardship, or suffer consequences for anything so long as the current republic stands.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  All of the big defense contractors do this, it’s kind of astounding. Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. their offices are spread out over the country to give enough coverage in congressional districts where no one will be willing to kill funding for a project at the risk of their local plant closing.
  - owlninja 3y ago
    Also the contracts the big companies have with vendors across the country. They still purchase a large portion of their parts and talking to congress members about the jobs a program creates in their district is a strong data point.
  - datavirtue 3y ago
    The military-ness has now outweighed the engineering culture in those companies...making them effectively government agencies that are publicly traded. I don't have a positive outlook for any stakeholder.
    - ecshafer 3y ago
      IMO the only reason those companies are not literal divisions of the government is plausible deniability so they can sell things to other countries. I would guess 95% of their revenue is from the government, and they have very strict government regulations. If we just nationalized Lockheed and friends, I would be we could get improved efficiency.
- zitterbewegung 3y ago
  What you say is true but now they do have some competition from SpaceX. If we make other companies that can compete with Boeing we can at least have price competition which is really the only thing that is needed. Boeing though has so many government contracts that are used so often for other projects you can’t shut down so you are correct.
Laremere 3y ago
This comment hits differently after the Ukraine invasion. I hadn't thought about the sheer level of diplomatic nightmare that has been avoided because Russia can't use cutting off access to the ISS as a bargaining chip.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  They still can use cutting off the ISS as a bargaining chip since half the station is Russian and handles orbit raising. They actually did do that a lot early into the war, until Rogozin was replaced as head of Roscosmos by someone who took a slightly less bombastic approach of saying that Russia would quit the ISS once they have a successor station up later this decade. What gets in the way is that the US has several replacement space station programs in the works while Russia knows very well that they almost definitely can't get a comparable replacement station up with how hollowed out their industry is. Plus, since the start of the war, NASA has been investigating options for taking over the tasks the Russian side of the station handles with the various supply vehicles just in case.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Isn't it the Russian modules that keep leaking atmosphere? Maybe its time to jettison them? I honestly have no idea what the Russian modules are or what purposes are are served by them. However, that does bring to mind something I never thought about. There is talk of privatizing ISS since NASA doesn't want to continue funding it. How do you privatize something made by multiple nations? Or is that precisely why the privatization isn't taken seriously?
    - kolinko 3y ago
      One of the purposes of ISS, and other space programs (Apollo-Soyuz for example) was showcasing how nations can work together, and bringing hope for peace during the cold war. May sound naive, but that's the reason why nobody should be jettisoned off the space station - even if there are embargoes on the ground.
ChuckMcM 3y ago
I agree with this, it is pretty stunning. Also ULA's inability to come up with a launch capability that is anywhere close to Falcon/Falcon Heavy in terms of cost and time to flight. The fascinating thing is that the lack of competition allowed the space launch industry to switch from "invent" mode to "monetize" mode way too early. It is also what makes the Starship work both more credible and more interesting. There are a lot of technical problems to work through on Starship between now and it being as reliable as say Falcon is, but if (when?) they get there, the ability to put 100 tons into LEO for just the cost of the propellant and some depreciation on the vehicle? That really changes the economics of having things in space in a way that is hard for folks to imagine.
- SEJeff 3y ago
  150T... They have been able to crank up the power of the raptors per Elon.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  There's also been a bit of a shift in the market for space launches. For the longest time there wasn't that much of a market for a higher volume, cheaper launcher like the Falcon as the number of launches were really limited to mostly government launches and a handful of communication satellites. Recently hardware has gotten much cheaper which combined with cheaper launches skyrockets the number of groups that could design and send up a payload because the economics on both ends finally met up.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    That was the point of Starlink. If the only capability is incredibly expensive and highly reliable, no demand that only works under cheaper and relaxed reliability exists. Luckily, the market's caught up pretty quickly.
  - ChuckMcM 3y ago
    I think the nuance is different. I think there has always been demand of inexpensive access to space, what did not exist was a company willing to invest in making that true. If you lived through the "Single Stage To Orbit" (SSTO) initiatives that were kicked off by Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars" project to put "hundreds" of satellites into orbit, the idea of a cost insensitive customer willing to pay for tens of launches a year, drove a lot of investment into the market. When SDI was cancelled rocket companies bailed and investment fled. Even though billions had been invested in Iridium, and millions had been invested in Teledesic, the "establishment" could not see how having such a capability would be useful. Sort of like prognosticators suggesting that the world demand for computers might be just five from IBM in 1943. People who are stuck looking at the cost/availability in the "now" cannot imagine a future where those things are different. One of the things I've always looked for in hiring people is the ability to "unconstrain" ones thinking by "rules." Those are the kinds of people who can think about a world where we have a technology to say, "nullify gravity", and what impact that might have on what we do or how we do it. Constrained thinkers will say, "There is no way to 'nullify' gravity so it isn't worth wasting any time thinking about what we could do if we could." This capability shows me someone who is able to step into a different frame of reference with their reasoning skills intact and sharp. As a result, when there is an "unexpected" discovery or event, they waste little time in cognitive dissonance says "This can't be happening" or "That isn't possible what I'm seeing" and instead jump right to "Hmm if we can do that then <x>, <y>, and <z> could be done too!" There are a lot of things to dislike Elon for, but one thing that he shares with Steve Jobs is if he believes a thing he is "all in". Sometimes it takes that to get to the other side of an "unthinkable" change.
mandeepj 3y ago
> They were paid 2x more than what NASA paid SpaceX. It's worth a case study - why didn't they try to pay Gwynne Shotwell 10x more + CEO role + (M\B)illions worth of stocks? Even if they did, why didn't she accept? She would certainly have turned their fortunes around.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  Hasn't Gwen's main role at SpaceX been sales? Is she also the main force behind spaceX executing at engineering?
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Operating officer, iirc. So not necessarily engineering but herding cats, still impressive.
  - elteto 3y ago
    She takes care of everything except the Mars program. Falcon is well established at this point and very few engineering iterations remain. It’s a “done” product and the cash cow of the company. Elon runs the Mars program out of Boca Chica but the day to day operations, (ie the boring stuff), including Falcon, is all Gwynne.
travisgriggs 3y ago
There was a time when Boeing was a Washington state company, with a strong engineering tradition and contribution. You can pretty much correlate the count of failures and overruns with the era when the mergers and buyouts started, the engineering substance was diluted, and management moved "off site" to Chicago to be "more accessible". As a Washington state resident that used to be proud of Boeing, now days, I just despise them. I work with lots of fine ex Boeing engineers at my current place of work. I feel for all of the fine individuals that still work at Boeing, but other wise, I wish them the same death I wish on IBM now days. No "Rest In Peace" from me. More of "Don't let the door hit you..." feeling.

mezeek 3y ago

To be clear to readers, the were only paid for their achieved milestones, which is nowhere near the full contracted amount since they haven't flown anyone. As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted.

nordsieck 3y ago
> As for the 2x part... it's cause their bid was 2x what SpaceX bid itself. And both got their bids accepted. Mostly. NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. > NASA instead requested Boeing “propose prices for additional flexibilities to fill an anticipated crew access gap, including shortening its lead times for rocket and spacecraft production,” the report states. After what OIG described as “prolonged negotiations,” NASA agreed to pay Boeing an additional $287.2 million for those mission flexibilities. > The OIG report concluded that much of those payments were not necessary, since there were other methods to provide schedule flexibility to mitigate gaps in crew access to the station. The report specifically notes that, five days after NASA agreed to the additional payment to Boeing, the company submitted a proposal to NASA offering to sell five Soyuz seats it has acquired from Russian company RSC Energia for $373.5 million. > The report concluded NASA’s payment of $144 million to accelerate the timetable for two of the four Starliner missions was unreasonable, and that it overspent by $43 million when it granted Boeing authorization to proceed on one Starliner mission a year earlier than necessary. > OIG also criticized NASA for not giving SpaceX, the other company with a commercial crew contract, an opportunity for offering its own proposal to address any gap in crew access to the ISS. “In our judgment, contacting both providers would have been a prudent approach to maximize the Agency’s options while also ensuring fairness,” the report concluded. https://spacenews.com/nasa-inspector-general-criticizes-additional-boeing-commercial-crew-payments/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-inspector-general-criticizes-addi...
- OrvalWintermute 3y ago
  > NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. Actually, a multiple award approach for a very high risk, technically challenging widget makes perfect sense, and is the same thing seen for similarly challenging weapon systems e.g. the Advanced Tactical Fighter F-22 vs F-23 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-23-stealth-fighter-vs-the-lethal-f-22-raptor-who-14461 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-23-ste... > The report specifically notes that, five days after NASA agreed to the additional payment to Boeing, the company submitted a proposal to NASA offering to sell five Soyuz seats it has acquired from Russian company RSC Energia for $373.5 million. This looks like Boeing was doing some horse trading that could have been pretty financially risky particularly considering the value of money. > The report concluded NASA’s payment of $144 million to accelerate the timetable for two of the four Starliner missions was unreasonable, and that it overspent by $43 million when it granted Boeing authorization to proceed on one Starliner mission a year earlier than necessary. Sometimes when thinking about the Industrial Base of the United States, there is a good rationale for keeping an incumbent's design & engineering capabilities active, while bringing competition to the table and potentially displacing it with a more agile competitor. If truly getting the best and most efficient designs out there was the true goal, there should have been more awards, and for funded development to enable a greater diversity of competitors with designs being put forth.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    The Starliner was gone get built if they dropped 100M extra on Boeing or not. There lots of more relevant and important technologies that need more funding. The CommercialCrew program was not done for research, it was trying to solving a particular problem at the time and do it fast and efficently. If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do it.
    - OrvalWintermute 3y ago
      > If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do it. SpaceX has been built on launch contracts displacing ULA. It is clear that the longterm for SpaceX, and their competitors, is going way past mere launch services (as complex as those are) to cis-lunar and interplanetary missions. Getting a healthy ecosystem with robust competitors is just the start. NASA and peer govt organizations are looking for partners on this, since companies are expected to bring their own funding to bear too. https://www.space.com/nasa-funding-moon-power-exploration-tech-july-2023 https://www.space.com/nasa-funding-moon-power-exploration-te...

api 3y ago

I'm sure they'll discuss that at the meeting they'll schedule in the next meeting scheduling meeting.

supportengineer 3y ago
Has the scheduling meeting been approved and budgeted via all the proper channels?
- FreshStart 3y ago
  There are always some teething problems in Gremiums of 1000 people that need to agree unanimously.

ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago

SpaceX has a fail safe where the human capsule can eject, I hope Boeing also have this

nordsieck 3y ago
> SpaceX has a fail safe where the human capsule can eject, I hope Boeing also have this They do.
ceejayoz 3y ago
They have a very similar system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pad_Abort_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pad_Abort_Test
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  You know, that looks scary to be in the capsule for, but far less scary than the Saturn V's Apollo Pad Abort Test, where the rocket was ON TOP of the capsule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system#/media/File:Apollo_Pad_Abort_Test_-2.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system#/media/Fi...
  - myfavoritetings 3y ago
    Whether you are being pushed or pulled by a rocket doesn't really matter. From the inside would feel very similar.
    - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
      It'd presumably feel a bit warmer for the case where you're underneath the rocket.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        Probably no significant impact, and probably no significant difference between the two. It's angled so it largely doesn't touch the capsule (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_Pad_Abort_Test_-2.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_Pad_Abort_Tes...) and the capsule is made to keep the occupants safe through reentry, which reaches higher temperatures and lasts much longer than the second or two the pad abort rockets fire. (It might even be less heat impact to the capsule than the Dragon-style rockets, as the hot spent rocket remains on the capsule; Apollo-style abort towers jettison.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

notquitehuman 3y ago

Boeing has offices in nearly every congressional district, and has been openly bribing congress for decades. They will never fail, experience hardship, or suffer consequences for anything so long as the current republic stands.

ecshafer 3y ago
All of the big defense contractors do this, it’s kind of astounding. Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. their offices are spread out over the country to give enough coverage in congressional districts where no one will be willing to kill funding for a project at the risk of their local plant closing.
- owlninja 3y ago
  Also the contracts the big companies have with vendors across the country. They still purchase a large portion of their parts and talking to congress members about the jobs a program creates in their district is a strong data point.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  The military-ness has now outweighed the engineering culture in those companies...making them effectively government agencies that are publicly traded. I don't have a positive outlook for any stakeholder.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    IMO the only reason those companies are not literal divisions of the government is plausible deniability so they can sell things to other countries. I would guess 95% of their revenue is from the government, and they have very strict government regulations. If we just nationalized Lockheed and friends, I would be we could get improved efficiency.
zitterbewegung 3y ago
What you say is true but now they do have some competition from SpaceX. If we make other companies that can compete with Boeing we can at least have price competition which is really the only thing that is needed. Boeing though has so many government contracts that are used so often for other projects you can’t shut down so you are correct.

Laremere 3y ago

This comment hits differently after the Ukraine invasion. I hadn't thought about the sheer level of diplomatic nightmare that has been avoided because Russia can't use cutting off access to the ISS as a bargaining chip.

dotnet00 3y ago
They still can use cutting off the ISS as a bargaining chip since half the station is Russian and handles orbit raising. They actually did do that a lot early into the war, until Rogozin was replaced as head of Roscosmos by someone who took a slightly less bombastic approach of saying that Russia would quit the ISS once they have a successor station up later this decade. What gets in the way is that the US has several replacement space station programs in the works while Russia knows very well that they almost definitely can't get a comparable replacement station up with how hollowed out their industry is. Plus, since the start of the war, NASA has been investigating options for taking over the tasks the Russian side of the station handles with the various supply vehicles just in case.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Isn't it the Russian modules that keep leaking atmosphere? Maybe its time to jettison them? I honestly have no idea what the Russian modules are or what purposes are are served by them. However, that does bring to mind something I never thought about. There is talk of privatizing ISS since NASA doesn't want to continue funding it. How do you privatize something made by multiple nations? Or is that precisely why the privatization isn't taken seriously?
  - kolinko 3y ago
    One of the purposes of ISS, and other space programs (Apollo-Soyuz for example) was showcasing how nations can work together, and bringing hope for peace during the cold war. May sound naive, but that's the reason why nobody should be jettisoned off the space station - even if there are embargoes on the ground.

ChuckMcM 3y ago

I agree with this, it is pretty stunning. Also ULA's inability to come up with a launch capability that is anywhere close to Falcon/Falcon Heavy in terms of cost and time to flight. The fascinating thing is that the lack of competition allowed the space launch industry to switch from "invent" mode to "monetize" mode way too early. It is also what makes the Starship work both more credible and more interesting. There are a lot of technical problems to work through on Starship between now and it being as reliable as say Falcon is, but if (when?) they get there, the ability to put 100 tons into LEO for just the cost of the propellant and some depreciation on the vehicle? That really changes the economics of having things in space in a way that is hard for folks to imagine.

SEJeff 3y ago
150T... They have been able to crank up the power of the raptors per Elon.
rtkwe 3y ago
There's also been a bit of a shift in the market for space launches. For the longest time there wasn't that much of a market for a higher volume, cheaper launcher like the Falcon as the number of launches were really limited to mostly government launches and a handful of communication satellites. Recently hardware has gotten much cheaper which combined with cheaper launches skyrockets the number of groups that could design and send up a payload because the economics on both ends finally met up.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  That was the point of Starlink. If the only capability is incredibly expensive and highly reliable, no demand that only works under cheaper and relaxed reliability exists. Luckily, the market's caught up pretty quickly.
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  I think the nuance is different. I think there has always been demand of inexpensive access to space, what did not exist was a company willing to invest in making that true. If you lived through the "Single Stage To Orbit" (SSTO) initiatives that were kicked off by Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars" project to put "hundreds" of satellites into orbit, the idea of a cost insensitive customer willing to pay for tens of launches a year, drove a lot of investment into the market. When SDI was cancelled rocket companies bailed and investment fled. Even though billions had been invested in Iridium, and millions had been invested in Teledesic, the "establishment" could not see how having such a capability would be useful. Sort of like prognosticators suggesting that the world demand for computers might be just five from IBM in 1943. People who are stuck looking at the cost/availability in the "now" cannot imagine a future where those things are different. One of the things I've always looked for in hiring people is the ability to "unconstrain" ones thinking by "rules." Those are the kinds of people who can think about a world where we have a technology to say, "nullify gravity", and what impact that might have on what we do or how we do it. Constrained thinkers will say, "There is no way to 'nullify' gravity so it isn't worth wasting any time thinking about what we could do if we could." This capability shows me someone who is able to step into a different frame of reference with their reasoning skills intact and sharp. As a result, when there is an "unexpected" discovery or event, they waste little time in cognitive dissonance says "This can't be happening" or "That isn't possible what I'm seeing" and instead jump right to "Hmm if we can do that then <x>, <y>, and <z> could be done too!" There are a lot of things to dislike Elon for, but one thing that he shares with Steve Jobs is if he believes a thing he is "all in". Sometimes it takes that to get to the other side of an "unthinkable" change.

mandeepj 3y ago

> They were paid 2x more than what NASA paid SpaceX. It's worth a case study - why didn't they try to pay Gwynne Shotwell 10x more + CEO role + (M\B)illions worth of stocks? Even if they did, why didn't she accept? She would certainly have turned their fortunes around.

jackmott42 3y ago
Hasn't Gwen's main role at SpaceX been sales? Is she also the main force behind spaceX executing at engineering?
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Operating officer, iirc. So not necessarily engineering but herding cats, still impressive.
- elteto 3y ago
  She takes care of everything except the Mars program. Falcon is well established at this point and very few engineering iterations remain. It’s a “done” product and the cash cow of the company. Elon runs the Mars program out of Boca Chica but the day to day operations, (ie the boring stuff), including Falcon, is all Gwynne.

travisgriggs 3y ago

There was a time when Boeing was a Washington state company, with a strong engineering tradition and contribution. You can pretty much correlate the count of failures and overruns with the era when the mergers and buyouts started, the engineering substance was diluted, and management moved "off site" to Chicago to be "more accessible". As a Washington state resident that used to be proud of Boeing, now days, I just despise them. I work with lots of fine ex Boeing engineers at my current place of work. I feel for all of the fine individuals that still work at Boeing, but other wise, I wish them the same death I wish on IBM now days. No "Rest In Peace" from me. More of "Don't let the door hit you..." feeling.