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Last paragraph is a bit melodramatic. Here's what's publicly known: - Boeing is a 'too big to fail' corporation with a significant source of revenue coming fro

Last paragraph is a bit melodramatic. Here's what's publicly known: - Boeing is a 'too big to fail' corporation with a significant source of revenue coming from the government. 40% in 2024¹, billions of dollars of public funds! Just a bit more and it would be mostly state-funded. - They're the 4th biggest American defense contractor, so they're likely seen as vital for securing state power by many in the government. - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. Using Ockham's razor, here's my guess what happened: To get in this position in the first place, there will have been a fair bit of lobbying and "greasing the wheels" involved. Boeing eventually found themselves in a position where they got government contracts, no matter what. Leadership got complacent, they didn't really compete anymore because they didn't have to. This was when Musk came in and disrupted the space industry. But at that point, company culture was likely already too far down the drain for quick fixes. The situation would already be much worse for their space division, if not for the fact that they have such good relations with NASA and the government. NASA basically covered for them and played down the seriousness of the issues for weeks. And even now, they're not having SpaceX rescue the astronauts immediately, which would be even more embarrassing for Boeing. Instead they're bringing them back together with the already planned SpaceX Crew-9 flight next year. Boeing keeps getting away with black eyes, there aren't enough consequences despite all the serious issues. ¹ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/why-u-s-government-may-still-do-business-with-boeing-even-as-a-felon https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/why-u...

philistine 2y ago
The fact that SpaceX demonstrated, without a doubt, that reuse of a first stage was viable in December 2015, and that we still do not have any clearly reusable first stage from anyone else tells you the whole industry is complacent and juiced up on the fat margins of launching a first stage up, then chucking it in the ocean, and then asking for money for another first stage.
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  Erm the Space Shuttle had a reusable first stage 40+ years ago.
  - Rhinobird 2y ago
    The space shuttle was refurbishable. It needed an army of 5000 engineers a few months to get it flight worthy after each launch. And ultimately that wasn't enough for safety.
    - rockemsockem 2y ago
      To be fair, falcon 9 also gets refurbished between flights. But it's way less time/labor intensive than the shuttle.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    I'm sorry this was downvoted. It is probably a bit too pithy for HN. I think you raise a good point even if there are some "technicalities" about it. Real question: I'm not an aerospace geek. The term "first stage" has probably changed at lot in rocket science in the last 50 years. From the NASA Space Shuttle to SpaceX Falcon 9, has the definition changed? From my elementary school memories, the Space Shuttle used a giant center rocket and two booster rockets that we expendable, but you are definitely right that the Space Shuttle "thing" (no idea how to call it) was used over and over again, (somewhat) safely. Something that I don't know: Where Apollo programme capsules reusued? I assume no.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      > From my elementary school memories, the Space Shuttle used a giant center rocket and two booster rockets that we expendable That's incorrect. The orange "giant center rocket" had no engines, it was an external tank which held the propellant burned by the orbiter's main engines. The SSMEs were on the "Shuttle thing" and were reused.
      - Thorrez 2y ago
- DoesntMatter22 2y ago
  That's true but it also speaks to the fact that Space X is incredible. Not nearly as bureaucratic and innovating like crazy. The new Raptor engine alone is mind boggling in it's simplicity.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Can you teach me? When you say "The new Raptor engine", do you mean version 3? I needed to read Wiki to learn there are multiple versions. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#Raptor_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#Raptor_3
    - DoesntMatter22 2y ago
      Basically this picture says it all https://preview.redd.it/evolution-of-the-raptor-engine-by-v0-iq1xjc5h1dgd1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=50bccc5c85d0d2fd1fd7ce1d9aa81e1b003b7071 https://preview.redd.it/evolution-of-the-raptor-engine-by-v0...
  - hoseja 2y ago
    I wouldn't call it "simplicity". Elegance, maybe. The 3D-printed manifolds are devilishly complicated.
- bushbaba 2y ago
  Or spaceX is the only firm that inspires engineers to work hard, and take (calculated) risk. To move quick. A lot of defense and aerospace is not used to the Silicon Valley mindset. Gotta give Elon credit in achieving what he did with spacex
  - tweetle_beetle 2y ago
    Let's be realistic though, it's nothing to do with the 'Silicon Valley mindset'. It's just the classical route to dethroning a poor-performing incumbant - hire good talent, throw lots of money at reasearch and stay focused on the smallest targets where you can demonstrate the biggest progress. Despite his projected persona, Musk would love nothing more than to get to the position of being the bloated encumbant supplier with guaranteed government contracts regardless of results.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      >Despite his projected persona, Musk would love nothing more than to get to the position of being the bloated encumbant supplier with guaranteed government contracts regardless of results. I'm impressed you can keep saying this nonsense despite how SpaceX operates being pretty well documented.
      - danielheath 2y ago
        I mean, what wealthy person wouldn't like to be on the "free money" train?
        _factor 2y ago
        One with an absurd amount of money that actually focuses on improving society and science. Instead we have Musk, and you’re probably right.
        hoseja 2y ago
        Oh so he doesn't focus on "improving society and science" by throwing money into jaws of NGOs but by trying to make us actually spacefaring.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  And SpaceX was already beating the entire industry on price before they ever successfully reused a first stage.
- throwawaymaths 2y ago
  To be fair literally no one else is doing this, not Russia, not China, not Japan, not Europe.
  - m4rtink 2y ago
    China has at least one Falcon 9 clone in testing stages (that one that accidentally launched during static fire a while ago) and many new-space rocket companies have reusable vehcles in pipeline (eq. Rocketlabs Neutron). Even Europe is going to do that - eventually. :P
    - throwawaymaths 2y ago
      > that one that accidentally launched during static fire a while ago Sounds like china currently has zero rockets that are reusable
  - postingawayonhn 2y ago
    RocketLab (US/New Zealand) has been recovering stages for awhile. I think they're getting close to reflying one.
  - philistine 2y ago
    That is exactly my point. It has been 10 years and aside from some small baby steps, no incumbent has declared clearly and vocally that reusability is the future. They're all in denial. The Russians, the Chinese, Europe.
    - piva00 2y ago
      > They're all in denial. The Russians, the Chinese, Europe. Not true, ArianeGroup has decided that reusability is the future with their Ariane Next program [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_Next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_Next
      - throwawaymaths 2y ago
- me_me_me 2y ago
  Because when you tally up the numbers the cost is the same - at the time of writing that is. Would it be possible to reduce the cost further? maybe... First stage needs to go through rigorous safety check in order to be re-certified for next flight thats what drives the cost up.
ericfr11 2y ago
Lobbying is the biggest problem. So much corruption. Everyone is bought, and 2016 showed that, indeed, the US are declining
lenerdenator 2y ago
> - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. This is irrelevant here; the only people buying most of the products that Boeing makes are governments or airlines (many of which have government backing, because countries find it advantageous to have an airline). Without government, there's just no Boeing, or SpaceX, or Lockheed Martin, or Airbus, or... The problem ultimately goes back to 1996 when Boeing was more-or-less taken over by McDonnell-Douglas management, and quality engineering took a back seat to quarterly results. Everything, from bad QA to "greasing the wheels" with lobbyists, ultimately goes back to someone with an MBA deciding that those behaviors were worth it for the stock price increase. And to be fair, they were... until they weren't. But by then, the guy with the MBA has either left or divested, and it becomes someone else's problem. SpaceX's success can be in a large part contributed to the fact that they don't have a bunch of retirement and pension funds demanding a chunk of the profits every quarter regardless of actual market space performance.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - nemothekid 2y ago
    Blackberry's revenue peaked in 2011, and things didn't really appear to be hopeless in 2014, with the iPhone 6. Apple had gone through roughly 3 major hardware revisions (3G, 4, 6) before RIM's hopelessness was reflected in their yearly revenues. I'm not unconvinced that organizational rot in a slower moving company like Boeing took 3 decades to fully spoil the org.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - Angostura 2y ago
        I think you’re being pretty flippant yourself with the claim that it doesn’t explain anything
datameta 2y ago
Corporate rot of engineering-first culture.
Buttons840 2y ago
Your say that believing the downfall of Boeing is reflective of the downfall of all of society is "melodramatic", and then spend the rest of your post explaining how Boeing's failures are exasperated by failures in government and other organizations. You defeat your own argument.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Exacerbated, you mean: "make (a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling) worse."
Sysreq2 2y ago
There US Army generally has one tourniquet that it’s deemed best. The CAT by North American rescue. Every Soldier is awash in these things. They hand them out like candy on Halloween. And rightly so. But the Government has to buy them from businesses that meet certain characteristics. Woman owned, etc. That’s a great thing, right? In this case however, that female owned business is the guy who invented the things wife. Who he sells them to at a mark-up. Who then sells them to the government. Economy of scale? Ya! They are the number one buyer and pay the most. Honestly, who cares though, it’s only a couple million a year. Drop in the bucket. How did Boeing fail? Death by a thousand cuts. That same story probably plays out across the entire supppy chain. Every part, every product, every supplier. Compounded over and over again.
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  > But the Government has to buy them from businesses that meet certain characteristics. Woman owned, etc. That’s a great thing, right? There’s people who would say any bigotry in government is wrong.
- datameta 2y ago
  That sounds like embezzlement in the USSR but painted with capitalism colors. Quid pro quo siphoning at every layer, undetectable as a whole, but a giant boulder of dead weight for the system.
Karellen 2y ago
> The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. That doesn't explain why their civilian aircraft aren't just not the best product, but have gone completely to shit over the last decade or two. The 737 max is the most notorious example here, as it's their most recent development and has never been good from the start - but reporting suggests that the engineering on their formerly-good lines has been going downhill also, and it's only the fact that they started out as good products which means they've taken longer to fall as low. And there's very little government revenue for the civilian aircraft design and manufacturing side of the business. It's all free market competition.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > gone completely to shit over the last decade or two Has the 777 and 787 done this? I don't think so. Yes, Airbus has many competitive aeroplanes in adjacent categories now, but that does mean the originals (and their many sub-models) from Boeing have "gone completely to shit".
throwaway2037 2y ago
> Boeing is a 'too big to fail' corporation My sarcastic reply: "Yeah, so what." My more thoughtful reply: I think "too big to fail" gets a bad rap on HN. In my view, for any sufficiently large country+economy, at some point, your top 3-5 defense contractors will be considered "too big to fail". No way around that. Depending upon the size of your country+economy, this is true for steel manuf also, but probably just the top 1-2. Has anyone with great expertise in Boeing considered the effects of a break-up? I'm not sure why Boeing needs so many different industries under one roof -- space, civil, military, plus others.
elif 2y ago
In the late 00's there were billions on the table of junk contracts for parts service training with crazy pricing to the USAF. I would speculate that when those got shaken out, (and likely some space contracts sniped away by SpaceX) Boeing did not make any adjustments for the revenue loss and simply tried to continue on their original bloated trajectory but instead cutting every corner possible along the way.
seanhunter 2y ago
> - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. Government aquisition is a monopsony (market dynamic where there is one purchaser who wields all the power) which means "free market competition" doesn't exist. This causes lots of negative consequences. Here's a discussion of the topic in the context of defense but a lot of the same surely applies to space. https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/break-the-department-of-defenses https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/break-the-department-of-def...
- dmix 2y ago
  This idea of neverending public-private partnerships, where Congress dumps money into the same tiny group of companies for decades and gov agencies just sit around finding new things for these same companies to build (over budget and way too late), was always going to get to a breaking point of dysfunction. Whether it's military or infrastructure or whatever. The gov created this environment and the private companies protect it because it's big money and grease it so it's the only option (like selling the bullshit idea "no one else can do what [Boeing] does cuz we huge staff counts and billions"). They both enable each other And people are too scared to have a system that encourages new smaller companies take part because they don't have fancy sales pitches or fail early prototypes or take longer to get to Step A. And everyone criticizes them to death. So the only option is to get bought by Boeing or Lockheed, who then do really good at Step A just to fail a Step C and D and E.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    I fully agree. There has to be some disruption to allow a healthy competition to exist. This will allow at least the possibility for better companies to thrive. At present the behemoth contractors are propped up by the fact that people will always say the small upstarts can't scale enough to meet the needs of the massive purchaser. Companies like SpaceX on the space side and Anduril on defence are showing that innovation is possible in these industries, and that small companies have something to offer. In both cases they probably got more of an audience in government than the average startup because of high-profile connections (Musk and Thiel respectively). It would be great if the playing field were set up such that others could also innovate and disrupt without having that leg up.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
> Boeing is a 'too big to fail' corporation with a significant source of revenue coming from the government. 40% in 2024¹, billions of dollars of public funds! Just a bit more and it would be mostly state-funded. SpaceX (as of a year or two ago) was getting 45%+ of its funding from the US government. And then there's the $900M in subsidies SpaceX asked for to provide rural internet access via starlink...
- megaman821 2y ago
  Aren't subsidies for the consumer equipment and monthly charges? It is not a monetary gift to Space X, though it would increase their user base.
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    They ended up not getting anything. But it's a net benefit for the company
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  0 Federal subsidies for SpaceX including for starlink

philistine 2y ago

The fact that SpaceX demonstrated, without a doubt, that reuse of a first stage was viable in December 2015, and that we still do not have any clearly reusable first stage from anyone else tells you the whole industry is complacent and juiced up on the fat margins of launching a first stage up, then chucking it in the ocean, and then asking for money for another first stage.

throwaway81523 2y ago
Erm the Space Shuttle had a reusable first stage 40+ years ago.
- Rhinobird 2y ago
  The space shuttle was refurbishable. It needed an army of 5000 engineers a few months to get it flight worthy after each launch. And ultimately that wasn't enough for safety.
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    To be fair, falcon 9 also gets refurbished between flights. But it's way less time/labor intensive than the shuttle.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  I'm sorry this was downvoted. It is probably a bit too pithy for HN. I think you raise a good point even if there are some "technicalities" about it. Real question: I'm not an aerospace geek. The term "first stage" has probably changed at lot in rocket science in the last 50 years. From the NASA Space Shuttle to SpaceX Falcon 9, has the definition changed? From my elementary school memories, the Space Shuttle used a giant center rocket and two booster rockets that we expendable, but you are definitely right that the Space Shuttle "thing" (no idea how to call it) was used over and over again, (somewhat) safely. Something that I don't know: Where Apollo programme capsules reusued? I assume no.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    > From my elementary school memories, the Space Shuttle used a giant center rocket and two booster rockets that we expendable That's incorrect. The orange "giant center rocket" had no engines, it was an external tank which held the propellant burned by the orbiter's main engines. The SSMEs were on the "Shuttle thing" and were reused.
    - Thorrez 2y ago
DoesntMatter22 2y ago
That's true but it also speaks to the fact that Space X is incredible. Not nearly as bureaucratic and innovating like crazy. The new Raptor engine alone is mind boggling in it's simplicity.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Can you teach me? When you say "The new Raptor engine", do you mean version 3? I needed to read Wiki to learn there are multiple versions. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#Raptor_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#Raptor_3
  - DoesntMatter22 2y ago
    Basically this picture says it all https://preview.redd.it/evolution-of-the-raptor-engine-by-v0-iq1xjc5h1dgd1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=50bccc5c85d0d2fd1fd7ce1d9aa81e1b003b7071 https://preview.redd.it/evolution-of-the-raptor-engine-by-v0...
- hoseja 2y ago
  I wouldn't call it "simplicity". Elegance, maybe. The 3D-printed manifolds are devilishly complicated.
bushbaba 2y ago
Or spaceX is the only firm that inspires engineers to work hard, and take (calculated) risk. To move quick. A lot of defense and aerospace is not used to the Silicon Valley mindset. Gotta give Elon credit in achieving what he did with spacex
- tweetle_beetle 2y ago
  Let's be realistic though, it's nothing to do with the 'Silicon Valley mindset'. It's just the classical route to dethroning a poor-performing incumbant - hire good talent, throw lots of money at reasearch and stay focused on the smallest targets where you can demonstrate the biggest progress. Despite his projected persona, Musk would love nothing more than to get to the position of being the bloated encumbant supplier with guaranteed government contracts regardless of results.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    >Despite his projected persona, Musk would love nothing more than to get to the position of being the bloated encumbant supplier with guaranteed government contracts regardless of results. I'm impressed you can keep saying this nonsense despite how SpaceX operates being pretty well documented.
    - danielheath 2y ago
      I mean, what wealthy person wouldn't like to be on the "free money" train?
      - _factor 2y ago
        One with an absurd amount of money that actually focuses on improving society and science. Instead we have Musk, and you’re probably right.
        hoseja 2y ago
        Oh so he doesn't focus on "improving society and science" by throwing money into jaws of NGOs but by trying to make us actually spacefaring.
HideousKojima 2y ago
And SpaceX was already beating the entire industry on price before they ever successfully reused a first stage.
throwawaymaths 2y ago
To be fair literally no one else is doing this, not Russia, not China, not Japan, not Europe.
- m4rtink 2y ago
  China has at least one Falcon 9 clone in testing stages (that one that accidentally launched during static fire a while ago) and many new-space rocket companies have reusable vehcles in pipeline (eq. Rocketlabs Neutron). Even Europe is going to do that - eventually. :P
  - throwawaymaths 2y ago
    > that one that accidentally launched during static fire a while ago Sounds like china currently has zero rockets that are reusable
- postingawayonhn 2y ago
  RocketLab (US/New Zealand) has been recovering stages for awhile. I think they're getting close to reflying one.
- philistine 2y ago
  That is exactly my point. It has been 10 years and aside from some small baby steps, no incumbent has declared clearly and vocally that reusability is the future. They're all in denial. The Russians, the Chinese, Europe.
  - piva00 2y ago
    > They're all in denial. The Russians, the Chinese, Europe. Not true, ArianeGroup has decided that reusability is the future with their Ariane Next program [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_Next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_Next
    - throwawaymaths 2y ago
me_me_me 2y ago
Because when you tally up the numbers the cost is the same - at the time of writing that is. Would it be possible to reduce the cost further? maybe... First stage needs to go through rigorous safety check in order to be re-certified for next flight thats what drives the cost up.

ericfr11 2y ago

Lobbying is the biggest problem. So much corruption. Everyone is bought, and 2016 showed that, indeed, the US are declining

lenerdenator 2y ago

> - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. This is irrelevant here; the only people buying most of the products that Boeing makes are governments or airlines (many of which have government backing, because countries find it advantageous to have an airline). Without government, there's just no Boeing, or SpaceX, or Lockheed Martin, or Airbus, or... The problem ultimately goes back to 1996 when Boeing was more-or-less taken over by McDonnell-Douglas management, and quality engineering took a back seat to quarterly results. Everything, from bad QA to "greasing the wheels" with lobbyists, ultimately goes back to someone with an MBA deciding that those behaviors were worth it for the stock price increase. And to be fair, they were... until they weren't. But by then, the guy with the MBA has either left or divested, and it becomes someone else's problem. SpaceX's success can be in a large part contributed to the fact that they don't have a bunch of retirement and pension funds demanding a chunk of the profits every quarter regardless of actual market space performance.

Dalewyn 2y ago
[flagged]
- nemothekid 2y ago
  Blackberry's revenue peaked in 2011, and things didn't really appear to be hopeless in 2014, with the iPhone 6. Apple had gone through roughly 3 major hardware revisions (3G, 4, 6) before RIM's hopelessness was reflected in their yearly revenues. I'm not unconvinced that organizational rot in a slower moving company like Boeing took 3 decades to fully spoil the org.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Angostura 2y ago
      I think you’re being pretty flippant yourself with the claim that it doesn’t explain anything

datameta 2y ago

Corporate rot of engineering-first culture.

Buttons840 2y ago

Your say that believing the downfall of Boeing is reflective of the downfall of all of society is "melodramatic", and then spend the rest of your post explaining how Boeing's failures are exasperated by failures in government and other organizations. You defeat your own argument.

hollerith 2y ago
Exacerbated, you mean: "make (a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling) worse."

Sysreq2 2y ago

There US Army generally has one tourniquet that it’s deemed best. The CAT by North American rescue. Every Soldier is awash in these things. They hand them out like candy on Halloween. And rightly so. But the Government has to buy them from businesses that meet certain characteristics. Woman owned, etc. That’s a great thing, right? In this case however, that female owned business is the guy who invented the things wife. Who he sells them to at a mark-up. Who then sells them to the government. Economy of scale? Ya! They are the number one buyer and pay the most. Honestly, who cares though, it’s only a couple million a year. Drop in the bucket. How did Boeing fail? Death by a thousand cuts. That same story probably plays out across the entire supppy chain. Every part, every product, every supplier. Compounded over and over again.

zmgsabst 2y ago
> But the Government has to buy them from businesses that meet certain characteristics. Woman owned, etc. That’s a great thing, right? There’s people who would say any bigotry in government is wrong.
datameta 2y ago
That sounds like embezzlement in the USSR but painted with capitalism colors. Quid pro quo siphoning at every layer, undetectable as a whole, but a giant boulder of dead weight for the system.

Karellen 2y ago

> The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. That doesn't explain why their civilian aircraft aren't just not the best product, but have gone completely to shit over the last decade or two. The 737 max is the most notorious example here, as it's their most recent development and has never been good from the start - but reporting suggests that the engineering on their formerly-good lines has been going downhill also, and it's only the fact that they started out as good products which means they've taken longer to fall as low. And there's very little government revenue for the civilian aircraft design and manufacturing side of the business. It's all free market competition.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> gone completely to shit over the last decade or two Has the 777 and 787 done this? I don't think so. Yes, Airbus has many competitive aeroplanes in adjacent categories now, but that does mean the originals (and their many sub-models) from Boeing have "gone completely to shit".

throwaway2037 2y ago

> Boeing is a 'too big to fail' corporation My sarcastic reply: "Yeah, so what." My more thoughtful reply: I think "too big to fail" gets a bad rap on HN. In my view, for any sufficiently large country+economy, at some point, your top 3-5 defense contractors will be considered "too big to fail". No way around that. Depending upon the size of your country+economy, this is true for steel manuf also, but probably just the top 1-2. Has anyone with great expertise in Boeing considered the effects of a break-up? I'm not sure why Boeing needs so many different industries under one roof -- space, civil, military, plus others.

elif 2y ago

In the late 00's there were billions on the table of junk contracts for parts service training with crazy pricing to the USAF. I would speculate that when those got shaken out, (and likely some space contracts sniped away by SpaceX) Boeing did not make any adjustments for the revenue loss and simply tried to continue on their original bloated trajectory but instead cutting every corner possible along the way.

seanhunter 2y ago

> - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. Government aquisition is a monopsony (market dynamic where there is one purchaser who wields all the power) which means "free market competition" doesn't exist. This causes lots of negative consequences. Here's a discussion of the topic in the context of defense but a lot of the same surely applies to space. https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/break-the-department-of-defenses https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/break-the-department-of-def...

dmix 2y ago
This idea of neverending public-private partnerships, where Congress dumps money into the same tiny group of companies for decades and gov agencies just sit around finding new things for these same companies to build (over budget and way too late), was always going to get to a breaking point of dysfunction. Whether it's military or infrastructure or whatever. The gov created this environment and the private companies protect it because it's big money and grease it so it's the only option (like selling the bullshit idea "no one else can do what [Boeing] does cuz we huge staff counts and billions"). They both enable each other And people are too scared to have a system that encourages new smaller companies take part because they don't have fancy sales pitches or fail early prototypes or take longer to get to Step A. And everyone criticizes them to death. So the only option is to get bought by Boeing or Lockheed, who then do really good at Step A just to fail a Step C and D and E.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  I fully agree. There has to be some disruption to allow a healthy competition to exist. This will allow at least the possibility for better companies to thrive. At present the behemoth contractors are propped up by the fact that people will always say the small upstarts can't scale enough to meet the needs of the massive purchaser. Companies like SpaceX on the space side and Anduril on defence are showing that innovation is possible in these industries, and that small companies have something to offer. In both cases they probably got more of an audience in government than the average startup because of high-profile connections (Musk and Thiel respectively). It would be great if the playing field were set up such that others could also innovate and disrupt without having that leg up.

KennyBlanken 2y ago

> Boeing is a 'too big to fail' corporation with a significant source of revenue coming from the government. 40% in 2024¹, billions of dollars of public funds! Just a bit more and it would be mostly state-funded. SpaceX (as of a year or two ago) was getting 45%+ of its funding from the US government. And then there's the $900M in subsidies SpaceX asked for to provide rural internet access via starlink...

megaman821 2y ago
Aren't subsidies for the consumer equipment and monthly charges? It is not a monetary gift to Space X, though it would increase their user base.
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  They ended up not getting anything. But it's a net benefit for the company
inemesitaffia 2y ago
0 Federal subsidies for SpaceX including for starlink