16 ms·
NASA freezes Starliner missions
- osigurdson 2y agoAs 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.
- ExoticPearTree 2y agoBoeing really needs to get a break pretty soon. Feels like they broke a mirror and have 7 years of continuous bad luck.
- tiahura 2y agoBoeing gets a break every day there is a jet duopoly, and both are booked years out on orders.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoAnd 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_boeing_pressured_the_us_government_to_impose/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/192dfwh/til_...
- barbazoo 2y agoPoor Boeing and their billions and billions in guaranteed government defence spending. They’re fine.
- namaria 2y agoNah. 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.
- JohnClark1337 2y ago[dead]
- ExoticPearTree 2y agoMy 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 2y ago>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 2y agoThat 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 2y agoOne 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoNASA might need to redo the tender for the 2nd supplier of crewed missions, regardless of the (even further) reputational hit to Boeing.
- Tuna-Fish 2y agoISS is not going to stay up there for long enough for a new second supplier to make sense.
- justinclift 2y agoThat doesn't seem right. It's supposed to be up there through to 2030+, and the point of a 2nd supplier is just to ensure there aren't any blocker level problems if a single supplier has issues.
- agiacalone 2y agoIf it's Boeing... ...I don't think anyone is going...
- prasadjoglekar 2y ago...or coming back....
- euroderf 2y agoThe answer, my friend, Is Boeing in the wind. Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoIv seen the word Boeing used as a verb. "He got the Boeing treatment"
- schiffern 2y agoOriginal NASA blog post: https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/15/nasa-updates-2025-commercial-crew-plan/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/15/nasa-update...
- aSithLord 2y agodivide et impera.
- OutOfHere 2y ago> 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 2y agoI’m all for Elon buying it and trusting that he makes the necessary changes.
- pfdietz 2y agoI think I saw recently that SpaceX is worth about 2x Boeing right now.
- Loughla 2y agoSpacex 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 2y agoAirplane 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 2y agoIt 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 2y agoDiverging slightly from the topic, Palm (the Palm Pilot company) at one point had a market cap higher than all US airlines combined.
- gchokov 2y agoIt wasn’t good while it lasted ;)
- dotnet00 2y agoWould 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoAgreed. Soyuz is old but reliable and SpaceX is new and reliable. Why go for something in between ?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> 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 2y agoWould 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.
- renegade-otter 2y agoBut 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/0385546491 https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Blind-Tragedy-Fall-Boeing/dp/0...
- throw4950sh06 2y agoWhat 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 2y agoThis is the company which famously asked its engineers to put the shareholders at top of mind when making all of their decisions.
- throw4950sh06 2y agoSo what? That doesn't mean anything. The shareholders didn't say this, the management of the company did.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoThe shareholders are supposed to fire management when they are being stupid.
- throw4950sh06 2y agoIt'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.
- tootie 2y agoHonestly 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 2y agoBoeing 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 2y agoThat'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 2y agoBut... 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 2y agoThere'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.
- tjpnz 2y agoSeems 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 2y agoWasn't it also supposed to go to the moon station for Artemis? Or is that also a non-starter if Starship works out?
- dotnet00 2y agoNope, 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 2y agoWhile 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 2y agoThe name of the specific Starliner that got stuck at the ISS? Calypso. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner_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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_(mythology) Yeah. Whoever named Starliner and that specific one are bloody geniuses.
- 2y ago
- dgrin91 2y agoI 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 2y agoIf 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 2y agoDoes Boeing still have any reputation left worth saving? Seems like they gotta start from scratch regardless.
- panick21_ 2y agoIf 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoI 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.
- ein0p 2y agoSanity prevails. A rare turn of events for US government whose main motto in life is “we don’t care - we don’t have to”
- Abismith 2y ago[dead]
- MangoCoffee 2y agoI'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?
- itopaloglu83 2y agoMaybe Boeing should be allowed to go bankrupt as whoever buys the pieces would definitely do a better job. Also, isn’t this how capitalism works or supposed to work?
- honeybadger1 2y agoIt'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 2y agoIt'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 2y agoOne 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%2F2reoopbklkud1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F2...
- WalterBright 2y agoYes, 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 2y agoMay 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 2y agowhat about volume viscosity? or did "fluid" imply incompressible Hierarchies? (IMX rapidly expanding Hierarchies do not [pace Landau] relax on a negligible time scale)
- TeslaCoils 2y agoMight as well start calling it McDonnell Douglas Starliner ;)
- nashashmi 2y agoImagine if this were a trip to mars.
- pimpampum 2y agoThat's what you get when you give control to MBA kind.