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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I think Boeing is an object lesson in what happens when you have an MBA without an engineering background run a company whose product is cutting edge engineering.
You can’t innovate when you have to justify every cost. That’s not how innovation works, and in Boeing, engineering was a profit center… but leadership thought Boeing was a manufacturing company, and engineering was a cost center.
So,
You cut corners to make manufacturing cheaper, stop innovating, try to fix aerodynamics problems with software, try to pretend like the big changes you made aren’t, underplay the need for training pilots on what are substantially new aircraft because you don’t want to admit they are actually a lot different than the good selling previous models, etc.
All just bean counter shenanigans instead of focusing on what Boeing was actually great at: delivering value through superior engineering.
So, all the engineers that actually wanted to engineer left to do interesting things, and you’re left with the ones that want to do as little as possible, along with the bean counters that want to minimise ‘spensive stuff like actually innovative projects.
At this point it’s almost like a zombie brand, I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing boeing branded Chinese dollar store crap any day now.
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?
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.
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.
> 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)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.)
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]
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
"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.
You can't seriously think that the incredible defensibility and natural resource wealth of the USA would suddenly go away if we taxed the shit out of rich people. Norway is rich and effective and much flatter than the USA so I think perhaps flatness isn't as rigidly tied to negative outcomes as you seem to think.
Venezuela is one of the most oil-rich countries on Earth and still they had gas shortages.
It isn't enough to have resources in the ground. They are worth zero until extracted and turned into products and services. And for that you need technology, companies and entrepreneurs.
When you tax "the shit out of rich people" that's what you lose. You can do it exactly one time - next time you won't have what to tax.
> 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.
> 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.
It's just the time we live in, a time of relative peace and disinterest in matters of government. People are able to live without investing in politics, so what we have is full of zealots and wanna-be despots who have something to gain.
P.S. the citizens united ruling in the US opened the floodgates for political corruption on a scale not previously possible. It's been talked about but remains unresolved.
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.
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.
Ya, so you don’t believe in merit. My view on the world is the truth. Wealth distribution is beyond fucked, pretending otherwise is choosing ignorance.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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?
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...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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)
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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_...
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.
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:
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.
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
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)
Compressible is the usual case, no? Non-negligible timescales are fine in my book.. (probably in yours too, if you believe that turning a low trust society into a high trust society one is possible, by injecting a something or other)
Length scales are impt too, we are obsessed with highly localized organizations like Musk’s (other than X) & Kelly’s because they seem so effective but the most insidious ones tend to rely on (the discrepancy bewtween?) long (or even mid) range info/materiel exchanges..
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
That's an interesting take. My take is that SpaceX shows the enormous benefit of privatizing space activities, and of a vertically integrated provider.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He also deliberately kept their budget small and headcount low, on the theory that "constraints breed innovation". Read The Everything Store for details.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
s/should/will/
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
It is unhealthy to not have competition to SpaceX.
> 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.
Intends, and (more importantly) is able to.
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.
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.
I think Boeing is an object lesson in what happens when you have an MBA without an engineering background run a company whose product is cutting edge engineering.
You can’t innovate when you have to justify every cost. That’s not how innovation works, and in Boeing, engineering was a profit center… but leadership thought Boeing was a manufacturing company, and engineering was a cost center.
So, You cut corners to make manufacturing cheaper, stop innovating, try to fix aerodynamics problems with software, try to pretend like the big changes you made aren’t, underplay the need for training pilots on what are substantially new aircraft because you don’t want to admit they are actually a lot different than the good selling previous models, etc.
All just bean counter shenanigans instead of focusing on what Boeing was actually great at: delivering value through superior engineering.
So, all the engineers that actually wanted to engineer left to do interesting things, and you’re left with the ones that want to do as little as possible, along with the bean counters that want to minimise ‘spensive stuff like actually innovative projects.
At this point it’s almost like a zombie brand, I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing boeing branded Chinese dollar store crap any day now.
New Glenn, eventually.
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?
>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.
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.
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.
> 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_missions
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
Especially when each rocket successfully makes it further into the test, beyond the point where the previous iteration failed.
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.
I want to short anything you’re involved in
Well that's one way to tell the world you've never built anything new.
The shuttle worked within its constraints, bad management killed the astronauts
> 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.
>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.
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.
> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious.
How do you know how serious the issue was?
My guess is because it returned to earth (unmanned) without any problems
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.)
IIRC NASA requires a 1/270 chance of failure in space.
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...
Tell me you own Boeing stock without telling me you own Boeing stock.
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.
> the comedy of spacex
What?
[flagged]
theres only four of you?
think i will start combining it into "Rustex"
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.
> 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Neither I nor thinkcontext said "dumb".
What you describe is still a defection in the iterated prisoners' dilemma sense.
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.
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
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.
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".
Not surprising considering his physics background...
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.
That's just a title; it may not really mean much for actual operations. The guy's too busy with Xitter to be actually doing any engineering at SpaceX.
No, it's not a title. He did enough engineering to be the one who did the key decisions.
>Boeing
[...]
>no drama
Come again?
There's completion but it will come from China. Nobody else is paying attention.
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.
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.
Musk is getting older. I bet his motivation is to fulfill the mission of humanity on Mars before he passes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps I'm the only one who doesn't know. Care to enlighten me?
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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-...
> 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.
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...
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.
Is this not a replay of the competition that happened between US homegrown Redstone rockets versus von Braun’s rockets for getting to orbit and moon?
> 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.
Agreed. Soyuz is old but reliable and SpaceX is new and reliable. Why go for something in between ?
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.
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
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)
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Yeah, we do, because we've seen flattened societies and the results.
You can't seriously think that the incredible defensibility and natural resource wealth of the USA would suddenly go away if we taxed the shit out of rich people. Norway is rich and effective and much flatter than the USA so I think perhaps flatness isn't as rigidly tied to negative outcomes as you seem to think.
Venezuela is one of the most oil-rich countries on Earth and still they had gas shortages.
It isn't enough to have resources in the ground. They are worth zero until extracted and turned into products and services. And for that you need technology, companies and entrepreneurs.
When you tax "the shit out of rich people" that's what you lose. You can do it exactly one time - next time you won't have what to tax.
We’ve also seen the results of societies with extreme economic disparity. Neither seem to work out great.
In the US, we've seen enormous prosperity as a result.
For a small and ever-decreasing share of the population, since the seventies.
We landed on the moon with taxpayer money. We just don’t prioritize NASA as much anymore.
And after landing on the moon, NASA's budget was cut.
> 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.
> 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.
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
It's just the time we live in, a time of relative peace and disinterest in matters of government. People are able to live without investing in politics, so what we have is full of zealots and wanna-be despots who have something to gain.
P.S. the citizens united ruling in the US opened the floodgates for political corruption on a scale not previously possible. It's been talked about but remains unresolved.
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.
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.
Ya, so you don’t believe in merit. My view on the world is the truth. Wealth distribution is beyond fucked, pretending otherwise is choosing ignorance.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
> but they leave a trail of human wreckage behind them.
Musk has not left a trail of human wreckage behind.
His children and ex wives might disagree
Musk's personal life is none of yours nor my concern.
> 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.
> 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.
Starlink is prepped to add ICBM launch sensors in select satellites and then potential "deactivation" measures. A global iron dome.
>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.
Yes, as a minority immigrant to the US, meritocracy is what got me here. Idk why americans are so obsessed with this air headed topic.
> Yes, as a minority immigrant to the US, meritocracy is what got me here.
Calling the system of lobbied-for preferences and geographic quotas built into the US immigration system "meritocracy" is...amusing.
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.
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.
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.
What makes you think he's unhinged? His odd tweets?
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.
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.
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?
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...
> Same goes with Tesla.
Isn't BYD a success?
Yes, 15 years later
BYD was founded in 1995 and BYD Auto was founded in January 2003 (Tesla in July 2023).
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.
> 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).
>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?
Thank Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX COO
So you think Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX and whatever else succeeded in spite of Elon?
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.
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.
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...
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....
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.
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.
NASA might need to redo the tender for the 2nd supplier of crewed missions, regardless of the (even further) reputational hit to Boeing.
ISS is not going to stay up there for long enough for a new second supplier to make sense.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Original NASA blog post:
https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/15/nasa-update...
It wasn’t good while it lasted ;)
If it's Boeing...
The answer, my friend,
Is Boeing in the wind.
Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
...or coming back....
Iv seen the word Boeing used as a verb.
"He got the Boeing treatment"
That would not be a verb. A verb would be:
He boeinged. Or he was boeinged.
Or let's try not to boeing this design.
Or let's boeing this whistleblower.
Might as well start calling it McDonnell Douglas Starliner ;)
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?
> 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 :)
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
Its market cap is 95B. If 55B is debt, that leaves a market value of just 40B as I see it.
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)
I’m all for Elon buying it and trusting that he makes the necessary changes.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
Nah, sell Boeing to Bezos.
I eagerly await my boeing prime membership to start out good and get increasingly overpriced and junk rapidly over time.
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?
As long as initially I can get shipped off this rock with free delivery it doesn't sound so bad.
Every second part in the rockets would be counterfeit inside of 5 years.
At least then we'd get all onboard Starlink and tweets warning us when the door's about to fall off.
I think I saw recently that SpaceX is worth about 2x Boeing right now.
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.
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.
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.
Diverging slightly from the topic, Palm (the Palm Pilot company) at one point had a market cap higher than all US airlines combined.
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)
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.
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
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.
There is absolutely a 0% chance Elon goes to jail.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
Does Boeing still have any reputation left worth saving? Seems like they gotta start from scratch regardless.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wasn't it also supposed to go to the moon station for Artemis? Or is that also a non-starter if Starship works out?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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!
Self fulfilling prophecy - hilarious !
You're probably thinking of Orion which is being manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Airbus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)
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.
Boeing really needs to get a break pretty soon.
Feels like they broke a mirror and have 7 years of continuous bad luck.
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.
>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.
Boeing gets a break every day there is a jet duopoly, and both are booked years out on orders.
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_...
Poor Boeing and their billions and billions in guaranteed government defence spending. They’re fine.
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.
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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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
what about volume viscosity? or did "fluid" imply incompressible Hierarchies?
(IMX rapidly expanding Hierarchies do not [pace Landau] relax on a negligible time scale)
Compressible is the usual case, no? Non-negligible timescales are fine in my book.. (probably in yours too, if you believe that turning a low trust society into a high trust society one is possible, by injecting a something or other)
Length scales are impt too, we are obsessed with highly localized organizations like Musk’s (other than X) & Kelly’s because they seem so effective but the most insidious ones tend to rely on (the discrepancy bewtween?) long (or even mid) range info/materiel exchanges..
Oops by “Faraday” i meant “Franklin” cofather of the french revolution, not the anglo revolution..
(Wuz thinking how the revolutionary structures (i.e. artillery stds?) were mostly already in place for decades before NB)
Q: how did these not diffuse to french navy? [Boudriot-Berti]?
L? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17498577
One of them is a real engineer, the other one is a back seat engineer.
I'm really surprised people still think he's doing the work and not just a salesman.
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.
Read a biography instead of just NYT headlines.
I wish we had many more “salesmen” like him in other industries.
Amazing bootlicking guys. 10/10.
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.
Gross.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
If the aerospace industry doesn’t have enough regulation for you I’m puzzled to think of one that does.
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.
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.
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.
That's my whole point. It's the management/possibly board, not the shareholders.
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.
This is the company which famously asked its engineers to put the shareholders at top of mind when making all of their decisions.
And moved its headquarters 2,000 miles away to not be close to those annoying "engineers".
So what? That doesn't mean anything. The shareholders didn't say this, the management of the company did.
The shareholders are supposed to fire management when they are being stupid.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Since the shareholders elect the board, I guess there might be a lesson for democracy in here too.
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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.
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.
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.
Cost plus contracts are an absolute disease that atrophies any company's ability to ship on a budget
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
That's an interesting take. My take is that SpaceX shows the enormous benefit of privatizing space activities, and of a vertically integrated provider.
Guys, we shouldn’t have private spaceflight that is cheaper. We should have government spaceflight that’s more expensive.
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?
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.
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.
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.
He also deliberately kept their budget small and headcount low, on the theory that "constraints breed innovation". Read The Everything Store for details.
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
Good to see that proved wrong with a controlled experiment.
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.
divide et impera.
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”