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Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

arstechnica.com

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Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#171

Post by wkat4242 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #64
tekla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Crew-1 Happened in 2020, Staliner-1 has been delayed until probably late 2023, 2024. Demo-1 Happened before OFT-1. They both started at similar times and also their delayed missions were delayed by similar amounts initially. By all accounts, Starliner is behind is every possible way with much greater funding than SpaceX. SpaceX is at Crew 7, Starliner isn't even close to Starliner-1

> By all accounts, Starliner is behind is every possible way with much greater funding than SpaceX. That's only true if you assume SpaceX strictly allocated budgets per program and that no revenue from their other missions have gone to the crewed flight programs. I'm not saying Spaceliner is a success, or that there are arguments to be made about each company's approach (you could argue that while Boeing's approach s…

> (you could argue that while Boeing's approach seems relatively glacial, Boeing also has far fewer smoking craters and damaged barges than SpaceX).

Yet SpaceX is still cheaper despite those damaged barges and craters. And that's really all there is to those, a cost element. It would be different if they had left smoking corpses but they haven't.

They do really do something right.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#172

Post by grecy »

jackmott42 wrote: post #136
grecy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon also said the Falcon 9 would work, said it would be re-usable, said the Falcon 9 heavy would work, said the Model S would be good, said the Model 3 would be great, said the Model Y would be the most popular car in the world, etc. etc. Obviously he's not hitting 100%, but you can't deny his companies are achieving immensely more than anyone ever thought possible. If I could take Elon's ratio of "I said it would w…

sane person here, I would only take Elon's claim that something would work seriously if it relied mostly on newtonian mechanics to verify. which model S being good, falcon 9 working etc, that is all it takes. basic physics napkin math. anything with nuance (self driving) or human emotions in play (twitter), and he is the same as any boomer uncle complaining about kids these days

> That is all it takes. basic physics napkin math

And yet Tesla and SpaceX and now wiping the floor with their competitors.

If it was really so "basic", why didn't those other multi-billion dollar companies do what Tesla and SpaceX are doing?

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#173

Post by travisgriggs »

areoform wrote: post #8

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

There was a time when Boeing was a Washington state company, with a strong engineering tradition and contribution. You can pretty much correlate the count of failures and overruns with the era when the mergers and buyouts started, the engineering substance was diluted, and management moved "off site" to Chicago to be "more accessible".

As a Washington state resident that used to be proud of Boeing, now days, I just despise them. I work with lots of fine ex Boeing engineers at my current place of work. I feel for all of the fine individuals that still work at Boeing, but other wise, I wish them the same death I wish on IBM now days.

No "Rest In Peace" from me. More of "Don't let the door hit you..." feeling.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#175

Post by ethbr0 »

rtkwe wrote: post #152
ChuckMcM wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, it is pretty stunning. Also ULA's inability to come up with a launch capability that is anywhere close to Falcon/Falcon Heavy in terms of cost and time to flight. The fascinating thing is that the lack of competition allowed the space launch industry to switch from "invent" mode to "monetize" mode way too early. It is also what makes the Starship work both more credible and more interesting. There…

There's also been a bit of a shift in the market for space launches. For the longest time there wasn't that much of a market for a higher volume, cheaper launcher like the Falcon as the number of launches were really limited to mostly government launches and a handful of communication satellites. Recently hardware has gotten much cheaper which combined with cheaper launches skyrockets the number of groups that could…

That was the point of Starlink.

If the only capability is incredibly expensive and highly reliable, no demand that only works under cheaper and relaxed reliability exists.

Luckily, the market's caught up pretty quickly.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#176

Post by ethbr0 »

jjordan wrote: post #122
notquitehuman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You don't need to tear down the Republic, but you do need to elect representatives that can somehow stand against the relentless current of lobbyists jockeying for appropriations.

That means campaign funding from a different source.

Which means overruling Citizens United and campaign funding reform.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#177

Post by FireBeyond »

ceejayoz wrote: post #146
FireBeyond wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> completely neglects to mention any delay whatsoever when talking about the Crew-1 launch The Crew-1 delay was three years ago. Why would he mention it in this article? > spins a lack of a confirmed updated launch date less than three weeks after discovery of issues into a delay that will approach 2025 Reasonable, given how it's gone so far. They've yet another parachute issue, and accidentally used "hundreds of fee…

> The Crew-1 delay was three years ago. Why would he mention it in this article?

The Crew-1 delays were not mentioned once in the article where Crew-1 actually launched - he just spent the article patting SpaceX on the back for saving NASA.

Now we have this delay but it's Boeing, and it's all about the delays. And speculating that Starliner may not even launch until after Crew-9, when Crew-8 isn't even announced, but will be mid 2024 at the earliest, and that's before you realize that Crew-7 is delayed, yes by a few days, but "because of another launch" - that other launch being a SpaceX launch that was delayed.

However you spin it, this journalist has a near allergic avoidance of the word "delay" when it comes to SpaceX, and can't wait to spin Boeing delays into worst case scenarios that are entirely speculation. There's no way you can reasonably turn "we're going to talk to Boeing and announce an updated launch date" in July of 2023 and credibly say "it's entirely possible that Crew-9 will launch before it!"

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#178

Post by vGPU »

dotnet00 wrote: post #39
Laremere wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They still can use cutting off the ISS as a bargaining chip since half the station is Russian and handles orbit raising. They actually did do that a lot early into the war, until Rogozin was replaced as head of Roscosmos by someone who took a slightly less bombastic approach of saying that Russia would quit the ISS once they have a successor station up later this decade. What gets in the way is that the US has severa…

>can’t get a replacement station

Ok, let’s break this down from the start. Russia has launched 10 space stations. The ISS was built using modules that were built for the Mir-2 station. The ISS was built on top of Russian modules.

Meanwhile, NASA wasn’t even able to fly their own astronauts to the ISS for a decade until Musk stepped in.

Russia has also demonstrated that they continue to have this capability as they added the first expansion to the ISS in over two decades recently.

I would hazard a guess that Russia’s capability in this area is much more… capable than the US at this time. They are also far more likely to be able to come to a collaboration agreement with china than the US is at this time. They also helped india kickstart their space program recently.

In conclusion: Russia bad? Maybe. But they weren’t stupid enough to outsource their manufacturing and allow the loss of institutional knowledge that the US has.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#179

Post by dotnet00 »

vGPU wrote: post #178
dotnet00 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still can use cutting off the ISS as a bargaining chip since half the station is Russian and handles orbit raising. They actually did do that a lot early into the war, until Rogozin was replaced as head of Roscosmos by someone who took a slightly less bombastic approach of saying that Russia would quit the ISS once they have a successor station up later this decade. What gets in the way is that the US has severa…

>can’t get a replacement station Ok, let’s break this down from the start. Russia has launched 10 space stations. The ISS was built using modules that were built for the Mir-2 station. The ISS was built on top of Russian modules. Meanwhile, NASA wasn’t even able to fly their own astronauts to the ISS for a decade until Musk stepped in. Russia has also demonstrated that they continue to have this capability as they ad…

Russia added a module that had been sitting around for 13 years and was only finally launched because warranties on some parts would've begun expiring. Then the first thing that module did was flip the station. While yes, they have a history of doing better than the US on space stations, the point is that their space industry is a shadow of what it used to be.

This can be seen from how many next generation rockets, rocket engines and crewed vehicles they've announced over the years which have never really ended up amounting to much. For instance, the timeline on Orel makes Orion seem like a speedy development.

Finally, while the US did make that mistake at first, they've very obviously more than recovered that knowledge considering how many different engines, launch vehicles, spacecraft etc are in actual (as in having working hardware to show and not just mockups and promises) development by several different American companies.

Plus, much of the former Soviet space program can be attributed just as much to Ukraine, where a lot of the R&D happened ;)

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#180

Post by [deleted] »

ethbr0 wrote: post #176
jjordan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to tear down the Republic, but you do need to elect representatives that can somehow stand against the relentless current of lobbyists jockeying for appropriations.

That means campaign funding from a different source. Which means overruling Citizens United and campaign funding reform.

[deleted]
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