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

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

#181

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 11:57 PM UTC

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…

I think the nuance is different. I think there has always been demand of inexpensive access to space, what did not exist was a company willing to invest in making that true. If you lived through the "Single Stage To Orbit" (SSTO) initiatives that were kicked off by Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars" project to put "hundreds" of satellites into orbit, the idea of a cost insensitive customer willing to pay for tens of launches a year, drove a lot of investment into the market. When SDI was cancelled rocket companies bailed and investment fled. Even though billions had been invested in Iridium, and millions had been invested in Teledesic, the "establishment" could not see how having such a capability would be useful. Sort of like prognosticators suggesting that the world demand for computers might be just five from IBM in 1943. People who are stuck looking at the cost/availability in the "now" cannot imagine a future where those things are different.

One of the things I've always looked for in hiring people is the ability to "unconstrain" ones thinking by "rules." Those are the kinds of people who can think about a world where we have a technology to say, "nullify gravity", and what impact that might have on what we do or how we do it. Constrained thinkers will say, "There is no way to 'nullify' gravity so it isn't worth wasting any time thinking about what we could do if we could."

This capability shows me someone who is able to step into a different frame of reference with their reasoning skills intact and sharp. As a result, when there is an "unexpected" discovery or event, they waste little time in cognitive dissonance says "This can't be happening" or "That isn't possible what I'm seeing" and instead jump right to "Hmm if we can do that then , , and could be done too!"

There are a lot of things to dislike Elon for, but one thing that he shares with Steve Jobs is if he believes a thing he is "all in". Sometimes it takes that to get to the other side of an "unthinkable" change.

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

#182

Post by wongarsu » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 12:17 AM UTC

resolutebat wrote: post #126

panick21_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA replacement stations are totally underfunded by congress, non are close. Don't expect a solution from that anyime soon.

If Starship delivers even half of what they're promising, we'll have a bunch of commercial space stations up even without NASA support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stati...

But what's the market for those, without NASA funding? Maybe one Salyut-sized station for "space tourism" (that is to say, 1-3 day stays for like 3 people at a time), and maybe one similarly sized station for space manufacturing (which is currently just optical fiber) and commercial 0g experiments. You could dock both together to share some systems. But what's the market demand for anything beyond those two stations, never mind any station comparable to the ISS?

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

#183

Post by wongarsu » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 12:29 AM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #142

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #5

> Because Starliner was funded by NASA through a fixed-price contract, as part of the Commercial Crew program, Boeing is responsible for any cost overruns and financial losses due to delays. Given Boeing’s history here this feels like the right kind of contract for this sort of work. Ensures all incentives are aligned

Fixed price contracts can be quite a problem in high risk projects. The issue is that incentives absolutely aren't aligned. The moment Boeing thinks it has achieved a certain part of the contract but NASA does not you have a huge problem on your hand where one side will try to get work done for free and the other has absolutely zero interest as they are not getting paid. If cost overruns are too great Boeing might al…

As much as I like the idea of having multiple independent vehicles (and knowing the impact of having your only crew-capable launch system grounded when it happened in the shuttle era), Starliner has been in systems integration hell for years now, always just a couple short months away. Boeing withdrawing and NASA restarting the bidding process for that contract might benefit everyone.

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

#184

Post by resolutebat » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 12:42 AM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #182

resolutebat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Starship delivers even half of what they're promising, we'll have a bunch of commercial space stations up even without NASA support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stati...

But what's the market for those, without NASA funding? Maybe one Salyut-sized station for "space tourism" (that is to say, 1-3 day stays for like 3 people at a time), and maybe one similarly sized station for space manufacturing (which is currently just optical fiber) and commercial 0g experiments. You could dock both together to share some systems. But what's the market demand for anything beyond those two stations,…

Starship economics change everything. Today, it costs on the order of $1500/kg to hoist something to orbit with a Falcon 9. Even if you add a zero to Elon's predictions of $15/kg with Starship, you're still reducing costs by 10x, which means zero-gravity manufacturing at scale, space tourism for 100 people at a time, etc etc becomes possible.

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

#185

Post by hinkley » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 12:42 AM UTC

ta1243 wrote: post #151

hinkley wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even get your plumber to tell you how much it's going to cost to get your toilet working smoothly again. And you want to get to the moon on a fixed budget? (Which will also require a toilet). Software has the same problems. An unreasonable expectation of being able to predict the future (except the bits they don't want you to know about), and a lot of whining when we run into unexpected issues.

> And you want to get to the moon on a fixed budget? (Which will also require a toilet). Didn't last time https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/poop-space-revisited-apo...

That's an article about why having a toilet on a space ship is a very, very good idea.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 12:56 AM UTC

dotnet00 wrote: post #113

ceejayoz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So many people want to erroneously believe Elon is some child with the mental capacity of a 3 year old with access to billions of dollars because they don't want to like him or give him credit for anything. I think the contrast between Musk's SpaceX and Twitter experiences is largely down to whether the organization grew up around Musk. SpaceX has an immune system built up for the nutty stuff, from Gwynne Shotwell…

I think saying that SpaceX is somehow "containing" the nutty stuff in a way that Twitter is not isn't all that accurate. SpaceX does tons of nutty stuff, some of it turns out to be good, and that's how they have their 10+ year technology lead on most of the world. In the early days this was stuff like using shears to roughly trim an engine bell in the field. Nowadays it's stuff like attempting to catch rockets with g…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by datavirtue » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 1:03 AM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #103

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.

All of the big defense contractors do this, it’s kind of astounding. Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. their offices are spread out over the country to give enough coverage in congressional districts where no one will be willing to kill funding for a project at the risk of their local plant closing.

The military-ness has now outweighed the engineering culture in those companies...making them effectively government agencies that are publicly traded. I don't have a positive outlook for any stakeholder.

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

#188

Post by CobrastanJorji » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

myfavoritetings wrote: post #141

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, that looks scary to be in the capsule for, but far less scary than the Saturn V's Apollo Pad Abort Test, where the rocket was ON TOP of the capsule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system#/media/Fi...

Whether you are being pushed or pulled by a rocket doesn't really matter. From the inside would feel very similar.

It'd presumably feel a bit warmer for the case where you're underneath the rocket.

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

#189

Post by OrvalWintermute » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 1:58 AM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #30

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NASA did just give Boeing extra money for some pretty dubious reasons. Actually, a multiple award approach for a very high risk, technically challenging widget makes perfect sense, and is the same thing seen for similarly challenging weapon systems e.g. the Advanced Tactical Fighter F-22 vs F-23 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-23-ste... > The report specifically notes that, five days after NAS…

The Starliner was gone get built if they dropped 100M extra on Boeing or not. There lots of more relevant and important technologies that need more funding. The CommercialCrew program was not done for research, it was trying to solving a particular problem at the time and do it fast and efficently. If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do i…

> If NASA want to spend money on more experimental human spaceflight, the CommercialCrew program was not the place to do it.

SpaceX has been built on launch contracts displacing ULA.

It is clear that the longterm for SpaceX, and their competitors, is going way past mere launch services (as complex as those are) to cis-lunar and interplanetary missions.

Getting a healthy ecosystem with robust competitors is just the start. NASA and peer govt organizations are looking for partners on this, since companies are expected to bring their own funding to bear too.

https://www.space.com/nasa-funding-moon-power-exploration-te...

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

#190

Post by ecshafer » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

datavirtue wrote: post #187

ecshafer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the big defense contractors do this, it’s kind of astounding. Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. their offices are spread out over the country to give enough coverage in congressional districts where no one will be willing to kill funding for a project at the risk of their local plant closing.

The military-ness has now outweighed the engineering culture in those companies...making them effectively government agencies that are publicly traded. I don't have a positive outlook for any stakeholder.

IMO the only reason those companies are not literal divisions of the government is plausible deniability so they can sell things to other countries. I would guess 95% of their revenue is from the government, and they have very strict government regulations. If we just nationalized Lockheed and friends, I would be we could get improved efficiency.