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NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

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Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#211

Post by timthorn »

panta wrote: post #201
edmundsauto wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think has changed since the 1960s? There were high paying private industry union protected skilled jobs, but many people went to work for NASA.

Corporate culture changed radically in the 70s adopting Milton Friedman views that ethics and responsibility towards society have no place in the private sector, and as a consequence started maximizing profits in spite of everything else.

I'm not convinced that's exactly what he thought, though corporates might have gone that way.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#212

Post by chrisco255 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #179
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we were to have made these workers government employees The problem is monopoly. Spacefaring isn’t exactly the type of work that attracts the safe and secure job for life types. (Most folks I know at SpaceX would have chosen another career if the only option were a public job at public pay with public promotion limits.)

While SpaceX has been successful and innovative, it certainly doesn’t keep folks around. Average tenure is ~3.6 years. Those folks are smart, and can always find work elsewhere. Are we optimizing for the individual? Or for an aerospace manufacturing and supply chain system that requires care and feeding over decades? A tale as old as time.

As a private company how are you even getting those numbers? I'm certain they vary dramatically by specialty within SpaceX.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#213

Post by thriftwy »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193
edmundsauto wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think has changed since the 1960s? There were high paying private industry union protected skilled jobs, but many people went to work for NASA.

The USSR had just beat the US to put the first man into space. The same USSR that was killing political dissidents en masse and building an arsenal of terrifying nuclear weapons. John F. Kennedy set out the ambitious goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and then he was assassinated. People wanted to make that happen. So they did. There hasn't been a lot to inspire people to work for the gov…

> killing political dissidents

That's a funny perspective. USSR just before that time mostly killed communist apparatus members¥ and with them innocent people. In such an environment, there naturally won't be too many dissidents, so I don't think they registered.

They did kill a lot of supposed sympathiers of pre-Soviet Russia, though.

¥ As they say, internal competition is the most fierce one.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#214

Post by jillesvangurp »

pharos92 wrote: post #112

And SpaceX are sitting there with all the capability, resource and a good chunk of the technology ready to go. The legacy defence contractors have been watered with a hoover dams worth of taxpayer money for far too long and have little to show for it.

SpaceX is about to launch Starship for the fifth time in a few weeks. If they pull off a controlled landing and catch (which they are rumored to attempt), that's going to be the best ticket to the moon by far. They might actually manage to get there before the Chinese if they put their mind to it and get the resources and backing to do it.

Chinese peer pressure might achieve what years of lobbying hasn't managed to achieve: a sense of urgency. The Chinese establishing a moon base without US boots on the surface would be a major embarrassment. They've done a few unmanned landings now. So, they clearly have the capability to pull this off now.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#215

Post by chrisco255 »

edmundsauto wrote: post #178
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we were to have made these workers government employees The problem is monopoly. Spacefaring isn’t exactly the type of work that attracts the safe and secure job for life types. (Most folks I know at SpaceX would have chosen another career if the only option were a public job at public pay with public promotion limits.)

What do you think has changed since the 1960s? There were high paying private industry union protected skilled jobs, but many people went to work for NASA.

The Apollo project was the most ambitious engineering effort since the Manhattan project. What was next though? We didn't establish a moon base and instead opted for the Space Shuttle program which was considerably less ambitious than Apollo/Saturn V.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#216

Post by zo1 »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #184
Jensson wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerful undemocratic countries are scary, if they are willing to oppress their own people they are for sure willing to oppress other people as well.

>Powerful undemocratic countries are scary Just like all the other undemocratic dictatorships the west is "friends" with and turn a blind eye to their anti human rights actions?

There is no reasoning about this. Government as an entity (especially the "Rainbow" West ones like the EU and US) is literally schizophrenic or crazy or has multiple personality disorder (that's the best analogy I can come up with). Their laws are not internally consistent, their words don't match their actions, they entertain conflicting and opposing priorities, they actively do things to their own detriment, they promote the well-being of everyone but their own citizens, they can't get consensus on anything from their own populace, and they blame everyone and themselves too at the same time for their own failings.

They admit their own failings by showing us who they are "allergic" to. So yes, China may be a "bad guy", but they're painted as a boogeyman for a reason.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#217

Post by chrisco255 »

panta wrote: post #201
edmundsauto wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think has changed since the 1960s? There were high paying private industry union protected skilled jobs, but many people went to work for NASA.

Corporate culture changed radically in the 70s adopting Milton Friedman views that ethics and responsibility towards society have no place in the private sector, and as a consequence started maximizing profits in spite of everything else.

Corporations never had "responsibility towards society". In fact I much prefer corporations that don't pretend to have such a burden. It's almost always a false front.

Corps have a responsibility to deliver a product or service at a competitive price in order to sustain growth.

Friedman was an economist, not a corporate whisperer. To the extent that corps changed, they were forced to by market forces, most notably globalization, a force much bigger than one man and a force that was inevitable and even necessary in the wake of world war one and world war two.

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#218

Post by QuesnayJr »

whatshisface wrote: post #84
mr90210 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NNT wrote Skin in the Game, which discusses such types of managers who cause similar damages. He argues that there should be clawbacks to managers that harm a company to the degree Boeing’s current management has. He invokes The Code of Hammurabi to illustrate how ancient civilization used to deal with such class of professionals.

The Soviet Union would actually send managers to GULAG for "wrecking," or other labor crimes, and it didn't really help. In fact, "accountability" was the only thing the USSR did not have a short supply of. Extraordinary punishments don't help if the system for figuring out who's doing a good job, and who isn't, is not working in the first place.

I think this is the key point, one that gets neglected in these discussions. It's easy to say we should reward people for doing a good job, and punish people for doing a bad job, but that determination will be made by people, and those people can have an agenda. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Re: NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

#219

Post by jajko »

nradov wrote: post #123
pjscott wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious patch for this is to have monetary penalties for failing inspection written into the contract, so that submitting shoddy work has a price measured in dollars. Money is the unit of caring, at least at a corporate scale, so there needs to be money involved if you want them to care systematically. (I don’t know if NASA already does this. They might.)

Inspections can help to an extent, but you can't inspect quality into a product. The customer can't anticipate every possible serious failure. Good results in safety-critical systems require an organizational culture that focuses on quality throughout the product lifecycle.

Yeah but as we see with Boeing now, when its shitshow, its more like crap is landing left and right and not a situation of overall excellence with one singular failing point.

Meaning many failures would be spotted. Maybe not 100% automatically corrected but much better situation than current regulatory capture one and stuff we see in news every second week.

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