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Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

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Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#31

Post by krasin »

renewiltord wrote: post #12

The funny thing is that Elon Musk promised us Mars and gave us orbit for cheaper than ever before. Boeing in its various incarnations has promised us orbit and given us nothing for just as expensive as before. Some people like to optimize for delta between promise and delivery. I think I like it when just delivery is optimized. There's really only one space company in the US today, and perhaps if there were other peo…

> There's really only one space company in the US today

Rocket Lab ([1]) is very decent and has a rapid launch cadence ([2]), even though their rockets are smaller than Falcon 9 (for now). They launched 8 rockets in 2023, 5 rockets in 2024 so far and plan to launch another 15 rockets this year.

1. https://www.rocketlabusa.com/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electron_launches

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#32

Post by yarg »

schiffern wrote: post #16
irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

>But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. Funny how it used to be SpaceX making this argument, and ULA was fighting tooth-and-nail for "sole source" as cheaper. :-\ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbL7o_SJsA I don't see SpaceX pushing to discontinue ULA's contract, so it would se…

SpaceX was a threat to ULA, and ULA knew it.

But is ULA any sort of threat to SpaceX? If I were Musk, I'd want them sticking around just to make me look good.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#33

Post by [deleted] »

schiffern wrote: post #16
irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

>But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. Funny how it used to be SpaceX making this argument, and ULA was fighting tooth-and-nail for "sole source" as cheaper. :-\ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbL7o_SJsA I don't see SpaceX pushing to discontinue ULA's contract, so it would se…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#34

Post by TulliusCicero »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

It's easy for old, incumbent companies to become ossified, where their internal culture and bureaucracy and processes are hilariously inefficient. At any given time, there will be some people pushing back on that, but there will always be more people there who are okay with it -- because the ones who couldn't handle the ossification left, while the people who were okay with it stayed. Survivorship bias, in other words; sometimes this is called the Dead Sea effect: https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-... (this article talks about it in terms of IT competence, but you can easily apply it to other aspects of a business' culture)

That's why it's so important for it to be easy for new entrants to start up in an economic sector. You need them to pressure the old guard, or failing that, to replace them.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#35

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

Hedging against what? Boeing should be allocated to making weapons now

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#36

Post by jvanderbot »

YeBanKo wrote: post #30
irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

Without SpaceX DoD would locked into a single maker, but also into a Russian made engine. 5 years behind the schedule and only after congress mandated it n

You're not wrong, but this doesn't contradict or support anything posted above, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#37

Post by TulliusCicero »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #28
tw04 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s really a fair assessment. Yes Space-X has had the most launches and gets the most press, but the US has a very healthy launch industry. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/top-us-launch-compan...

The thing is, it's not even remotely close. SpaceX had 98 launches in 2023. ULA, the closest competitor, had 3. For all of these others, considering that this article is from 2022, how many of them even still exist? Don't get me wrong, I hope SpaceX gets some stiff competition because I believe that competition breeds innovation. At the moment, however, I have no idea where that is going to come from or when it might…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electron_launches ?

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#38

Post by jvanderbot »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #34
insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

It's easy for old, incumbent companies to become ossified, where their internal culture and bureaucracy and processes are hilariously inefficient. At any given time, there will be some people pushing back on that, but there will always be more people there who are okay with it -- because the ones who couldn't handle the ossification left, while the people who were okay with it stayed. Survivorship bias, in other word…

Boeing is definitely in on it, but let's be clear, the gov as a consumer was not really asking for 100 launches a year, and was not in the business of paying for the change necessary to completely reinvent lift as a service. So why wouldn't they just keep charging what they were charging, and building what they always did.

There just wasn't an appetite for risk and reinvention, at least not enough to bring it down and start over, the way an eccentric billionaire could.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#39

Post by somenameforme »

irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

The chances of SpaceX failing in an irrecoverable way are zero. In some sort of crazy black swan event, a public offering of stock/equity would easily bring in vast sums for them. They even managed to get through COVID unscathed. The main danger of relying on a single provider is them taking advantage of that position and charging unreasonable rates, exactly like Boeing/Lockheed have been doing for decades (two companies, exact same issues - go figure). But SpaceX is ideologically motivated and minimizing the costs of spaceflight, as they have now been doing for decades, is a fundamental part of their goal. To use an obvious example, we didn't build out two identical Apollo programs.

Space is orders of magnitude more complex than air flight, and Boeing is now left struggling even with the latter. China has a highly advanced space program and have successfully launched/manned their own space station, and much more. Yet even they are technologically far behind SpaceX - the same is true of Russia. I don't actually understand why this is, as it's not like SpaceX is relying on any sort of just extremely well guarded secrets, but whatever the reason, it is what it is. And so with this context, I don't think there's any realistic chance of Boeing "getting its act together" anytime in the foreseeable future. So it turns these gestures into little more than lighting tens of billions of dollars on fire. And that's a pretty big fire.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#40

Post by cratermoon »

dotnet00 wrote: post #25
insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

SpaceX was able to accomplish it because they were actually trying. They quickly became the company to go to if you entered aerospace primarily to work yourself hard doing R&D, so they got all the best young aerospace engineers who just wanted to get things done rather than have their soul crushed by the bureacracy at the old space giants. Meanwhile Boeing and the other old guard were full of jaded "it isn't that eas…

> Meanwhile Boeing and the other old guard were full of jaded "it isn't that easy" types.

That has nothing to do with it. Boeing has been a cost-plus defense contractor for so long managed doesn't know how to do fixed-price work. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-th...

Back in 2023 Boeing execs even said so: https://www.missouribusinessalert.com/industries/technology/...

Prior to the pandemic and the 737Max debacle, though, Boeing would low-bid fixed-price contracts and eat the losses because their commercial aircraft business would cover it, then make up the difference with continued sales. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2022/04/boeings-low-ball...

The only folks who weren't trying here were senior management, who were unable to do anything that wasn't milking the cost-plus contract cow.

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