Live data from Hacker News

NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

flyingmag.com

341–350 of 413 posts

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

#341
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there were a lot more players in aerospace then too. Apart from Boeing and Lockheed, Apollo also involved North American Aviation, Grumman, Rocketdyne, General Dynamics, Pratt & Whitney, Douglas, TRW, and Bell. Of those, only General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney have not been acquired or merged into other companies.

Are there not _far_ more players in aerospace today than what you listed? Maybe those of today are not at the scale of the companies you listed at the height of the cold war, but we're really in a new era of space industry.

People making cubesats? Sure. Companies that can build moonshot hardware, though, are far more scarce.

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

#342
post #272

What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far: - Western Industry. - The blue-collar middle class - The Middle Class - Our health care system - Our education - Western Economic Leadership. - Social Mobility Now they are busy destroying western technology, science and innovation on their never-ending selfish wealth-extraction quest. They convinced us that our homes are investments, so they can fleece us with their usurary…

> So, what next? our organs? I’m almost certain I’ve seen a study that tried to prove opening up the organ trade would help the economy and hinder the black market.

I see your organ trade study and raise you a billion dollar VC to turn kidneys into penis enlargement powder, buying at a rate that prices out the majority of dialysis patients.

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

#343
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but Stennis Space Center is nearby. It's no Cape Canaveral but it's not as though aerospace is completely unheard of there.

Stennis is not getting its personnel from local grad schools.

Welders don't go to grad school so I'm not sure what we're talking about here.

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo program doesn’t seem to be a good example of a space pipeline that is sustainable for a few decades at least.

> Apollo program doesn’t seem to be a good example of a space pipeline that is sustainable for a few decades at least Correct. OP suggested the root of the problem is we haven't made "these workers government employees." The Apollo programme had lots of government employees. Commercial interests clearly aren't at the root of the problem.

Im pretty sure the government employees working on Apollo were mostly already there before the program or stayed there afterwards, so their tenure was probably much longer than 3.6 years. And a lot of work on Apollo was done by contractors (for example building basically all flight hardware as far as I know).

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a meaningless distinction though. What's the logic of not choosing the most reliable supplier in the industry just because the owner is rich?

> That's a meaningless distinction though. Just because there's currently no way to separate the two financially doesn't mean the complaint is invalid. There are multiple plausible ways for those finances to become untangled. > just because the owner is rich Him being just "rich" (7-8 figure threshold) is barely a factor. It's the extreme level and the way he acts.

This is why I mentioned 'reliable'. People love to whine about how extreme they perceive Musk to be, but SpaceX has continued to be as reliable as ever and hasn't shown any of the urges conspiracy theorists love to imagine they will have.

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

#347
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stennis is not getting its personnel from local grad schools.

Welders don't go to grad school so I'm not sure what we're talking about here.

Stennis isn’t going to keep welders around. Those are the design and engineering support personnel.

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

#348
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic: Dear proud American, pls loosen up your immigration rules for highly-skilled workers who despite the last years would still be very grateful to move to America. We want our grandchildren to one day also be proud Americans. Cheers, A friend from abroad who still believes in America

If we stopped illegal immigration, we would have far more room for high skills legal immigrants.

How does that work exactly?

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

#349
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When that was happening, the US was spending ungodly amount of money to show Soviets that they can take ~a nuke~ sorry people to the Moon and back. Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a rol…

> Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model. To be fair, Boeing, Lockheed etc won't be the decisive players putting humans back on the moon from the US. It'll be smaller and scrappie…

This is where the "ungodly" funds of Cold War make the difference. There is little incentive in the US government to spend at once as much and take political risk as much as it did back then.

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

#350

What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far: - Western Industry. - The blue-collar middle class - The Middle Class - Our health care system - Our education - Western Economic Leadership. - Social Mobility Now they are busy destroying western technology, science and innovation on their never-ending selfish wealth-extraction quest. They convinced us that our homes are investments, so they can fleece us with their usurary…

My undergrad is in finance. IMO the problem is that we don't really teach what wealth is as Adam Smith defined it. A wealthy nation is not the one with the greatest stockpile of gold, but the one with the most quality goods and services easily available to its average citizens (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but you understand). Smith really stresses that profit is a measurement of the good provided to society by an activity. But in my studies, there was no concern for this quality of profit. The attitude was that any way net income (profit) could be increased was strictly to be understood as a net positive for society.

I had professors explain that war is profitable because people are employed building tanks etc. and they use their wages to stimulate the economy. When I asked 'what if instead of sending a few million dollars of steel and circuitry to the desert to get exploded, those workers used the same resources on a hospital?' I recieved the answer that if the NPV of the tank is higher than the hospital, it must be the better use of the resources.

Post reply on HN