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

Post by FreshStart » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #52

FireBeyond wrote: post #28

While there are concerns with the bidding process, I think this is a pretty big "nothing", in the grand scheme. There is some pretty horrific anti-Boeing spin. > Throughout this spring, NASA and Boeing had been working toward a July launch date of the spacecraft, which will carry two astronauts for the first time. > Asked whether Starliner might be able to launch this year, Stich did not offer a concrete timetable. "…

Objective reality seems to be that SpaceX's first (successful) crewed flight (to the ISS) was completed a bit over 3 years ago now. And SpaceX is well into its 6th operational NASA ISS mission since then. Vs. Boeing still has not finish assembling a Starliner capsule that meets NASA's safety spec's. Right now, "speculation" is saying that Boeing will ever successfully fly a Starliner mission.

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

evandale wrote: post #80

housemusicfan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this article just reeks of subjective opinion, more so than objective neutrality The comments section of any Ars Starliner article is a must-read for me. These guys were devout Boeing haters and would endlessly praise SpaceX - that is, until Elon become public enemy #1 last year and they suddenly and abruptly shifted their hate and derision the other way. Not a single independent thought on that entire forum, unles…

The haters don't want to admit space flight is really really hard and Elon, excuse my language, fucking nailed it. Richard Branson is a billionaire who tried to do spaceflight long before Elon and Virgin Galactic hasn't launched anything useful (before SpaceX) as far as I know. If someone thinks a suborbital flight is impressive I highly recommend them to play KSP and find out how easy that is compared to getting int…

Post by FreshStart » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #33

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a different perspective on that from large acquisitions around firm fixed price contracts. If you're doing some low risk building, say a 10 mile road on flat ground with known soil, replacing a previous road, that is well-known to current specs with set-in-stone requirements (no pun intended) it is easy to pitch that firm fixed price because the contractor will know exactly what to do, and there are 20 road…

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.

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

ktpecot wrote: post #89

FireBeyond wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does, "Announced in 2012 to be launched in November 2016, the program suffered numerous delays until four years after the initial launch date, it's taking off..." > and the situation in Russia Presumably you mean the Ukraine invasion, which had zero bearing on this, given that it happened nearly a year and a half later...

I mean I guess you are correct it was late but it was still first relative to Boeing. So the timeline warranted less emphasis then say now when Boeing is delayed 3 plus years on top of that. I’m not sure how you can say the Ukraine invasion has zero bearing on the “NASA…having no access to space”. Given starliner is a dumpster fire and NASA would not be able to reliably count on Soyuz for access to ISS, it was a rema…

Post by panick21_ » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

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…