Boeing was perceived by much of the industry as the blueblood of spaceflight while SpaceX was the company that was going to kill astronauts due to its supposed recklessness.
Given leadership at both companies I wouldn’t feel too comfortable being an astronaut these days.
I disagree. SpaceX is rumoured to have hired an “Elon babysitter” and Gwynne Shotwell seems to know what she’s doing.
But musk sucks.
The good news is that he’s so busy with Twitter and Tesla that he’s left spaceX alone.
I think Elon has become (or perhaps always was) an ass, but somehow he knows how to hire some pretty smart people.
I will say confideny that the problems with Tesla and Twitter’s daily operations are with Elon being directly involved daily.
SpaceX has Gwynne to actually run daily operations and it’s just fine. Elon says his usual shit, but it doesn’t affect daily processes. The same cannot be said for Twitter and Tesla.
Agreed.
Gwynne runs the show at SpaceX, and frankly, she’s fucking awesome at her job. The CEO is a blowhard, but Gwynne is calling the shots day to day.
I don’t know why anyone would think that of Boeing. They did fuck all for space until acquiring McDonnell Douglas and parts of Rockwell in like 1997. Then they spun most of that off into ULA with Lockheed precisely because they didn’t know what to do with it. Lockheed people have even run ULA for it’s entire existence.
The part of Boeing behind Starliner isn’t all that old. It’s certainly younger and seemingly less talented than ULA.
I don’t know why anyone would think that of Boeing.
That’s an easy question to answer: because most people think “big established aerospace company == must be competent, right?” and don’t know any of the other stuff you wrote.
State of journalism these days unfortunately. I’ve learned more about all this by simply reading and listening to the NASA briefs myself. Which you’d think the guy who writes all the Ars articles about space stuff would also do being their job and all.
Dude for real. I’d rather strap myself to the rockets those sliderule nerds used to make.
Boeing has jumped the shark entirely. A company that used to be run by engineers is now a shell of its former self and run by MBAs.
It’s literally the flayed corpse of Boeing being worn by the parasitic McDonnell Douglas.
For what it’s worth, I used to work for the former Boeing CEO who blew up the company. He seemed unrepentant. Totally just a normal dude having a normal time. His WIFE however. Holy shit was she a ball of anxiety. She was so anxious she would give her elderly dog drugs to “calm him down.” The lady was a wreck.
Guess she wasn’t a psychopath
Sounds like an abuse victim.
She wore the guilt in the family.
Therefore, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will undock from the station early next month—the tentative date, according to a source, is September 6—and attempt to make an autonomous return to Earth and land in a desert in the southwestern United States.
The whole world will be watching that and if it fails, so will Boeing.
What a fucking mess Boeing’s gotten itself into.
Not to worry. I’m sure the Boeing executives golden parachutes will save them.
Has anyone tested a Boeing parachute lately?
Probably not even Boeing’s space program.
Airbus can’t just jump in and suddenly make all the planes to replace Boeing’s civilian sector. Moreover they are irreplaceable in the defence sector. If Boeing really is to go down completly, it will take years of bad news.
Well it has been a few years of bad news…
It’s not clear to me that they are irreplaceable. If enough of their planes fall apart, you have no choice but to replace them. And also, if Boeing is so incompetent that they can’t get anything right, that’s a good argument for nationalizing the company. If they’re necessary but incompetent, and all track records indicate that they are getting worse, then the only solution is to take them over.
This is the way. Bail them out when they tank, but do so with a 51% (pr more!) stock purchase by the gov on behalf of the people/society. Force a new board. Fix the company. If they’re ever profitable again they’re free to buy their stock back from the gov at the market price. I’m not usually a capitalist, but an /actual/ capitalist bailout seems like a good way to fix the rot in this case.
Boeing has already failed… to what scale will be directly proportional to how big of a fireball this thing turns into.
We all know it’s, at best, burning itself on reentry.
To say Boeing has gloriously fucked up is an understatement
Damn you know they have real doubt about Starliner with this decision. People were saying Nasa was just being super careful and the vehicle was perfectly fine like Boeing said. But with the astronauts being forced to use Crew Dragon, they can’t wear their space suits. Because the suits they use on Starliner aren’t compatible with all the SpaceX stuff. This can be a big risk, if there is a problem with the vehicle, the astronauts have no protection. But Nasa must have decided that was a smaller risk over using the Starliner. That says a lot.
Can’t they just send up extra suits with the dragon capsule? Badly fitted suits are probably better than none, it’s not like they are piloting it down.
NASA has the measurements of all their astronauts and Dragon flight suits for Butch and Suni are already made.
They’re sending spaceX suits up with crew dragon. They’d never allow anyone to re-enter without a suit.
I haven’t seen that in any official reports yet. Mind sharing where you saw that?
2 suits and 2 seats are coming up on Crew 9 in about a month.
The last thing NASA wants to do is to loose astronauts during a mission. This would just be compounded by the fact it is an election year.
If returning with a proven Dragon capsule is even a few percentage points safer than returning with Starliner that has thruster issues, they are going to do it.
Boeing royally screwed up the entire Dreamliner program as well as Artemis production. With Sierra’s Dreamchaser potentially coming online as third alternative for manned space flight. I doubt NASA has fewer issues with letting Boeing go at this point.
Oh no that’s so embarrassing! Fucking Elon going to milk that for all its worth.
The insanity of Elon haters is beyond me…
I’m sorry I have to ask, but, serious or kidding?
Serious. Even if people don’t say it aloud, there are ones practically hoping for Tesla FSD to fail and kill someone, Neuralink recipient to die of complications or the Crew Dragon module to fail and kill the astronauts only so that they can say “I told you so” and then keep shitting on Elon. Any rational person would hope for these companies to succeed despite who the CEO is because it’ll benefit all of us on the long run.
Oh seriously, f right off. Nobody wants Tesla drivers to die, they just want Musk accountable for killing the ones that died because they believed his constant lies in the videos he released and speeches he gave that “Autopilot” / “Full Self Driving” and “ROBOTAXIS ARE COMING” meant that the cars actually can drive themselves.
Tesla only succeeded due to the hard work and innovation of its two ACTUAL founders. Ever since Elon did his cuckoo bird routine and pushed them out of the nest, Tesla has fallen behind all other car manufacturers, and have only managed to stay afloat trading carbon credits for government cash. Instead of releasing a low to mid-priced model to compete, he squeezed out the cyberturd. And SpaceX is going to ruin any chance of humans getting off this planet with Starlink. In 6 months, Starlink satellites had to make 25,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers, and they are on an exponential curve. It’s not if, but when they screw up and start the beginning of the Kessler syndrome.
And Starship is the biggest government grift of them all. That PoS will never make it to the moon, much less Mars. It’s going to end up just like the Hyperloop.
Elon is a con-artist whose only talent is constant market manipulation, insider trading, and fooling the gullible.
I don’t get people like you that start their rant by telling me to fuck off and then expect me to continue reading any further.
This is a hilariously solid take.
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If every Starlink satellite shattered into the most dangerously-sized pieces simultaneously, it would only affect our access to space for 5 to 10 years. It would perhaps be bad enough to put manned missions on the back burner during that time period, and would certainly cause major issues for terrestrial astronomy, but it wouldn’t cause much harm to the space program overall. If they were in a higher orbit, it would definitely be a concern.
Because of the CEO it will NOT benefit us all. Just think of starlink and Ukraine as a tiny example.
Did Elon Musk Turn Off Starlink Access in Crimea To Disrupt Ukrainian Attack?
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.
Yikes, a major war you say? The fact that Ukraine doesn’t have full ability to use starlink in whatever fashion they feel is necessary to repel the invaders of their nation (crimea is part of Ukraine) proves that Elon musk is aligned with money, not morals, not human rights, just fucking $$$. linking that article proving musk personally ensured starlink would not help Ukraine, and thinking that was a good thing? He’s attempting to incite a civil war in the UK, attempting to influence the US election via twitter, and he’s a really just a silver spoon apartheid slave jewel mine produced asshole and here you are saying “he’s a necessary evil”, yeah fucking right ignoramus.
Yikes, a major war you say?
Those are not my words. Not even Elon’s. Those are the words of the author of Elon’s biography, Walter Isaacson. What Elon said is:
If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.
The reason Ukraine can’t use Starlink in Russia (or occupied territories) is because Starlink is not enabled there due to US sanctions to Russia. Enabling it would be literally illegal for him to do. He also added later that had he been contacted by US officials and told to enable it, he would have, but they didn’t.
Thanks, didn’t know that!
It’s rare to see someone value truth over pride. Kudos to you.
Fuck Elon musk fuck your attempted astroturfing.
Bot
You do realise you just posted this under a comment that is doing the exact opposite and assuming SpaceX’s success, right?
Assuming success and hoping for the contrary are not in conflict with eachother
You’re not going to win here. The level of hateness is so great they will deny his accomplishments. I guess that’s the reality of life when are not successful enough - just find the bad guy to hate.
One thing for sure, however much hateness they have on him, they will never be able to achieve what this ‘phony’ Elon have achieved. The best these demographic can do is hate. they are not able to accomplish much anyway. So let them be.
Oh such great accomplishments like using his money to hire actually talented engineers then take all the credit same as Edison.
“hate” is already a noun (in addition to being a verb). The “ness” suffix is superfluous.
thx, point noted. I am not a native speaker btw.
Yeah it’s funny to watch, these are companies full of literally the best educated and most dedicated people using the most upto date tools and are regulated by incredibly serious and well organized bodies.
Yet everything they do is terrible and broken because they’re owned by Elon, a man I’m repeatedly told is a feckless layabout who does nothing but run his yap on Twitter…
The reality is people are experiencing reality like reality TV, they know Elon as a personality and they dislike his personality and since there’s only a cast of about half a dozen characters he’s the bad guy and as marvel movies teach us bad guys are ontological evil and everything they’re involved in is awful…
Reality is the other CEOs are often weird too, the general population of workers is full of weird people - many with totally trash opinions… yes it sucks that distasteful people are involved in good things or people with some bad opinions also have some good opinions or agree with sensible ideas but that is how reality works. When people act like anything Elon is involved in can only be bad it just makes it clear they don’t live in reality, they live in ideology.
I hope the astronauts make it back safely.
That being said, can you imagine the irony of a Dragon capsule coming to rescue them to their deaths?
What’s the irony? Unlike Boeing in the past few years, SpaceX has a rather good reputation among the people whose judgement is not blinded by hatred towards the CEO.
Why do people hate Gwynne Shotwell(sp)? I get the Musk hate and the diarrhea of the mouth/brain… but G.S. is a BAMF.
Nevermind, I was wrong… She is COO… point still stands though.
The thing that’s so laughable and tawdry is that the people that hate him now are generally the same ones that worshipped him before.
Make a god out of some random person, then demonize them. Build them up, then burn them down. The whole thing is pretty cringe of the general public.
The same dynamic happens with actors, and while they’re the Darling, they do great, perform better, etc. Eventually it breaks, and public opinion turns, and then the person is the Bastard. Their careers suffer, their temperament suffers, and a lot of people drop out of the race at that point. Those who don’t truly are exceptional people, but at the end of it all, don’t really give a fuck about public opinion.
Musk has yet to show what he’s going to do. But I knew when they were lifting him up that they’d burn him down.
Elon has been doing a fine job at burning his own reputation down. He certainly doesn’t need any help from the rest of us in doing so.
Have you had literally millions of people use you as a dump for getting their hatred rocks off? You’d be a shitshow, too.
People are responsible for their own actions, but it’s not like this is happening in a vacuum.
What possible reason would literally millions of people have for disliking Elon?
Perhaps, that they get off on the whole process of projecting “this person is so awesome and can’t fail!” because it feels good and gives them hope, and what’s wrong with good vibes anyways, amirite? …along with that goes a lot of physical resources and torrents of surface-level emotional support.
…until the person buys into it wholesale because it’s all they’re fed, and, because they think they can’t fuck up now, they start fucking up. Once they start fucking up, opinion starts turning. As opinion turns, the emotional support dries up. Obsessive adoration becomes obsessive hatred, person by person. What was manageable when everyone helped is no longer manageable when everyone fights you. You feel betrayed, and care about the people less. You make more shitty decisions. A feedback loop occurs, until the person realizes (well enough) what’s going on, and ducks out of the race, or buys into the negativity and adopts that as their self-view, or (occasionally) just handles the strain and breaks on through to the other side.
Meanwhile, people got to feel hope (yay, wasn’t that nice?!) and “justified” hatred (i mean, clearly he’s the asshole! What a fucking power mongering dickhead!).
And, what do you need after all that? Hope! Let’s find something positive to think about!
It’s cringey. That’s not to say that Musk’s behavior isn’t also cringey - it’s just clear to me that the cringe isn’t centralized on him, it’s well-distributed. There are a LOT of people that are just as trashy - and it’s generally the people that are all about burning him down (most of whom were all about building him up before).
The fun part is - even though I find it all really interesting, cringey, etc, at the end of the day, I kindof don’t care. I’m just watching people get what they deserve. I wish they deserved better, and maybe they will someday - but their own behavior has 'em locked in a loop.
We all fuck up sometimes, but at least it’s somewhat self-limiting, even on the massive collective scale.
I know it is corporate incompetence, but part of me wants to believe the Russians infiltrated Boeing and secretly altered repair records or falsified safety inspections just so that America’s Airspace industry would fall apart and Russki Musk could swoop in and take over.
I wouldn’t describe this as corporate incompetence. I would say the corporation is functioning exactly as the bosses wanted it to. They got their market dominance, they got their assurances of bailouts no matter how much they messed up, and they decided to make as much money for themselves as possible. It’s a total success story, for a small group of people, as long as you don’t consider all of the damage that was done on the side.
Another way of looking at it is to say that the system is functioning as intended. It’s just that we wish otherwise.
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Good bot.
