Boeing's Starliner capsule leaking helium.

[luctor-et-emergo]

This is what happens in cost+ government contracts. It's a blank check with no risk.


SpaceX would (will) have the exact problems if they were given the same contract.

While it's not a public company and Elon runs the show I don't think that's necessarily the case. Expansions would happen faster probably but focus at SpaceX is on the shortest route to success, not necessarily the cheapest option.

 

[Voluntarist]

This is what happens in cost+ government contracts. It's a blank check with no risk.

Except that neither Starliner nor Crew Dragon were cost plus contracts; they're both fixed price. As I mentioned earlier, Boeing is already in the hole for over a billion $$ on Starliner - which is being paid on Boeing's dime. But I think that's just on the development costs. I don't think it includes any operational overruns (like for mission control for extra missions or extra time on orbit).

Edited to add
Keep in mind though, that requirements for fixed-riced systems are frozen at the time the proposals for the contracts were submitted. That means you're now dealing with requirements from a decade ago, despite anything you've learned since then. Contractors charge through the nose for any ECRs the government requests.

 

[TheCount]

While it's not a public company and Elon runs the show I don't think that's necessarily the case. Expansions would happen faster probably but focus at SpaceX is on the shortest route to success, not necessarily the cheapest option.

At some point in Boeing's past that was also the case

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

At some point in Boeing's past that was also the case

Yes, and when the key people driving things now are replaced, things will be different...

 

[TheCount]

Yes, and when the key people driving things now are replaced, things will be different...

I don't believe in great man theory

 

[TheTexan]

I guess it needed thicker star lining

 

[acptulsa]

I don't believe in great man theory

Do you believe in incompetent bastard theory?

 

[Voluntarist]

I guess it needed thicker star lining

OR ...

 

[Voluntarist]

I don't believe in great man theory

In aerospace, it isn't so much Great Man Theory as it is institutional knowledge known only to specific individuals and not passed along to their successors. Boeing's 737 franchise started from a design in the early 1960's, and to a large extent it still builds aircraft in the same fashion as it did back then. It's the same with their space systems. The ISS was designed in the mid-to-late 70's. Boeing's design processes have been updated since then, but those updates are layered upon that mid-20th-century backbone.

SpaceX, on the other hand, is building their space systems like they did in the 2000's. Their design processes were new at that point. Less dependence on the wise old Yoda's from decades ago.

 

[acptulsa]

It isn't so much Great Man Theory as it is institutional knowledge known only to specific individuals and not passed along to their successors. Boeing's 737 franchise started from a design in the early 1960's, and to a large extent it still builds aircraft in the same fashion as it did back then.

Truth be known, the 737 is very little different from the 707, which entered revenue passenger service in 1958. The biggest change has been the elimination of two engines.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

I don't believe in great man theory

In general I do not believe it either. I have however been part of a merger where things went quite south after original management was replaced. That's anecdotal and I can appreciate it. However, when your company relies on producing a good quality product or service at the cutting edge of technology, you need people with an original founder type of view, not people who are good at milking out existing business. And yeah, on both sides things can go wrong.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

This is what happens in cost+ government contracts. It's a blank check with no risk.


SpaceX would (will) have the exact problems if they were given the same contract.

Nice try at diverting the conversation away from incompetence and DEI.

 

[Henry Rogue]

Are the radio calls hilarious?

Why does Butch sound like Mickey Mouse?

 

[unknown]

Someone dig up the guys who got us to the moon.

 

[acptulsa]

Someone dig up the guys who got us to the moon.

Fifty year old tech to the rescue! Anyone still have the blueprints..?

 

[unknown]

Fifty year old tech to the rescue! Anyone still have the blueprints..?

Na uh, we lost it.

But we don't need to make a 500,000 mile round trip.

We just need to travel 200 miles into Low Earth Orbit.

 

[jmdrake]

Keep in mind, also, that the Falcon 9 boosters, which Crew Dragon launches on, are reusable. That decreases the life cycle costs of using SpaceX. The Atlas 5 boosters, that Starliner uses, are completely expendable.

Landing vertically - as Robert Heinlein and Max Hunter intended:

I've always thought that the video of the boosters landing seemed fake.

 

[unknown]

 

[unknown]

I really hope they're having sex.

 

[Voluntarist]

Someone dig up the guys who got us to the moon.

Fifty year old tech to the rescue! Anyone still have the blueprints..?

Catch-22. The guys from the sixties can't deal with 2020 electronics and 2020 software methodologies. So you tell them it'll be OK to build it with the 1960's electronics and software; except the 1960's electronics are no longer being built (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were designed before the first microprocessor). The DOD is having to start from ground zero on designing replacements for cruise missiles designed in the seventies because they can no longer get the parts to build them to the old blueprints. And software in the sixties? For embedded systems, it consisted of Program Array Logic for semiconductors, which you could only burn once (they weren't rewritable). You could keep time to the clock rates by tapping your foot (OK, I made that one up).

1960: most homes still had black and white TVs that sat in wooden cabinets. When you took your electronics in for repair, vacuum tubes were the things they tended to replace.