NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

https://www.flyingmag.com/modern/nasa-investigation-finds-boeing-hindering-americans-return-to-moon/

by hobermallow • 2 years ago

478 349 2 years ago

flyingmag.com

Animats• 2 years ago

Anyone found the actual Office of the Inspector General report yet? It ought ot be here [1] or here [2], but it's not.

[1] https://oigforms.nasa.gov/audits/auditReports.html

[2] https://oig.nasa.gov/investigation-reports/

bloggie• 2 years ago

I found it here: https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspector-general-oig/nasas-m...

jtriangle• 2 years ago

Headline makes it sound like it's intentional, like Boeing knows the moon's haunted and wants to prevent people from going.

Turns out they're just a giant company suckling on the teat of mommy government and have developed severe structural dysfunction that prevents them from effectively executing their plans.

quantified• 2 years ago

"Moss on my teeth is hindering my getting a date" reads the same. I think different people will get different interpretations.

a1445c8b• 2 years ago

“NASA considering sending FlossX to extract moss from teeth”

grahamjameson• 2 years ago

I do not know the details of their contracts, but assuming these are cost-plus contracts then it may be fair to equate structural dysfunction to intent.

jaggederest• 2 years ago

The purpose of a system is what it does. Defense contractors extract money from the government, they are not here to enable space travel, they are here to move money from other people's pockets to their own. Any other actions are purely ancillary. And if they can get the money without delivering any result at all, why, they're fine with that.

nradov3• 2 years ago

These are not cost-plus contracts for the most part. Boeing has incurred huge losses on fixed-price contracts with NASA.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/boeing-says-it-cant-ma...

ClumsyPilot2• 2 years ago

Turns out they're just a giant company

That should die. This is what happens when you allow monopolies, you can’t even let them die because you’ll be left with nothing.

They face no competition , and have no reason to improve

whatshisface6• 2 years ago

The "left with nothing" fear is unfounded. All of their assets would be bought up by investors seeking to do the same thing but the right way; a factory has value and somebody will want it.

mc323• 2 years ago

I usually despise stack rank, but it looks like there are times when it's needed. Maybe companies should mostly eschew it for other methods, but run it once per decade and flush out all the dead weight, of course, including management.

mangamadaiyan3• 2 years ago

Who stack-ranks the management? How?

jordanb• 2 years ago

The problem is that stack ranking rewards the political actors and not people who heads down focus on their work. This is especially true when the organization has already been taken over by the parasites.

I think Boeing needs to immediately fire everyone in leadership positions with a finance or consulting background, unless they're under the CFO. Everyone needs to be reviewed to make sure they have the background to lead their team. If the leader can't do the work of the people at least one and ideally two levels under them they need to be fired for incompetence. Basically Boeing needs rebuilt from the top down as a company of doers.

dylan6043• 2 years ago

It only reads that way if you're being very very generous and have lived under a rock for the past few years so that you've not seen any other information about Boeing.

throwawayffffas• 2 years ago

Originally, the EUS was allocated a budget of $962 million and intended to fly on Artemis II, which in January was pushed to no earlier than September 2025. But by the OIG’s estimate, EUS costs are expected to balloon to $2 billion through 2025 and reach $2.8 billion by the time Artemis IV lifts off in 2028.

Lets see they were allocated a budget of $962 million in order to deliver in 2025. But now they can deliver in 2028 and they will be paid $2.8 billion.

They would have to be stupid to deliver in time.

orls• 2 years ago

Exactly - all the anti-Boeing sentiment in the comments here (while deserved) should also be directing some ire at the funding and contract structures being used for these projects (I.e. “cost-plus” contracts).

They’re just bad policy if you want the _nominal objectives_ of the project delivered on time and on budget; they have structural incentives for contractors to go over.

(It’s pretty clear that delivering the nominal objectives is not what the relevant policy-makers are actually aiming for, though. The cost overruns are the real goal for them, as it’s a kind of pork to steer regional funding)

mihaaly2• 2 years ago

Title of The Economists article form April:

Can anyone pull Boeing out of its nosedive?

Apparently the answer is a sound no.

They decided to proudly shoot themselves into the stomach, then mitigating the situation by setting themselves on fire.

The inspector general is wrong saying "blame on the aerospace giant’s mismanagement and inexperienced workforce". How can someone blame clueless person? The blame is on those putting clueless person there in the first place. Or is the management the most inexperienced and clueless of all for this line of job perhaps?! As suspected for many many years now. Ajh!!

moffkalast3• 2 years ago

To paraphrase the investigators of the average Boeing airliner crash: "A trained pilot would not have been able to regain control in the required time"

sbuttgereit• 2 years ago

A nice video commentary on this by Philip Sloss: https://youtu.be/XDsxdrIL_Cs

PopePompus• 2 years ago

I don't know which is a better illustration of America's decline during my baby boomer lifetime - California High Speed Rail vs The Interstate Highway System or Artemis vs Apollo.

ClumsyPilot2• 2 years ago

Good examples. The same comparison can be made in other western countries. When I point out there issues, people act like they were always there - but they weren’t. We used to build! Or they say it’s an inherent feature of democracy. Or they get angry.

wonderwonder5• 2 years ago

I watched the Superman movie with my kids the other day and I wondered how a planet like Krypton could just collapse after all its accomplishments. It seemed unrealistic. I totally understand now.

fourseventy• 2 years ago

Just give the whole contract to SpaceX already

adamm255• 2 years ago

Has SpaceX even been outside low earth orbit with anything meaningful?

pennomi• 2 years ago

They regularly have missions to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, but I assume that’s not what you’re talking about.

CobrastanJorji• 2 years ago

Not yet, but I believe the Artemis 3 manned moon landing is still a planned for 2026.

ktpecot• 2 years ago

"Launches to higher-orbits have included DSCOVR to Sun–Earth Lagrange point L1, TESS to a lunar flyby, a Tesla Roadster demonstration payload to a heliocentric orbit extending past the orbit of Mars, DART to the asteroid Didymos, Euclid to Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, and Psyche to the asteroid 16 Psyche." Per wikipedia, not sure if those count as meaningful. Plus Europe Clipper in a few months.

dotnet008• 2 years ago

If you mean human spaceflight, current Boeing has less experience flying humans to anywhere in space than SpaceX, let alone beyond low earth orbit. If you mean general spaceflight, SpaceX has launched more lunar and interplanetary payloads than Boeing has in the past decade or two.

Boeing and its proponents love to talk about things like "spaceflight heritage", but none of that means anything when most if not all of those employees are gone and nothing was done to transfer the knowledge.

mcmcmc4• 2 years ago

Sure, let’s give the richest man on earth who spends more time trolling on Twitter than working more taxpayer dollars for his self enrichment

stass• 2 years ago

Does this somehow disqualifies SpaceX as a contract supplier?

dotnet008• 2 years ago

"This service is awful, let's switch to the better one"

You: "and give them money in exchange for services rendered?!!?"

wonderwonder5• 2 years ago

So in a thread about how abysmal and over budget the only competitor is, you have decided that we should cut off the most innovative space company in of the past 20 years and our governments sole proven launch provider because you don't like the owner on a personal level?

chasd00• 2 years ago

Indeed. Iirc Falcon Heavy has the capability right.now. They time/effort only needs to be spent on the lander and getting back.

ordu• 2 years ago

SpaceX faces the same risks of becoming a monopolist and then declining. To give the whole contract to him maybe is a good short term solution, but long term it will end badly.

mananaysiempre• 2 years ago

During a visit to Michoud in 2023, for example, inspectors discovered that welding on a component of the SLS Core Stage 3 did not meet NASA standards. Per the report, unsatisfactory welding performed on a set of fuel tanks led directly to a seven-month delay in EUS completion.
“According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision,” the OIG says. [...]

Welders are highly qualified and well-paid craftsmen. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’d been hit particularly hard by management that doesn’t value tenured, expensive employees.

emchammer• 2 years ago

You must have seen how beautiful the welds are on the Rocketdyne F-1 joints. Whoever made those put pride in their work.

jprete2• 2 years ago

I guess they felt, correctly, that they were not just making a weld, not just making an engine or a rocket, but helping to put people on the moon. "Building a cathedral", indeed.

dandellion• 2 years ago

If anyone else is curious this article has close-up photos of the joints: https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the...

mohaine• 2 years ago

A welding book I had mentioned that stick welding aluminum is no longer done because it is too hard and used the F-1 stick welds as an example of such welds. I think they we not so much welds as strategic strengthening.

ikekkdcjkfke• 2 years ago

Having NASA come and test stuff.. Creates a 'see what sticks' kind of attitude. Eat your own dogfood

pjscott• 2 years ago

The obvious patch for this is to have monetary penalties for failing inspection written into the contract, so that submitting shoddy work has a price measured in dollars. Money is the unit of caring, at least at a corporate scale, so there needs to be money involved if you want them to care systematically.

(I don’t know if NASA already does this. They might.)

dgfitz3• 2 years ago

Welders are highly qualified and well-paid craftsmen.

They’re not. You must be one of those people that hears something once and quotes it as gospel. My BIL did that yesterday: “nfl viewership has been down because of all the different platforms, and it’s been trending down for years.” As it so happens, last year was their second-best year of ratings since ratings were tracked. But, it fit his narrative, facts be damned.

“We all see the welding school advertisements: Make Over $100,000 As a Welder! And while it’s true that skilled welders are among the most sought-after workers in the job market, the average welder is bringing in $48,000 per year, a far cry from six figures.” [0]

[0] https://primeweld.com/blogs/news/how-much-do-welders-make-in....

nothercastle• 2 years ago

I can assure you that skilled welders like the ones you need for aerospace applications are rare and valuable. The welding techniques and standards are much higher than your average welding application

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

I had a friend who was a welder for nuclear power plants.

He got shipped around the country.

Not exactly a trade-school C-student.

Had a better house than mine, but I’m a cheapskate.

windexh8er• 2 years ago

This is 1000% false and misleading. My Dad was a journeyman machinist and many of his friends were highly sought after welders in the area we lived. These guys could weld anything anywhere and exceed quality criteria.

Welding is an art and at a certain required level of performance it's not something you teach, but find the folks who have the drive to be that good and want to weld for high precision requirements.

What you've linked is a run of the mill welder. My Dad machined classified parts for USG and NASA. When they'd get those jobs they would go to the guys who had a reputation to be able to produce the die to the spec required. Messing up a multi-ton die of a specific quality could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost material and time. You don't make $48k on those tolerances, even back in the 80s.

sgnelson4• 2 years ago

If you read the OIG report, it states:

"Michoud officials stated that it has been difficult to attract and retain a contractor workforce with aerospace manufacturing experience in part due to Michoud’s geographical location in New Orleans, Louisiana, and lower employee compensation relative to other aerospace competitors."

eddiewithzato• 2 years ago

aka they aren’t willing to pay, many such cases.

whimsicalism• 2 years ago

There is a reason that major contractors for government have widely distributed facilities in politically relevant states.

selimthegrim4• 2 years ago

How did they build LIGO then? Fairy dust?

selimthegrim4• 2 years ago

UNO’s enrollment has dropped by 2/3rds since Katrina. What did people think was going to happen to the labor supply?

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

New Orleans is one of the greatest cities in the world and definitely has access to experienced welders, this argument makes no sense to me.

wmf4• 2 years ago

The entire purpose of SLS is to create high-paying jobs and they just... didn't. Imagine having a blank check and cheaping out. Amazing.

klabb3• 2 years ago

it has been difficult to attract and retain a contractor workforce […] in part due to […] lower employee compensation relative to other aerospace competitors

You’re building rockets and complaining about the cost of skilled labor?

dopidopHN• 2 years ago

I live in New Orleans. It’s 1h away of commute.

They pay a solid 30% below market. ( 100k for a senior eng position )

noworld• 2 years ago

The Navy’s ability to build lower-cost warships that can shoot down Houthi rebel missiles in the Red Sea depends in part on a 25-year-old laborer who previously made parts for garbage trucks.

Lucas Andreini, a welder at Fincantieri Marinette Marine, in Marinette, Wisconsin, is among thousands of young workers who’ve received employer-sponsored training nationwide as shipyards struggle to hire and retain employees.

The labor shortage is one of myriad challenges that have led to backlogs in ship production and maintenance at a time when the Navy faces expanding global threats. Combined with shifting defense priorities, last-minute design changes and cost overruns, it has put the U.S. behind China in the number of ships at its disposal — and the gap is widening.

Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, says Eric Labs, a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. “I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.”

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

Government incentivized wall-st backed outsourcing of critical skill sets turned out to be a bad idea.

coliveira3• 2 years ago

I think it is a great development, the US decided to export jobs to other countries to pay less its own workers, so it fits well that now it has no expertise to build its war machines.

gen220• 2 years ago

There was an ad for Navy shipbuilding recently that did the rounds online, targeting gig workers [1]. The snake grows hungry, and slithers toward its tail. :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1IZC3t8NRc

underlipton4• 2 years ago

Everything about this reeks to me. Why do we need to build so many warships? (To fight China? We're going to war with another nuclear power?) Why are we fighting Houthi rebels? But also, why isn't the government sponsoring this training? Why is it only thousands, and not hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers being trained? And when did the call go out that they were going to be offering training? (I never hear about these initiatives, or when I do, it's for a couple thousand people to get into a position that pays $18/hr starting. Might as well walk onto a warehouse job.) If this is so important, why did they close so many shipyards during realignment?

Like, from every angle, it's ill-conceived.

notabee3• 2 years ago

This has been posted here a good bit before, but adding it in as relevant.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-navy-spent-billions-l...

We've let everything go to rot for the sake of a giant financial ponzi scheme that we call the U.S. economy.

gttalbot• 2 years ago

Why is this not cancelled?

deelowe• 2 years ago

Same reason the most popular political candidates never make it past primaries.

dotnet008• 2 years ago

Because Congress critters use it as a means to spend taxpayer money on purchasing votes. They'll do pretty much anything to avoid having to admit that SLS was a mistake.

akira25015• 2 years ago

Is "Moon Policy" anywhere near the ballot box? Particularly for senators? To the extent it might be, isn't it the inverse problem, to cancel the program is to lose jobs. So they're mostly just being held hostage by the monopoly.

The person you are voting for has fantastically small power. Which, is not what we were taught, but it does seem to be the fact.

api• 2 years ago

It's pork for states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The joke for years has been that SLS stands for "Senate Launch System."

dgoodell• 2 years ago

Probably the same reason the Space Shuttle wasn't cancelled even through pretty early on it was clear that it didn't make sense.

Upper management decisions are seldom made for good technical reasons.

nordsieck5• 2 years ago

Probably the same reason the Space Shuttle wasn't cancelled even through pretty early on it was clear that it didn't make sense. Upper management decisions are seldom made for good technical reasons.
SLS's existence has nothing to do with upper management. This is the child of Congress who funded it without any sort of mission.

Which is a big part of why Artemis is kind of messed up - neither SLS nor Orion was designed with the mission in mind. So Orion has to go to a relatively high near "rectilinear halo orbit" instead of Apollo's "low lunar orbit" because the SLS/Orion system doesn't have enough delta-V to get to the superior orbit and back.

givemeethekeys• 2 years ago

The money is in the journey, not the destination /s

umanwizard4• 2 years ago

Does anyone actually seriously believe the U.S. will land a person on the moon in 2025? This is the country that takes decades to open a new subway station.

akira25015• 2 years ago

We're the only nation that has ever done it. It seems like unchecked graft is our current main problem. In the scope of all problems of returning people to the Moon this is both expected and the easiest to deal with.

umanwizard4• 2 years ago

We're the only nation that has ever done it

The USA of the 1960s was very different from the one that exists today.

cqqxo4zV46cp• 2 years ago

What “the US” did 50+ years ago has absolutely no say in what “the US” can do now.

okanat2• 2 years ago

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 role model.

davidw• 2 years ago

There are no NIMBYs on the moon, so maybe?

justinclift• 2 years ago

If they keep awarding contracts to SpaceX for getting the needed pieces done, then it's possible. :)

At least until SpaceX starts to feel a bit too comfortable... o_O

dylan6043• 2 years ago

That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX. So until SpaceX achieves Mars, they have too much to do to become too comfortable. Of course, I just sit on a couch offering opinions.

Yeul• 2 years ago

If America can make space a crusade again instead of a business sure.

The Chinese are currently in their Apollo phase in which every engineer dedicates their life to the mission.

pharos922• 2 years ago

Well we're over 1,000 days in to Kamala Harris' $42B universal broadband access program and not a single subscriber has been connected.

wonderwonder5• 2 years ago

I honestly hope so or soon after although I think it unlikely. The psychological shock to the nation & to the world of seeing China do it before us will be immense. It will have indicated a changing of the guard and the decline of America.

But I like to think we will.

kevin_thibedeau• 2 years ago

That was always a bullshit date. No different than elder Bush's Mars in 2030. 2028, maybe if everything goes well with Starship, and the suits. Their lunar variant is still a disaster waiting to happen without a better design. We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel? SLS is also supposed to somehow fit into the picture which is still not tested in any way resembling the baby steps Apollo took.

mr_toad• 2 years ago

Starship didn’t destroy anything, that was the booster, and they’re not landing a 33 engine booster on the Moon.

boxed• 2 years ago

Super Heavy isn't going to the moon. Also, the moon has less gravity. WAY LESS.

I think those two things combined means your logic is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude.

inglor_cz2• 2 years ago

"We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel?"

Starship has fewer engines than Super Heavy, it likely won't be landing at full throttle either, and lunar lander Starship could have landing legs as well. The lower gravity on the Moon means that you can carry more hardware with you. Maneuvering in 0.16 g is nowhere near as fuel intensive as in 1 g.

wormlord• 2 years ago

Why is this being downvoted? These are all valid concerns.

cco• 2 years ago

There is a very interesting video from Smarter Every Day that suggests everyone knows that the SLS is physically incapable of landing on the moon as designed but nobody seems to be mentioning it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

preisschild2• 2 years ago

HLS is for landing, but nobody seems to have any plan on how many resources it will take to get Starship HLS there with a full enough tank

the_duke• 2 years ago

You got things very confused.

SLS is the thing that launches Orion, which is the capsule with humans inside. SLS isn't capable enough to get that capsule into lunar orbit. Orion also isn't landing by itself though, it just transfers the astronauts to a landing vehicle (SpaceX Starship, currently...), which lands and then starts again.

The thing brought up in that video is that the rendezvous point should probably be in lunar orbit, but isn't.

mglz• 2 years ago

The damage to Boeing is already done I am afraid. But moving forwards there needs to be accountability for management types that destroy companies in such a way. This is a massive destruction of capability for the USA and will continue to be extremely expensive in the future.

mr902103• 2 years ago

NNT wrote Skin in the Game, which discusses such types of managers who cause similar damages.

He argues that there should be clawbacks to managers that harm a company to the degree Boeing’s current management has.

He invokes The Code of Hammurabi to illustrate how ancient civilization used to deal with such class of professionals.

whatshisface6• 2 years ago

The Soviet Union would actually send managers to GULAG for "wrecking," or other labor crimes, and it didn't really help. In fact, "accountability" was the only thing the USSR did not have a short supply of. Extraordinary punishments don't help if the system for figuring out who's doing a good job, and who isn't, is not working in the first place.

mdorazio• 2 years ago

The challenge with this is how far back you have to go. A lot of the damages that ultimately led to the 737 MAX and now this space boondoggle started under James McNerney, who was CEO from 2005 to 2016 and is now 74 years old.

zugi2• 2 years ago

For example, Boeing Defense’s Earned Value Management System (EVMS)—which NASA uses to measure contract cost and schedule progress ... has been disapproved by the Department of Defense since 2020. Officials claim this precludes Boeing from reliably predicting an EUS delivery date.

Interesting that instead of commenting on engineering or technology issues, this is basically NASA bureaucrats complaining about Boeing bureaucrats' procedures. The whole SLS program is so bureaucratized it's amazing they can get anything of the ground, and not surprising that Space X is beating them in performance and cost by 3X.

whatshisface6• 2 years ago

Just read a little farther, here are some comments on technical issues:

“According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision,” the OIG says. “The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards.”

zugi2• 2 years ago

Fair enough and thanks for pointing that out. Even that focuses on "adhere to NASA requirements" rather than "will it work". In between there's stuff like:

DCMA also found that Boeing personnel made numerous administrative errors through changes to certified work order data without proper documentation

and

Some technicians reported they had to hunt through layers of documentation to identify required instructions and documentation of work history and key decisions related to the hardware

It sounds like the focus is more on making documents and reading documents and complying with documents than "will this thing fly?"

mihaaly2• 2 years ago

I feel that in this situation the balme is valid. Engineering was spot on until management threw it out the window as something in the way for making money.

They wanted to make things for sales, not for use. Usability is the side effect for sellable for them apparently: sometimes happen, sometimes not. While they were pushing on with sell sell sell sell sell, sell nooow! Instead of making something that is needed and is usable, so people would want to buy.

vlark• 2 years ago

What killed American expertise? Middle management.

darth_avocado3• 2 years ago

More than middle management, it was extreme financialization.

umeshunni• 2 years ago

Lack of adequate STEM education in US schools --> more liberal arts majors --> more MBAs --> low value for engineering fundamentals and higher value for financialization --> Oh crap, MBAs can't send stuff to space?

grecy• 2 years ago

With no universal healthcare, no free higher education, very little social safety net and a raft of other holes in society to fall through, America is the poster child of “F$$k everyone else, I got mine”

People have to behave this way just to survive.

tgv• 2 years ago

The best quote I've ever read about that was "Why become a physicist, when you can be his boss?" Can't find the source anymore.

hnthrowaway03152• 2 years ago

That was the decision of US elites decades ago. The whole matter becomes a bit clearer if you regard those elites as aristocratic and the US happened to be one of their most fertile lands.

How do you extract value from your land? There are many ways.

iancmceachern• 2 years ago

It could just stop at hindering.

I think it's safe to say at this point that Boeing is hindering Americans. Full stop.

I'm a very proud American, my grandfather worked on Apollo, and was a submariner in WWII. Recently Boeing has not made me proud.

mr902103• 2 years ago

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

otteromkram• 2 years ago

Dear prospective immigrant,

Thanks for the offer, but we have plenty of highly-skilled workers in the US already. Unless you're a medical doctor, that is.

Cheers!

The Unemployed (and Forgotten) Masses

(Note: I'm not unemployed, but was for a several months until earlier this year.)

silexia2• 2 years ago

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

borisk• 2 years ago

Boeing has been very slow at raising salaries and contract rates in the last 15 years or so. That lead to a lot of the best engineers, managers and technicians leaving.

BobbyJo• 2 years ago

It's a pervasive problem among all gov contractors. Most don't pay as well as private market, and you have the added downside of needing a clearance in a lot of positions, so they try to make it up with "job security". That means, when times are tough, instead of letting people go they freeze or cap raises, often below inflation. Good people wind up leaving.

If half your best people leave every few years when the gov hits its next debt ceiling, your company is gonna have a bad time.

29athrowaway• 2 years ago

When Yuri Gagarin saw Earth from orbit for the first time in history, he saw a planet without borders between nations. One planet, one human species.

This vision is the last thing that the people profiting from conflict want you to see.

dylan6043• 2 years ago

Another version of this first is the Blue Marble and Earth rise images when they looped around the Moon for the first time. IIRC, at least one climate group formed based on them.

whoitwas• 2 years ago

What's worse ignorance or malice? Boeing presents the best of both all to maximize quarterly earning$.

Can we please stop giving my tax dollars to them? Maybe it's better than building functioning weapon systems?

trentnix2• 2 years ago

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy claims another victim.

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

RIP Jerry. A Step Farther Out is one of my all time favorites.

silexia2• 2 years ago

This is why bankruptcy is such a good thing in private industry. And we need a mechanism like bankruptcy for government agencies.

sgnelson4• 2 years ago

The OIG Report itself: https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ig-24-015.pd...

pharos922• 2 years ago

And SpaceX are sitting there with all the capability, resource and a good chunk of the technology ready to go.

The legacy defence contractors have been watered with a hoover dams worth of taxpayer money for far too long and have little to show for it.

preisschild2• 2 years ago

Maybe SpaceX should finish the HLS that they have saying should have landed on the Moon by now.

jillesvangurp• 2 years ago

SpaceX is about to launch Starship for the fifth time in a few weeks. If they pull off a controlled landing and catch (which they are rumored to attempt), that's going to be the best ticket to the moon by far. They might actually manage to get there before the Chinese if they put their mind to it and get the resources and backing to do it.

Chinese peer pressure might achieve what years of lobbying hasn't managed to achieve: a sense of urgency. The Chinese establishing a moon base without US boots on the surface would be a major embarrassment. They've done a few unmanned landings now. So, they clearly have the capability to pull this off now.

reddog• 2 years ago

This is an easy fix for Boeing: budget for more lobbyists and campaign contributions.

atlgator• 2 years ago

Is Boeing salvageable at this point? They are so bloated and bureaucratic. We've seen nothing but dishonesty from their executives. I'd rather see Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic step up beyond this space tourism nonsense.

eBombzor• 2 years ago

Intel and Boeing. Sad to see greats turn into this.

dehrmann• 2 years ago

I wonder how much of this is Boeing and how much is NASA. It's very easy to throw Boeing under the bus right now, and they might even deserve it, but at a minimum, NASA deserves blame for not doing due diligence. They're also trying to build something that we've largely forgotten how to build. It's a different NASA, and different Boeing, and design technology and manufacturing is completely different. It isn't reasonable to expect this to go smoothly.

wonderwonder5• 2 years ago

I think Nasa has forgotten how to Nasa because of SpaceX. They still cannot adapt to how fast SpaceX moves. They are used to being able to plan everything for years as technology moved slowly. Now their plans are obsolete by launch date.

Boeing appears to have simply collapsed under its own hubris.

Sophistifunk• 2 years ago

Boeing haven't exactly been covering themselves with glory with their non-NASA work over the last decade or two, either. But I'd still go with "both" :)

notabee3• 2 years ago

The blame should honestly go to Congress, because they keep interfering in the process to force NASA to stick with SLS. NASA has tried several times to ditch this albatross around their necks only to be scolded by influential senators determined to keep money flowing into their states despite the overall project failing wildly.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shel...

wmf4• 2 years ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41193416

andy_ppp2• 2 years ago

Sack all the managers at Boeing and watch everything work better…

esskay• 2 years ago

Honestly think we're beyond that now. They need stripping of all government contracts - obviously not in one go as theres currently no alternatives in many cases. They certainly should be banned from being involved in anything going forwards.

andy_ppp2• 2 years ago

I work at a company like this where management self interest has taken over and the staff have zero power to say no. It makes everything impossible if I’m honest, the 200 layers of management might as well be using a magic 8 ball to run the company.

lucasRW• 2 years ago

Boeing's number one priority is DEI.

elzbardico• 2 years ago

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 schemes. So, what next? our organs?

They convinced us to exchange our pensions for the privilege of being the mark on a market where the sharks like them do whatever the fuck they want, from blatant insider trading, to pump and dump schemes, to outright fraud, having for all practical purposes bought the SEC a long time ago.

What they will kill next?

How long are we going to transfer wealth to those slimmy sweet talking ignorant greedy bean counters?

Our daily work is like being in a mad house because almost everything is subordinated to the the most sacred goal of cooking the next quarter numbers to ensure we maximize executive bonuses, and fuck the long run! crazy projects started, spin offs, merges, projects cancelled, company killing layoffs, fuck long term value generation! they want more and more, and more, and they fucking want it right now! the fucking bonus gollums.

Everything is fucked in our society but executive compensation. Xerox, HP, IBM, Boeing... How many other proud symbols of our economy and civilization are we going to let them destroy?

yunohn• 2 years ago

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.

klyrs• 2 years ago

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.

micromacrofoot• 2 years ago

what next? our organs?

already happening, look at the american food industry

BirAdam5• 2 years ago

No one really “let them” destroy things. This is one of the key dangers of majoritarian government. The moment that people can vote for representatives the representatives will be purchased, and later, the votes will purchased. Once this happens, money will be destroyed to allow the purchasing class to rob the wealth of the civilization, and this leads to financialization of economics. This pattern has been repeated over and over again. In the USA, this process started almost immediately after the formation of the country, but it didn’t become truly corrupt until the McKinley campaign. The financialization process started in 1913, saw its first bust boom/bust less than a decade later, and then purposeful inflation began in 1971. The entire economy was financialized by the late 1990s which culminated in 2008. The banks are now so bankrupt that the Fed has begun providing overnight repossessions to member banks…

snapcaster2• 2 years ago

If you think 1913 was the first boom/bust in United States financial history you're either trying to push an agenda or just totally ignorant

sgu999• 2 years ago

This is one of the key dangers of majoritarian government. The moment that people can vote for representatives the representatives will be purchased

What better alternatives are you thinking of? An intelligent, compassionate, eco-friendly and forward-thinking dictator would be great I guess, but historically that's not the ones emerging on top.

trentnix2• 2 years ago

1971, you say?

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

ASalazarMX2• 2 years ago

It goes beyond voting, people actually empower their abusers by buying the cheapest option regardless of its context. People dislike monopolies, but will happily grow one if it costs less than local or more responsible alternatives. That monopoly eventually gains the power to change the game rules.

We are mostly ignorant, and we vote, consume, act and live that way. We choose to be that way, and so good things won't last long in our collective hands.

rdtsc2• 2 years ago

So, what next? our organs?

Not even kidding. There are villages around where I grew up, a good number of adults have one kidney only.

Now if they manage to kidnap and kill a person, now they got two kidneys, a heart, a liver and other stuff.

Rinzler895• 2 years ago

There are villages around where I grew up, a good number of adults have one kidney only.

Moldova?

grugagag• 2 years ago

What country are you in?

gcr• 2 years ago

Whoa cool how come?

mhuffman• 2 years ago

You should know that in business school and after everything you just described would be called "optimized". There is some short discussion about ethics, usually involving not stealing from investors, but otherwise the world is seen as one giant place where people are the same as nuts and bolts or ingredients in a chocolate bar to be optimized. This goes for customers and employees.

jprete2• 2 years ago

Optimization is one of the more useful terms for it, but I think a big part of the problem is foundational. It's easier to trade in measurable values than unmeasurable ones, so the trades with something measurable on both sides get prioritized, which subtly increases the demand and market value of measurable values over unmeasurable.

So we end up gradually converting our productivity to the measurable outputs because we can more safely trade them. But then unmeasurable values get shafted.

The non-fungible values get shafted even harder. For example, it's inherently impossible to trade for true human relationships because the bidirectional flow is where the value comes from and that flow must be built. But that means two people must simultaneously choose to take a mostly unknown level of risk on building a relationship that could fail or even be a net negative. Our relationship drive is pretty strong. The people making AI chatbot friends and SOs, not even to mention dating apps and relationship-commodifiers like Meetup or old Facebook, are doing their best to commodify relationships, though. The sheer level of social toxicity caused by online mass social media has been correspondingly enormous.

mmcconnell1618• 2 years ago

It wasn't always this way. Milton Friedman introduced the idea in the 1970s that businesses could ignore their workers and communities because if they focused on profit, that would benefit everyone. Shareholder Theory elevates the stockholders above all others and leads to stock buybacks and optimizing for wealth extraction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

chii3• 2 years ago

that would benefit everyone.

no, it would benefit the shareholders. The regulations imposed by the gov't (which is meant to be representitive) would reign in the excess externalization. Everyone would benefit from competition, when it does happen.

WarOnPrivacy• 2 years ago

What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far:

You can add governance for as long as lobbyists have been writing law.

You can add accountability for whenever MBAs and investors come in contact with news orgs.

rmbyrro• 2 years ago

So, what next? our organs?

Yep, they started with our eye balls. In exchange, we are getting "relevant ads".

Also our frontal lobe. In exchange, we get depressive dopamine releases.

electriclove• 2 years ago

You mention health care and education. Have you considered government’s role in this? https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-...

boppo15• 2 years ago

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.

didgeoridoo• 2 years ago

You had finance professors who were unfamiliar with Bastiat’s parable of the broken window? Or unable to apply it to the military-industrial complex?

Our universities may be in worse shape than I thought.

imtringued3• 2 years ago

War is profitable in capitalism, because the dogma is that capital is productive and must net a positive return.

In the underutilized capital scenario, idle capital incurs costs, but no benefits. It must be destroyed. The easiest way to maintain the facade is to send the capital to war. If you acquire new land, congratulations, the "investment" paid off. If it doesn't, then the destruction of capital at least maintains the profitability of domestic capital.

War is really that simple. If you had a war for any other reason, everyone involved would see the stupidity after the first few skirmishes.

seoulmetro• 2 years ago

- Social cohesion and homogeneity and all the draw backs of destroying it.

The idea that you should mass import as many people as possible to increase GDP is absolutely one of the worst things that has happened in modern time.

If you want to import this many people then it takes a lot of hard work. Singapore is a good example.

financetechbro• 2 years ago

But think about all the shareholder value they created

throw0101b• 2 years ago

From the Tom Toro The New Yorker comic:

* https://www.npr.org/2015/01/25/379787274/howd-a-cartoonist-s...

jklinger410• 2 years ago

They convinced us that our homes are investments, so they can fleece us with their usurary schemes. So, what next? our organs?

It's an extortionist scheme. Every additional industry or vertical is not only proof that capitalism continues to provide "value" and move society forward, but it makes more millionaires and inflates our GDP. Currency wants everything to be traded with currency. Healthcare, water, land, sex, breathable air.

Also, this ultimately benefits the Fed and other massive financial institutions. If they get together and decide policy, they can do almost whatever they want. Then that small cabal of people can scheme with the government or military to exert control. This is mostly extra-democratic.

We'd have to switch out our entire government with un-bribable ethically driven heroes in order to even put a dent in this system.

In truth we are playing pretend with democracy. Like a little game for the peasants to play pretend. While economic and military policy is decided outside of that system.

Every inch financiers can gain, is another system under the control of economic fascists.

And to claim that it is dictated in some way by profit or merit is laughable. It is only dictated by those things when they want it to be. Another game.

Eumenes2• 2 years ago

You could find/replace Boeing with NASA/Federal government with this entire article. Boeing has a crazy amount of oversight. This is the governments failure.

bdavisx• 2 years ago

Nope - Boeing has been failing at many things for many years - this is the fault of putting accountants in charge.

Eumenes2• 2 years ago

Boiling the downturn of one of the largest military contractors in the country down to "accountants" is a mass simplification. Boeing has 1000s of employees focused on regulation and oversight. If the federal government didn't see this coming, they are either complicit in this or incompetent. I will say, its a mix of both.

IX-103• 2 years ago

And SpaceX doesn't? They had the same requirements.

Boeing failed to meet the basic standards, but has been given a pass by NASA up til now. Bad welds? Sternly worded letter. Inadequate heat shielding? Well, it didn't get too hot so let's try with people. Bad valves? Just replace the broken ones, In sure there's no borderline valves from a systemic problem. Leaky tanks? Not a problem. Flaky thrusters that might not be able to make it to re-entry? Hold on there!

kazinator• 2 years ago

If the delays end up with Boeing extracting more money from NASA, it is obviously NASA who is inexperienced and mismanaged, while Boeing looks rather clever.

If outside contractors and suppliers are causing delays while you pay them, the poor manager is you.

exabrial• 2 years ago

The SLS is a sinking ship and money pit. Blaming on Boeing is just en vogue.

BizyDev• 2 years ago

Don't worry you Americans.

Your government will soon find a reason to sue Airbus (corruption, unfair competition, etc.) in order to extract its secrets and supply them to Boeing, and voila, Airbus' technological lead will be wiped out.

See Alstom's story for a manual of the perfect economic imperialist : https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/17/how-the-americ...

nojvek• 2 years ago

IMO its a huge opportunity cost for humans to land on moon if it comes at cost of gazillions of dollars. We've been to moon, many countries have spent probes on the Moon. Humans are fragile blood bags covered in thin skin plastic. It takes a ton of other infrastructure around to sustain them. Even losing a single human is a disaster.

That money and time could be spent building better rovers. We could likely send 10 +rovers to different planets for exploration at the same time + cost factor.

Spirit & Opportunity spent ~21 years combined on Mars.

We could have an army of rovers for years on Moon and build habitable bases. It'd be cheaper than sending a few human astronauts to the Moon for a few hours of "we did it" videos.

NASA investigation finds Boeing hindering Americans' return to moon

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