Shouldn't this pretty much sink Boeing?

Between this and the litany of commercial liner disasters, things should be looking very grim for them

It certainly doesn't look great for Starliner, but it's tough to say what will happen. They'll almost certainly have to re-certify it, which will involve more lengthy delays. They're also on a fixed-price contract with NASA, so it's not out of the question that they would either ask for more money or back out of the contract, neither of which is great for what NASA wants.

More broadly, I doubt it'll have a huge impact on Boeing's bottom line in the short-term. They have annual revenues of around $80 billion, so Starliner makes up a relatively tiny piece of the pie. There's no question that their brand has taken a huge hit, though.

When you have revenues of $80 billion, you don't get cancer on Jan 1 and die Dec 31 of the same year. When you have $80 billion in annual revenues you are so big that if you are cancerous and terminal, it just might take 8-10 years for death to come.

Boeing's problem is they have gotten so big and stodgy they confuse the symbols of good performance with actual good performance. They think they did well because a line on a financial statement looks pretty good. The executives pat themselves on the ass because they saved a buck here. The fact they couldn't produce a functional space craft....well thats just a blip they'll figure out in the next quarter.

We'll have to see what changes the new CEO puts in place and whether he can right the ship.

You expect a new CEO to come in and change the culture of the organization to one that can bring success. That used to be what CEO's did. Not any more. A modern CEO is there for sales...sales....sales. If you are American Airlines and you're going to buy a billion dollars worth of jets, do you want to be schmoozed by some VP? No, you want the CEO of Boeing kissing your ass.

This is especially true in old stodgy corporations where it is the board that has the mental defect of confusing symbols of good performance with actual good performance. Get them to sign on the bottom line and that is good performance. Doesn't matter if your planes crash and your spacecraft are junk....that's just an unfortunate that will be figured out later.

ROFL

Quote:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.</p>&mdash; Tory Bruno (@torybruno) <a href="https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1819819208827404616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 3, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Quote: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Works pretty good for a “partially assembled” engine :) <a href="https://t.co/UkHkGyoOY7">pic.twitter.com/UkHkGyoOY7</a></p>&mdash; Gwynne Shotwell (@Gwynne_Shotwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gwynne_Shotwell/status/1821674726885924923?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Wow. You don't often see Gwynne getting spicy.

Yeesh...

NASA gave another non-update to the media on its crewed Boeing CST-100 Starliner mission. The agency still doesn’t know when astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will come home from the International Space Station, and it doesn’t have a firm date for when it will make a decision on the matter. However, NASA did let slip a development that could potentially crank up a massive source of embarrassment for Boeing.

Last week, NASA said that if it can’t send its crew home on the Starliner, it might have to send them back on a SpaceX Dragon vessel — in February! — and if that happens, the photos of the crew walking on Earth could feature Boeing’s arch-rival’s space suits instead of the get-ups they launched with.

“From a suit standpoint, they’re really not interchangeable,” said Joel Montalbano, the deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “You can’t have a Boeing suit in a SpaceX [vehicle], or a SpaceX suit in a Boeing vehicle. So that would not be the plan.” Boeing representatives were not present on the call.

Speculation continues to mount that the Starliner mission is already a failure — there are fears the ship might not even be able to undock from the International Space Station without its crew — but NASA has not conceded that point yet. For weeks, it has been testing and reviewing data about its thrusters to assess the vulnerabilities created by helium leaks. The gas is used to control the thrusters, and though NASA has said there is plenty of helium on board to get them home, it has yet to commit to a return mission.

Hopefully NASA will avoid Boeing like the plague going forward.

The issue is that, despite all of Boeing's issues, NASA still REALLY wants to have redundancy. SpaceX had an issue with their second stage on a Starlink launch a month or so ago, and those kinds of issues usually ground the entire fleet until they figure out what happened.

Thankfully, that issue was really obvious, so it only took a couple of weeks to get them flying again, but it's not out of the question an incident could ground SpaceX for months.

NASA doesn't want to have to rely on the Russians to get people to/from ISS, so they would really prefer to have two options for U.S.-based rides. That means continuing to work to get Boeing certified even as frustrating as the process has been.

I'm pretty sure if it was up to Butch and Sunita they would ride home with the Russians. Making them stay up there until Feb for "pride" is a bit of a big ask. My concern would the Russians arresting them for spying upon arrival.

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If they have to stay there until February, are they going to start growing potatoes to keep from starving?

Supplies really aren't an issue. They keep the place very well-stocked, and they can adjust what they send up on resupply missions if needed.

<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/C2NPV4Bm6tewg" width="480" height="394" style="" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/matt-damon-sebastian-stan-the-martian-C2NPV4Bm6tewg">via GIPHY</a></p>