May 8, 2024 03:25 AM
(This post was last modified: May 8, 2024 03:26 AM by C C.)
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/th...ed-at-all/
EXCERPT: . . . All of Boeing's struggles with Starliner played out against a much larger backdrop of the company's misfortunes with its aviation business. Most notably, in October 2018 and March 2019, two crashes of the company's relatively new jet, the 737 MAX 8, killed 346 people. The jets were grounded for many months.
The institutional failures that led to these twin tragedies are well explained in a book by Peter Robison, Flying Blind. Robison covered Boeing as a reporter during its merger with McDonnell Douglas a quarter of a century ago and described how countless trends since then—stock buybacks, a focus on profits over research and development, importing leadership from McDonnell Douglas, moving away from engineers in key positions to MBAs, and much more led to Boeing's downfall.
It's estimated that, in addition to paying customers and the families of victims, the grounding of the 737 Max for nearly two years cost Boeing $20 billion since 2019. This critical loss of cash came just as Boeing's space division faced crunch time to complete work on Starliner.
There were so many other challenging issues, as well. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 occurred when Boeing was dealing with the fallout from all the software issues on Starliner's debut flight. Additionally, the pandemic accelerated the retirement of experienced engineers who had brought spaceflight experience from the shuttle program. Boeing's best people were focused on the aircraft crisis, and the experienced space hands were leaving.
n late April, I asked Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president and the manager of the company's commercial crew program, what he thought was the biggest challenge Boeing faced in its quest to fly astronauts.
"Design and development is hard, particularly with a human space vehicle," he replied. "There's a number of things that were surprises along the way that we had to overcome. And so I can't pick any one that I would point to. I would say, though, that it certainly made the team very, very strong."
The Obama White House created the commercial crew program in early 2009, but Congress was reluctant to go along. It didn't see how companies like SpaceX could ever step up and put astronauts into orbit. According to Garver, the key advisor to Obama on space policy at the time, Congressional purse strings didn't really open up for NASA to support private spacecraft until Boeing indicated its willingness to participate. Suddenly, commercial crew became a legitimate program.
Boeing undoubtedly would like to have that decision back. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the strain of operating in a fixed-price environment was the fundamental cause of many of Boeing's struggles with Starliner and similar government procurement programs—so much so that the company's Defense, Space, & Security division is unlikely to participate in fixed-price competitions any longer. In 2023, the company's chief executive said Boeing would "never do them again."
A Boeing spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the company would no longer compete for fixed-price contracts. However, the company believes such contracts must be used correctly, for mature products.
"Challenges arise when the fixed price acquisition approach is applied to serious technology development requirements, or when the requirements are not firmly and specifically defined resulting in trades that continue back and forth before a final design baseline is established," the spokesperson said. "A fixed price contract offers little flexibility for solving hard problems that are common in new product and capability development."
There is a great irony in all of this. By bidding on commercial crew, Boeing helped launch the US commercial space industry. But in the coming years, its space division is likely to be swallowed by younger companies that can bid less, deliver more, and act more expeditiously.
The surprise is not that Boeing lost to a more nimble competitor in the commercial space race. The surprise is that this lumbering company made it at all. For that, we should celebrate Starliner’s impending launch and the thousands of engineers and technicians who made it happen... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Let's look back at Boeing's long struggle of problems to launch humans on Starliner
EXCERPT: . . . All of Boeing's struggles with Starliner played out against a much larger backdrop of the company's misfortunes with its aviation business. Most notably, in October 2018 and March 2019, two crashes of the company's relatively new jet, the 737 MAX 8, killed 346 people. The jets were grounded for many months.
The institutional failures that led to these twin tragedies are well explained in a book by Peter Robison, Flying Blind. Robison covered Boeing as a reporter during its merger with McDonnell Douglas a quarter of a century ago and described how countless trends since then—stock buybacks, a focus on profits over research and development, importing leadership from McDonnell Douglas, moving away from engineers in key positions to MBAs, and much more led to Boeing's downfall.
It's estimated that, in addition to paying customers and the families of victims, the grounding of the 737 Max for nearly two years cost Boeing $20 billion since 2019. This critical loss of cash came just as Boeing's space division faced crunch time to complete work on Starliner.
There were so many other challenging issues, as well. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 occurred when Boeing was dealing with the fallout from all the software issues on Starliner's debut flight. Additionally, the pandemic accelerated the retirement of experienced engineers who had brought spaceflight experience from the shuttle program. Boeing's best people were focused on the aircraft crisis, and the experienced space hands were leaving.
n late April, I asked Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president and the manager of the company's commercial crew program, what he thought was the biggest challenge Boeing faced in its quest to fly astronauts.
"Design and development is hard, particularly with a human space vehicle," he replied. "There's a number of things that were surprises along the way that we had to overcome. And so I can't pick any one that I would point to. I would say, though, that it certainly made the team very, very strong."
The Obama White House created the commercial crew program in early 2009, but Congress was reluctant to go along. It didn't see how companies like SpaceX could ever step up and put astronauts into orbit. According to Garver, the key advisor to Obama on space policy at the time, Congressional purse strings didn't really open up for NASA to support private spacecraft until Boeing indicated its willingness to participate. Suddenly, commercial crew became a legitimate program.
Boeing undoubtedly would like to have that decision back. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the strain of operating in a fixed-price environment was the fundamental cause of many of Boeing's struggles with Starliner and similar government procurement programs—so much so that the company's Defense, Space, & Security division is unlikely to participate in fixed-price competitions any longer. In 2023, the company's chief executive said Boeing would "never do them again."
A Boeing spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the company would no longer compete for fixed-price contracts. However, the company believes such contracts must be used correctly, for mature products.
"Challenges arise when the fixed price acquisition approach is applied to serious technology development requirements, or when the requirements are not firmly and specifically defined resulting in trades that continue back and forth before a final design baseline is established," the spokesperson said. "A fixed price contract offers little flexibility for solving hard problems that are common in new product and capability development."
There is a great irony in all of this. By bidding on commercial crew, Boeing helped launch the US commercial space industry. But in the coming years, its space division is likely to be swallowed by younger companies that can bid less, deliver more, and act more expeditiously.
The surprise is not that Boeing lost to a more nimble competitor in the commercial space race. The surprise is that this lumbering company made it at all. For that, we should celebrate Starliner’s impending launch and the thousands of engineers and technicians who made it happen... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Let's look back at Boeing's long struggle of problems to launch humans on Starliner