It’s official: NASA calls on Crew Dragon to rescue the Starliner astronauts
It’s official: NASA calls on Crew Dragon to rescue the Starliner astronauts
"I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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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