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 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.
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.
I don’t know why anyone would think that of Boeing.
That’s an easy question to answer: because most people think “big established aerospace company == must be competent, right?” and don’t know any of the other stuff you wrote.
State of journalism these days unfortunately. I’ve learned more about all this by simply reading and listening to the NASA briefs myself. Which you’d think the guy who writes all the Ars articles about space stuff would also do being their job and all.
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.
Agreed.
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.
That’s an easy question to answer: because most people think “big established aerospace company == must be competent, right?” and don’t know any of the other stuff you wrote.
State of journalism these days unfortunately. I’ve learned more about all this by simply reading and listening to the NASA briefs myself. Which you’d think the guy who writes all the Ars articles about space stuff would also do being their job and all.
Dude for real. I’d rather strap myself to the rockets those sliderule nerds used to make.