"I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise."
  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
    1111·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
      595·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        352·
        4 months ago

        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.

      • MumboJumbo@lemmy.world
        19·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works
      201·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        4 months ago

        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.

        • Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works
          8·
          4 months ago

          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.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
          766·
          4 months ago

          Serious. Even if people don’t say it aloud, there are ones practically hoping for Tesla FSD to fail and kill someone, Neuralink recipient to die of complications or the Crew Dragon module to fail and kill the astronauts only so that they can say “I told you so” and then keep shitting on Elon. Any rational person would hope for these companies to succeed despite who the CEO is because it’ll benefit all of us on the long run.

          • freddydunningkruger@lemmy.world
            354·
            4 months ago

            Oh seriously, f right off. Nobody wants Tesla drivers to die, they just want Musk accountable for killing the ones that died because they believed his constant lies in the videos he released and speeches he gave that “Autopilot” / “Full Self Driving” and “ROBOTAXIS ARE COMING” meant that the cars actually can drive themselves.

            Tesla only succeeded due to the hard work and innovation of its two ACTUAL founders. Ever since Elon did his cuckoo bird routine and pushed them out of the nest, Tesla has fallen behind all other car manufacturers, and have only managed to stay afloat trading carbon credits for government cash. Instead of releasing a low to mid-priced model to compete, he squeezed out the cyberturd. And SpaceX is going to ruin any chance of humans getting off this planet with Starlink. In 6 months, Starlink satellites had to make 25,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers, and they are on an exponential curve. It’s not if, but when they screw up and start the beginning of the Kessler syndrome.

            And Starship is the biggest government grift of them all. That PoS will never make it to the moon, much less Mars. It’s going to end up just like the Hyperloop.

            Elon is a con-artist whose only talent is constant market manipulation, insider trading, and fooling the gullible.

            • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
              935·
              4 months ago

              I don’t get people like you that start their rant by telling me to fuck off and then expect me to continue reading any further.

          • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
            171·
            4 months ago

            You do realise you just posted this under a comment that is doing the exact opposite and assuming SpaceX’s success, right?

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        4 months ago

        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.

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
    233·
    4 months ago

    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?

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
      418·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        31·
        4 months ago

        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.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
    134·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
      141·
      4 months ago

      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.