Will it still be able to charge a premium for its vaunted “spaceflight expertise”?
Boeing had been riding on its laurels for too long a time. As I noted in the book, companies don’t have experience; people do. With Gerst gone, there’s a new sheriff in town at NASA.
When the big layoffs hit in the mid 90s, a hell of a lot of expertise went with the people who were laid off. Soon after that, Delta II launch success rate went from 100% to 90%.
So what has Boeing done with their work force? I have my own ideas, but I would love to hear other’s opinion on the subject. Any Boeing employees who follow this blog?
Boeing changed management from engineers making decisions to accountants making the major policy decisions, between 1997 and 2007, after the 1997 merger with MacDonnel-Douglas. That was arranged in the Clinton Administration’s great aerospace merger binge of 1993-1997. 2005-2007 was when Harry Stonecipher was publicly bragging how he’d “make Boeing a ‘normal’ business”, instead of being run by engineers.
The management then made engineers realize they could either cringe before management decisions, or leave. The results have only become truly obvious in the last 3 years, though the growing string of obvious lobbying victories and corrupt practices before then should have warned us.
I could write an encyclopedia about Boeing and its fuck-u*s in the space world. It is now fait accompli that SpaceX will beat them in Commercial Crew. But that won’t in any way affect Boeing’s gravy train. They have greased too many palms to ever lose a contract, even if they never perform on it.
“Open the pod bay doors, Elon.”
https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1252336741706428417/photo/1
I am not sure whether to be more discouraged that the USA needed a long-shot startup to finally make this happen or encouraged that such a thing is still possible.
I am jazzed that the long-shot startup made it. I tried and failed, as did many others. After that, I realized that it would take a Howard Hughes to make a launch startup work – a person with enough personal wealth to do the job, and enough technical savvy to set the big goals, then hire the engineers capable of reaching them. I had everything except the huge personal wealth.