9 thoughts on “Commercial Crew”

1. Boeing knows that with enough delays they can get paid without ever delivering a product.

   1. Regretfully, Ken, your comment jibes with my experience as a former Boeing space systems employee.

2. Ken writes:
   Boeing knows that with enough delays they can [get] paid without ever delivering a product.

   Ken: I think you meant [continue to get]…

   Rand: I worry that we are advancing past the point of risk to actual human life. Rather we are reaching the point to where we are not far from becoming unwilling to risk our human rating criteria on actual crewed spaceflight. Safe spaces are not outer.

3. Boeing gets its first pad-abort test article to the Cape in late 2017, while SpaceX flew the Dragon pad abort test over a year ago, and has flown ten of them into orbit and back since 2010…and the race for commercial crew is too close to call?

4. Commercial Crew/SLS are the new ISS from 20 years ago. Always talk of the new future almost near, followed by schedule slips to the right. This time, instead of Shuttle still flying just a few missions a year; we have an ISS constantly manned with no way to get there ourselves. Just enough to keep the key civil servants employed, and a few companies employed.

   I got a call from one of the employed yesterday. Of course, Columbus Day, so all the contractors are at work, and none of the civil servants are there. So no meetings scheduled. This would be panacea in most industries, but when you don’t have much work, because everything is vaporware. A day without meetings drags on.

5. “NASA will allow private companies to hook up modules to the International Space Station”:
   http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/11/13241404/nasa-private-companies-international-space-station-modules

   Cool news. I guess Bigelow impressed.

   1. Also: plans to make ISS private by mid 2020s:
      http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/iss/nasa-considers-handing-iss-private-company/

   2. Unless they open slots to everyone who wants one, Bigelow might not win. :*(

6. I found Lee Hutchinson’s comment interesting:

   It’s funny, because even a few years ago, both sides hated each other.

   Boeing’s Houston site, where I worked, was mostly a heritage McDonnell site, and everyone from the line engineers to the senior management talked endless shit about heritage Boeing people, even in the early 2000s and and 2010s. Heritage Boeing fucked up our processes. Heritage Boeing is inflexible. Heritage Boeing makes terrible engineering decisions. And on and on and on.

   But when I’d go visit the mothership in Bellevue for staff meetings, it was the exact same things being said about “heritage MacDac,” again at every level from wrench-turners to VPs. Heritage McDonnell makes stupid decisions. Heritage McDonnell has terrible processes. Heritage McDonnell is inflexible. And on and on and on.

   It’s been almost 20 years since the merger and the legacy components of the two companies still pretty much hate each other and blame each other for everything that’s not right about Boeing.

   There’s a lot of talk in the comments of how the corporate clash from that twenty year merger hasn’t truly settled down. Douglas seems to get more of the blame though.

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