To be clear, the "Safety Review" was particularly about ensuring that both companies had a drug-free workplace. One company's CEO smoked weed on camera and the other's did not, so you can imagine why one might get a different level of examination.
Is the CEO of Boeing a teetotaler? If not, should we launch an investigation? There might very well be drinking in the workplace.
And I'm not surprised they make less effort verifying that for a longtime aerospace contractor and instead focus on the rocket startup that had a bit of a PR mishap. Would have preferred this to not be an issue at all, but not sure this was an option after this kind of public event. Hope it doesn't unnecessarily push sending humans to the ISS further back.
Disclaimer I drink but don't smoke, so if anything I'm biased against my point.
Still it's a blatant example of how illogical us humans are.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron...
There's also the angle that weed is federally illegal, so smoking it demonstrates an attitude that compliance with rules is optional and subject to personal judgement. Someone with that attitude is probably more likely to choose to not comply with security procedures or secrecy commitments.
To have a mistress is fine. To get caught in a public spectacle is bad judgement.
EDIT: Regarding the maybe, replace that with "NIL". In my opinion a lot of the security concerns are coming from blackmail risks. In turn a lot of blackmail risk comes from the clearance process itself, so a home made issue Just where do you draw the line? Tricky question.
Yes, it's a stupid thing to judge someone on, and yes, our space program was built by people unafraid to bend the rules and take risks where warranted. But if you expect the bureaucracy to behave out of accordance with its nature, you are bound to be disappointed.
Company A: weed smoking 3-commas idiot upstart with habitual lying tendencies.
Company B: cultured and serious businessmen with habitual lying tendencies.
The idea is that behavior at the top sets an informal company policy. There have been a lot of articles about how Enron can be understood as a culture problem [1]. I think it's less about pot per-se, and more about the cultural signals of the boss thinking it's a good idea to be recorded committing a federal crime[2]. Does that set a standard that breaking rules is ok if they're dumb rules? Does anyone at SpaceX think that safety requirements are dumb? It's worth saying that a lot of the reporting around Boeing's recent failures have been chocked up to culture change[3].
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=enr...
[2] Though I think it is very dumb, smoking pot is still a federal crime.
[3] https://www.npr.org/2019/10/26/773675393/boeings-cultural-sh...
But a little bit of weed on the Joe Rogan podcast, and that's the hill to die on.
> ...
> But a little bit of weed on the Joe Rogan podcast, and that's the hill to die on.
The safety reviews were ordered in November 2018 [1]. The 737 MAX groundings started in March 2019 [2].
The 737 MAX fiasco is irrelevant to this series of safety reviews, but as the OP article states, Boeing may be subject to future reviews triggered by its own actions.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/elon-mus...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings#Grou...
I doubt if Musk had said "I work 18 hour days and drink 18 cups of coffee every day", NASA would have cared. The bureaucracy has a list of things they care about. Marijuana is on that list. I don't believe overwork and excessive coffee consumption are.
Or, to be more precise, he took one puff and didn't even inhale it. In a place where it is legal. Pretty absurd. Just like the entire worldwide "War on Drugs".