Hacker News Reader

Comment by hellogoodbye | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile SpaceX is launching a manned flight today

How is this relevant at all? Boeing's cuts are being caused by a collapse of its commercial airplane business brought on by the pandemic. SpaceX doesn't compete in commercial aviation at all.

If you're referring to SpaceX winning the launch contract over Boeing, that happened a while ago, and has no connection to the pandemic or this layoff.

Congratulations to SpaceX for their accomplishment today, but it's neither here nor there for the topic of this article.

Boeing's Space branch hasn't been doing well in general. Starliner delays lost them a big PR opportunity, their Delta IV rocket is getting increasingly fewer launches due to Falcon 9 being a serious competitor, and their moon lander proposal lost to much less well established competitors.

Their problems in commercial aviation are undoubtedly worse and the bigger reason for this layoff, but another major division struggling certainly didn't improve Boeing's situation.

To me at least, the GP's comment read more like a shallow aggrandizement of SpaceX, whose successes and failures can stand on their own.

To connect the current layoffs at Boeing to the competition in the commercial space launch industry really seems to be motivated reasoning that focuses on irrelevant minutiae while the whale in the room is the impact of the pandemic.

Which is relevant insofar as Boeing's Starliner was on track to be the first American vehicle to deliver astronauts to the ISS in nearly a decade, but after their pretty bad test flight SpaceX overtook them and are now getting that sweet PR instead.

It's been a bit of a horse race. SpaceX was kind of in the lead for a while but then their capsule's thruster blew up in a ground test which set them back several months. Then Boeing failed their test flight which let SpaceX get back in the lead.

Except Boeing's Starliner so far has cost Nasa almost 2X as much as SpaceX, and is aiming for prices at around 2/3 more per astronaut (55mil SpaceX vs 90mil Boeing).

If it's a horse rase, the plough horse is neck-and-neck with the thoroughbred.

Especially sour because ULA/Boeing is not expected to try again until October (unmanned) for their commercial crew ISS mission, first manned in 2021.

Reminder for those with Oculus Rift / Oculus Quest:

You can view the event in VR using Bigscreen! Today at 1:30 PST

Pop on your Quest, search for "Bigscreen" (it's called Bigscreen (Beta)) ... Then show up at 1:30!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com