Blue Origin employees say they wouldn't feel safe riding the company's rockets | Hacker News Reader

Blue Origin employees say they wouldn't feel safe riding the company's rockets

businessinsider.com

66 pointsnotRobot44 comments

If you want your safety complaint to do any good, it needs to be specific and actionable. Something like "Power bus C has unexplained overvoltage events during startup" or "Welds on PN123 were not x-rayed correctly" or "These o-rings become too stiff and stop sealing below 45f"

A general complaint about working conditions may make you feel absolved when the rocket blows up, but it will not prevent the rocket from blowing up.

True, but coming from a harsh & strict NDA environment, it's not so easy to be that specific without revealing clues to your identity. And if you aren't prepared to go the full whistle-blower route, best avoided (or make the general assertion here & be specific in a private communication to the FAA, NASA, etc.) .

Also working in aerospace- HN community does not understand how strictly information has to be controlled. In many cases you are subject to criminal penalties (e.g. export controls)

Sorry about your downvotes.

Thx, & Yup Aerospace (I work in that industry too) is VERY strict about information control, and a wide variety of info is unclassified, but designated as 'Controlled Unclassified Information' - 'CUI'.

There is a whole system of qualifications to even access CUI, along with requirements for it's handling. We must even check a database to verify whether any supplier, partner, or customer has the required qualifications to broadcast it, and there are serious penalties for breaching it.

If Blue Origin is doing any DOD work, a lot of their technology will fall under this classification. Broadcasting even descriptions of it to the general public would be a serious violation, and really stupid in this instance, as the soon-to-be-former employer will also be pushing for your prosecution.

But unfortunately, HN is not immune to postings with less information and more attitude.

Somewhat meta: Every time I try to engage with news sites like this, I'm frustrated when links appear to be useful, but are just links to other articles. In this case, there's clearly a link for "open letter", which should lead to the contents of the open letter. That's what I actually want to read. I understand they do it to keep users on their site, loading ads, but damn if it's a horrible user experience.

(Other annoyances include the TITLE of the article being on the lower half of my screen because of the giant space used for a single ad, having to scroll 3 whole page lengths just to see the first words of the actual article, and "do you want to get notifications?" popups covering the content I was trying to read.)

The actual open letter:

https://www.lioness.co/post/bezos-wants-to-create-a-better-f...

So no one is willing to put their name to the letter except a person who was fired for cause two years ago.

> the manager discovered that the team had documented "more than 1,000 problem reports" related to the company's rocket engines.

Without context, that claim is completely meaningless with respect to the safety.

This is a hack job and a garbage story.

Seeing how aggressively Blue Origin is ready to take legal action, it would be almost a miracle if the paper had more signatures. Sure, it might be fake, but I'd say that the odds of it being real are higher.

This is not a hack job or a garbage story. 17 engineers left BO this summer in the week after the BO flight, at the same time reports of internal dissension first started being reported openly.

And with respect to Abrams, "for cause" in hercase was...allegedly receiving export control violation warnings. In the context of her former job in employee communications, that would mean disclosing information in press releases that was subject to export controls. It's hard to imagine what sort of PR employee would have access to information subject to export controls at a civilian spaceflight company, since that information should have been sanitized before getting to the PR team. Either Blue Origin is confessing that multiple employees violated export controls or that they lack proper controls on such information (either way, placing their federal contracts at risk), or they're lying, so take what Blue Origin says here with a huge boulder of salt.

Also, CBS News spoke with 5 of the other (anonymous) signatories. They wouldn't disclose their names for fear of getting sued. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-origin-alexandra-abrams-sa...

Here's a quote from NASA regarding Blue Origin:

> But it is not an overstatement to say that all of the successes upon which the Option A procurement is built, all of this once-in-a-generation momentum, can easily be undone by one party—in this case, Blue Origin—who seeks to prioritize its own fortunes over that of NASA, the United States, and every person alive today who dreams to see humans exploring worlds beyond our own. Plainly stated, a protest sustain in the instant dispute runs the high risk of creating not just delays for the Artemis program, but that it will never actually achieve its goal of returning the United States to the Moon. What begins as a mere procurement delay all too easily turns into a lack of political support, a budget siphoned off for other efforts, and ultimately, a shelved mission. GAO should, of course, sustain one or more of Blue Origin’s grounds of protest if they find them to be availing. But NASA merely wishes to impress upon this office just how high the stakes are in the present dispute.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22689729/blue-origin-moon...

I find it baffling how Blue Origin is making sure that there is a strong force within NASA to never grant them any contract, ever.

Here's a quote from NASA's lawyers in response to a protest to GAO that SpaceX received preferential treatment to Blue Origin:

...

(In fact Blue Origin's complaint was that SpaceX's proposal was inconsistent with NASA's safety review requirements, and SpaceX was given an opportunity to tweak their proposal.)

Addressing these disputes is what the GAO is for, and the GAO ruled in NASA's favor. Having read all of the proposals, from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics, and statements from NASA, the GAO, and Blue Origin, among other materials, I agree with the GAO's conclusion. BO's lawsuit is baseless, frivolous, and vain.

I was also troubled by this. In the CBS story, Ms. Abrams calls the other 20 people incredibly brave. Uh. No. If they were brave, they would quit and make their claims publicly.

They clearly want to keep cashing that paycheck while being involved in an organization that they find reprehensible.

Many of them did quit. They chose to stay anonymous because they didn't want to get blacklisted in an industry controlled by 3 petulant billionaires with a history of suing their critics. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-origin-alexandra-abrams-sa...)

That's still not particularly brave, is it? If they have real concerns about engineering flaws that could even kill someone, they really should be going to the FAA, not writing a letter with someone who was fired two years ago. The FAA is quite capable of granting someone anonymity.

My impression is that this is really the work of someone who is still angry enough to dredge up problems from two years ago. The CBS reporter could only interview 5 of the 20 after granting them all anonymity. So why aren't the 15 at least willing to speak to a reporter?

Reminds me of the Silicon Valley episode where the stunt driver miscalculated and Dinesh and Gilfoyle had to decide whether to tell him:

"Let Jeff die"

Strengths - One less billionaire in the world

Weaknesses - Possibility of being fired

Opportunities - Dissolve blue origin

Threats - Possible legal action

One less billionaire in the world? Doesn’t he have any legal heir to inherit his wealth?

If you are someone who decides if a mission is a go no go you are mostly wanted to be hired by someone else.

Thats not an opportunity at all, you will probably be hated by many people who just lost their job.

About threats, well shit.

Blue Origin is well on its way of becoming the most unpopular company in the world. They might already hold that spot in the space category.

I'm not sure, they have Boeing to compete with :)

Boeing is just in a position to feel sorry for, after the Starliner had so many issues and has been delayed so long.

So it's a good time to buy the stock? I'm not entirely joking. It's high risk but all that hatred may mean a discount and immediate gains once (if) the first commercial flight is a success...

Does anyone feel safe riding in rockets? They're inherently dangerous. Although from the tenor of the letter, it seems they're more worried about "unsafe environments" created by sexist comments than exploding rockets.

'It also said that in 2018, when someone new took over one particular team, the manager discovered that the team had documented "more than 1,000 problem reports" related to the company's rocket engines. None of those reports had been addressed, the letter said.'

This is from the article you are responding to.

If someone took a look at my production logs and counted the number of times 'WARN' appeared, it would not be a very effective measure of either the correctness or robustness of my software.

Similarly without context "more than 1,000 problem reports" is worthless.

Maybe I'm naive, but isn't that the level of urgency a WARN would suggest?

In my mind: DEBUG is irrelevant outside of debugging, INFO is useful (let's say for performance measurements), WARN suggests that something is off (even if it might not need immediate action) and ERROR means "something has completely failed here and needs immediate intervention".

I agree that it needs more context, but a "problem report" is clearly something much more pressing than a WARN console statement.

Are you building rockets carrying people, though?

Are you? And if not, where have you gotten the context surrounding the reports and their significance?

Oh no way would I work on something like that but that's not the point. If multiple sources working on something with significant inherent risk tell me that THEY don't think it's safe, that's a red flag.

It would be more convincing if those "multiple sources" weren't lots of anonymous people and one named individual—a non-technical head of employee communications—who was fired for cause by the company in question two years ago.

Fine, you go ride on their rockets, then :)

If they offered me a ride, for free, I would take it.

Dangerosity isn't a boolean, there are many degrees to it.

And the article you are commenting on, makes it very clear that former and current employees of BO think that corners are being cut and safety is compromised by the lack of personel to achieve the over ambitious goals of the leadership.

If the engineer behind the rocket I am riding is a complete sexist asshole, but still the best person in the world at making rockets that carry people, I’m gonna give him a pass on his assholiness if I am sitting on top of it.

Let’s not forget the father of The US space program was a Nazi. An actual Nazi and not the generic 2021 definition. An

I've just finished the book Bad Blood about Theranos fall, and this strikes an eerie chord. Whistle-blowers armed with courage and nothing more due to aggressive legal intimidation. People and media, with the unsuspecting help of strong company PR counter-tactics, calls them disgruntled and points out the weaknesses in their legally constrained narrative.

Often, like in Theranos case, no one knows what goes on behind the curtain until it's too late.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/former-blue-origin-e...

Why would you feel safe riding a rocket? "Safe" is not the word.

I'd ride it.

This reads like a hit piece.

On the plus side, I think this is an easy rebrand. Blue Origin: out of this world coffee. Charge $10 for Milky Way lattes at a flagship store on the Amazon Seattle campus and call it a day.

Next up, sausage factory work says they wouldn't feel safe eating company's sausage.

It's a rocket. It's dangerous and there are risks.

I think that would be equally concerning, if not more. Do you know of any?

Most people wouldn’t feel safe riding any rocket. That’s why they call it “The Right Stuff.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com