Is this possibly the end for the Starliner project? I can't imagine Boeing saving face after that.
No. Remember, these are fixed-price contracts. NASA will force Boeing to fix the problem on its own dime.
Which is fitting, as Starliner is the stupidest space programme in present existence.
You’re spitballing. Starliner was pushed by NASA, not electeds. Boeing is currently in the shitter with the public and thus the Congress.
Even if you’re cynical beyond evidence, the hypothesis doesn’t hold: Boeing’s competitors are deep pocketed and connected too.
They still haven’t figured out a root cause for the thruster failures, and they won’t be getting the faulty flight hardware back to examine it. Is Boeing willing to put substantial engineering time into fixing/re-designing the thrusters, and then flying another 2-person test flight? I guess we’ll find out soon…
How wouldn't that be a part of a perfectly rational risk analysis though?
It's like saying (of course on a very different scale) that NASA should be buying rockets from Russian/Chinese/etc. companies/government as long as they offer a good price/quality ratio etc. Which would be an immensely stupid thing to do regardless of how good the actual rockets were.
> Twitter and saying inappropriate shit out loud
Or possibly more importantly doing inappropriate shit both publicly and not.
In general companies that are purely driven by their management's desire to maximize profits/shareholder value/their bonuses are fairly predictable and can be expected to behave rationally under most circumstances. However you might not want to rely too much on company owned by someone (hard to tell which ones are correct so pick any):
- willing to burn billions to either to prove some bizarre point - makes impulsive decisions worth billions under the influence of drugs - is willing to spend large amounts of money to manipulate public opinion (and/or undermine democracy and the rule of law)
(at least long-term anyway...)
How so? Surely you're not claiming that shitposting on Twitter/X is some kind of objective assessment of a person's mentality?
if the CEO of a business whose primary revenue source is money from advertisers
tells advertisers to fuck off
and when they do instead of apologising or rolling anything back, sues them over it
and if this is part of a pattern of unpredictable behaviour
covering everything from calling a cave rescue diver a paedophile
to accidentally buying a $44 billion company while trying to prank the SEC to make a point
some would say that is not the level of boring, levelheaded rationality you want
from the man who can decide whether your astronauts get home or not
This is just re-asserting the opinion that he's unhinged rather than shitposting for entertainment. Nothing you've presented suggests anything "unhinged", and investors can decide for themselves if his "risky behaviour" warrants their money.
> from the man who can decide whether your astronauts get home or not
If you seriously think Musk would decide to not assist, you're deluded. Not only would he not do this for personal ethical reasons and his interest in space exploration, he knows most of his staff would resign in protest, and that would also be the end of SpaceX's government contracts, and thus basically the end of SpaceX.
If he's truly unhinged as you claim, then you can expect that this will happen sometime soon. I won't hold my breath.
I agree - it would be completely irrational.
I just think Musk does irrational things from time to time.
There's nothing wrong with that, it's his right as a private individual. I do irrational things myself sometimes.
But if I was at NASA in charge of manned space flight
and you gave me a choice of staking my crew's safety on Musk alone, or Musk but with Starliner as a backup option
I would keep the backup option around
I get people don't like Musk, fine. But pretending that he has a history of making bad business decisions is ludicrous. He is by far the most successful business man alive (and maybe in history). This is just a fact. You can point out plenty of his faults, but his business acumen is clearly not one of them.
Just as an example: I'm old enough to remember when everyone said Twitter was going to completely break in a week after he fired >50% of the engineers to cut costs. How long ago was that? Also, whether you like the changes or not, there seems to be far more productivity and new features since Musk bought Twitter than the previous years with the old management and far larger headcount.
Twitter also triggered race riots in the UK and instead of being halfway apologetic about this, he has been spreading conspiracy theories on his personal account. This is likely to lead to a significantly more hostile legal environment in the future.
He is also being sued by the EU for changing blue checkmarks from a badge of verification to a paid feature, confusing users.
and that’s just this week!
The man runs 3 multibillion dollar businesses that are being sued all the time. I don't think any of these will have large or even noticeable impacts on the companies.
People are getting thrown in prison for years for things like throwing a trash can at a police officer. Like thrown directly in prison: arrest->trial->sentencing->appeal->incarceration is all happening in the span of a few days and the UK is actually attempting to make it illegal to talk about on social media! This is in addition to giving actual rape and murder perpetrators slow-walked trials, house arrest or just non-investigations.
The EU lawsuit just seems weird. I'm not sure why they would care so much about that one. The checkmark change was highly publicized and I don't think it mattered to anyone but celebrities and attention-seeking figures anyways. Government officials and other critically important people/organizations still get a verification.