Boeing Starliner could brick ISS docking port if crew abandons it
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
People should be in prison.
The latter, I hope were better than that. And to prohibit the possible offenders here, no need to jail them. Just forbid them from serving in capacity that can cause such harm: bar them from serving in executive or decision making role.
Number 4 obviously doesn't apply in the US justice system, but number 3, deterrence, is imho the major argument for putting executives or employees in prison. The threat of punishment can be a strong motivator, especially in corporate settings. But it only works if punishments are actually delivered after someone crosses the line
Which would seem to suggest that stuffing even more people into prisons may not help much; what we really need is to dial back some of the gutting of regulatory bodies that's made it so easy for corrupt behavior to flourish in the first place. Sunlight continues to be the best disinfectant.
And you can kind of see it on an international scale? The "better regulation" approach is favored by places like EU countries, while the "throw the leaders in jail" approach is more favored by places like Russia and China that don't exactly seem to be ideal role models for how to keep corporate corruption in check.
Imagine something similar to Chapter 11 in which they are temporarily protected from their creditors, but at the same time cannot function.
The concept of corporate personhood is laughable when the most powerful method of coercion that the state has to ensure all people obey the law is completely inoperative for corporate people.
Why can't I just reincorporate myself as a Delaware C Corp, shoot up a school, and then pay a fine and walk away?
https://www.foxbusiness.com/fox-news-crime/mcdonalds-employe...
> Joshua Daryl McGregor, 34, was working at the restaurant on 2701 Montgomery Ave. in April 2023 when he became frustrated that the store was too busy
> McGregor lit a piece of cardboard on fire and threw it into the dumpster outside the restaurant that was already full of cardboard and other flammable materials. He ensured the fire ignited before going back inside the restaurant, according to the press release.
> He also filmed the fire with his cell phone and posted the video on social media
> The fire became so intense that customers in the drive-through lane needed to back out of the parking lot
> Savannah Fire Department worked to put out the fire
Compare, for example, to hitting a cyclist with a car causing spinal injuries and brain damage and then fleeing the scene. He got charged with a misdemeanor and 90 days jail time which he didn't even serve because it was a suspended sentence.
What's the difference between these two cases where both seem to have wildly disproportionate sentences given the details of the crime? One was a minimum-wage macdonalds employee and the other was an investment banker.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/martin-erzinger-morgan-stanl...
A small example: most battery-powered hand tools (drills and co) use 18-21V lithium batteries, with the same connectors for all manufacturers, as a result you can buy some tools from one brand, some from others and swap batteries issueless. We do the very opposite, not only some vendors even insert a small "intelligence" in batteries to impede the use with tools not identify as belonging from the same registered buyer, formally "to avoid stealing" etc. Car parts are the same.
A working industrial system need open standards for interoperability and competition, need a universal school systems where most R&D are public and the private sector pick ideas from them. So marketed ideas are good for users, not for some vendors against their customers. We have had essentially that in the past, when all westerns economies was working well. We have abandoned that to fully go financial. Current state of thing where an entry level BEV from China cost ~9000€ in Thailand and the very ~40.000€ in the EU. We still have some high-tech dominance, but not for long and not without automotive and mid-tech mass industries in general. We can only recover ANNIHILATING private-public partnerships, putting back well funded public research based on research and development goals not short-term profits, stating clear to the private sector: you can loose talents for the public or starting to follow the new-old system.
This should been able to fix in a decade or so, if the WWWIII get postponed. In a shorter timeframe I doubt anything better than the current disaster could be done.
In future bids SpaceX can seamlessly take the role of the experienced company with track record, and thanks to SpaceX's success there are plenty of startups bidding to take the role of the innovative alternative.
Boeing's position in defence and aerospace is very safe, but to keep their space division running they will have to let that lobbying shine
The US govt is now relying on just Space X
So far those goals mostly involve building cash cows in service of financing even higher goals. I'm not sure if that goal is still Mars, but whatever it is they are reinvesting everything and regularly take in more investments
If it’s for public benefit, than let the public decide what the benefit be.
This stifles innovation and the willingness to take on risk for a reward down the road. If you actually pull it off and reach some level of “public benefit” it could just be taken from you.
Is Amazons same day delivery of medications a “public benefit”?
SpaceX has reduced costs of launching into space far greater than NASA, an already public service, has achieved. NASA's deeply inefficient costs have directly contributed to its budget being slashed and the disinterest in Congress for funding it further, it is subject to the political whims of being a public service and exacerbated by its uncompetitive spending pattern to achieve anything extraterrestrial.
The direction that the US Government is going is one to incentivize the private sector - yes, with its shareholders and all the trappings of capitalism - but with competition between multiple private enterprises. So far, the space industry is failing to have competition between multiple private enterprises, just because Boeing has poor quality control. But additional entrants into this sector are expected.
Human grief in, human relief out.
It shouldn't have been allowed to happen, period.
I get that what I said will not be popular, but this has been the consensus of every previous thread on this topic that I've seen - NASA is sorta playing the role of a systems integrator here, and assumes the liability for defective components from their subcontractors, and has the ultimate supervision authority to decide if something can or cannot fly.
I'm sorry, where do you see this impulse? I'm just not following.
Meanwhile, boeing is a publicly traded company with what amounts to a monopoly on many, many, many contracts. What was the point of defeating communism if we just give handouts to non-competitive and highly unproductive organizations who can't even hold themselves accountable? And the people who come out of the woodwork to defend them are even more confusing. Don't you want to avoid burning tax money and calling it progress? If they wanted to be seen as a public good they would have voluntarily given up on profits decades ago instead of trying to come off as parasites.
> Boeing removed the Starliner’s autonomous undocking feature from its software. The aerospace manufacturer wants to push a software update to the spacecraft in orbit, but NASA fears it could do more damage.
I'm very far away from NASA internals, but as I've seen them in the "older" days was that just a _finished_ product went into space and they would not allow to go into space with something they _knew_ required updates in-mission to complete the _original_ mission.
So it seems like a management issue on both sides.
Boeing just didn't bother to make it so the mission could potentially be changed in-flight, they just decided they'll load a software profile on the ground and that missions will just never change.
Of course, this isn't to say that Boeing doesn't have much more serious problems going on, they clearly do.
That used to be the case. For example with the Space Shuttles that is how it went.
With the Commercial Crew Program the idea is that they find commercial providers who take their astronauts where the astronauts has to be when the astronauts has to be there.
One is like building an experimental aircraft from a set of parts. Where they definietly are the system integration. The other is more like paying for airplane tickets.
To quote from the wikipedia page of the program: "The spacecraft are owned and operated by the vendor, and crew transportation is provided to NASA as a commercial service."
> as the ultimate supervision authority to decide if something can or cannot fly.
No. They have the authority to decide if their crew is safe to fly on it or not. But Boeing doesn't need NASA's permission if they just want to fly the Starliner on their own. (As long as they don't fly it with NASA personal, or close to NASA property.)
It is as if you bought a return ticket to fly to some destination and while en-route onwards you heard a death rattle from the engine. Then you have to decide if you trust the company flying you for the return trip, or you find some other way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Docking_System_S...
And adapters:
> The International Docking Adapter (IDA) converts older Russian APAS-95 docking systems to the International Docking System Standard
Imagine flying all the way and then realizing you forgot your adapter...
Jalopnik doesn't really seem like an authoritative source on this, especially since the hyperlink they included when they talk about the "Bricking" issue links to some article about simulated decompression sickness that has nothing to do with the ISS docking port...
This feels like the story they're telling isn't the real story because that's just basic, basic shit that gets beaten on all the time during development.
> Three separate, well-placed sources have confirmed to Ars that the current flight software on board Starliner cannot perform an automated undocking from the space station and entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
The reasons why the current software can't perform this operation when it could during ground testing are supposition though, and it seems Jolopnik ran with that a little bit.
That's Boeing's mission statement in general I think, but specifically here I think there's a strong indication that they deployed some software for their stakeholders that they promised would do a thing, then they literally un-deployed it after they got the sign-off.
Doctorow's own definition of enshittification can drift [1][2][3] but I called it that because Boeing sold this system as one thing, but then apprently unilaterally pulled a core feature. In other words they reduced the value of the system _after_ they extracted what they could from it by scoring the contract. It might not reach the exact definition, but it rhymes.
Honestly I thought "enshittification" as something "hip" had already had its time. It just seemed to apply.
[1] https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04... He describes it as an entity "shifting value away from end users [...] and business customers [...] to itself."
[2] https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-go... "[T]he ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders"
[3] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
If you make any sort of device and your updates can brick the device, you suck at what you do.
They could similarly ship another update that restores it. Therein, this is clickbait content
Yes and one can take the trash back to earth.
You know, like half of star trek is looking for lost crew and ships that have gone astray. People shipping off to mars and beyond are going to have to solve their own problems or just die.