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NASA freezes Starliner missions

(gizmodo.com)
269 points rntn | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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dgrin91 ◴[19 Oct 24 14:40 UTC] No.41888020[source]▶
I wonder if Boeing will cancel starliner since they already lost 1B+ and won't have a chance to earn on it for a while
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Vecr ◴[19 Oct 24 15:10 UTC] No.41888246[source]▶
If they don't fix it, what will their reputation be like? In isolation giving up is probably the correct thing to do, if it wasn't so extremely public.
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solardev ◴[19 Oct 24 15:15 UTC] No.41888278[source]▶
Does Boeing still have any reputation left worth saving? Seems like they gotta start from scratch regardless.
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panick21_ ◴[19 Oct 24 16:34 UTC] No.41888812[source]▶
If they drop this program they basically fuck over NASA. And Boeing is still the prime contractor on SLS. Meaning that NASA could very well finally stop playing nice over SLS.

And if Boeing wants to ever recover a chance on major NASA contracts, they can't let NASA down on this. Unless the want to just leave the space business.

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solardev ◴[19 Oct 24 16:42 UTC] No.41888848[source]▶
> Unless the want to just leave the space business.

Do they really have a choice...? I haven't been following this very closely, but it seems like SpaceX is eating their lunch regardless, and Boeing the overall organization is in crisis, isn't it? Will they even still be around in a year or two, much less continue to make space things for NASA?

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1. lukeschlather ◴[19 Oct 24 18:14 UTC] No.41889504[source]▶
I mean, yes they might close up shop entirely but that's not really an outcome they want.

Really, Boeing needs to have a come to jesus moment on several different things - they need to say "hey so clearly SLS is a mistake, we need to develop something like Starship, give us $5 billion we'll make it happen."

Although it also seems like they need to have a better engineering culture and organizationally they would prefer to retaliate against engineers trying to improve their culture. If they don't fix that, probably can't fix anything. But also if they had a good engineering culture they probably would've scrapped SLS 5 years ago.